Frustrations in using Mac OS in support of photography.

Les McLean

Les McLean

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Les
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I do like the Mac OS, I feel it's no better or worse than Windows, just different, but, and it's a huge but, it frustrates me no end regarding some of it's weaknesses compared to Windows in support of photography related activity.

The 4 main areas (for me) that I find difficult are:

After a shooting session, I like to quickly browse a card full of images on my PC, tagging the images I want to work on, saving those images to file before sending them to Lightroom or Photoshop for processing, in Windows I use Fastone, which is an excellent (and free) method of quickly working through a card full of images, unfortunately there is nothing within(or I have been unable to find) the mac OS field that comes close. Lightroom is too slow (in windows or mac) to do this as efficient as Fastone (or similar windows programs).

Secondly is 'inserting' images into web pages or sending as attachments in E-mails, while I find browsing folder images in "Finder' on the mac an absolute delight with excellent and varied ways of viewing images/thumbnails, when it comes to 'inserting' images or 'attaching' an image to an E-mail, a lot of this functionality is lost, especially not being able to adjust thumbnail size when browsing a folder (in icon view), the only way to do this is in column view, where you can adjust the thumbnail size for individual images, but can't see the thumbnails of other images.

Third is using FTP programs, I use smartftp in windows, in which I can browse (as thumbnails) any images sat on my remote server, while there are a number of ftp browsers that support Mac OS, non seems to have the ability to view remote images as thumbnails.

Fourth is the native E-mail applications, I find 'Mail' for Mac just too basic for any appointment handling, syncing with other calendars/devices or organising schedules. Outlook for Windows does this smoothly without fuss, on the Mac I found I had to employ third party programs (notably Thunderbird), a range of plug-ins, google calendar to synch devices to get anywhere close to the functionality of outlook for windows.

So I find I'm drifting back to Windows for a lot of the basic functions to do with supporting my photography, which is a pity, as I really do like Mac as an operating system.
 
<gets popcorn>

I half expected you to finish that post off with something like "Smoke me a kipper...." :D
 
I'll bite ;)

1 - I can't really help you with this as I've always found Lightroom to be fine in this respect, I like to keep all my workflow within Lightroom. The import box preview in Lightroom allow you to view images up to a fairly large size before ticking them for import.

2 - What version of OS X are you using? On Icon view there is a slider at the bottom of finder windows, so you can resize the thumbnails. For emails you can drag and drop onto the "Mail" icon on the dock and you will get a blank email with your image as an attachment, along with the option to have it small, medium, large or actual size.

3 - I use Cyber duck, I've always been happy with it so not looked at others. It doesn't seem to do thumbnails, but I use the space bar to invoke quickview.

4 - Have you tried Entourage for Mac, it's the equivalent of office?
 
I've not found any real problems converting from PC to Mac.

As far as previewing images prior to import into Lightroom, the Import preview pane in Lightroom serves me well enough. As far as attaching images to email, you can automate Lightroom to render the image and automatically past it into an email and it will send it via mail.

I do have to agree with you about Mail though. But then I used Thunderbird on the PC so using it on the Mac is no big deal for me.

Cyberduck does seem to be the best option for FTP. To be honest I can't remember what I used on the PC, so you may be right.
 
You don't want Entourage, it's a dog. Outlook is available for Mac in the latest version of Office, i.e 2011. Rebuilt from the ground up and so so similar to the Windows version.

Image Capture gives you previews of your images before you import them.

To attach photos to an email, why not use the normal finder where you can change preview size and then just drag and drop them into your email.

Have you tried Transmit as an FTP client, pretty good.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions

Regarding lightroom, it's just not fast enough to render a 32gb of 1Ds MKIII Raw files for a quick look (in win or mac), and I'm using an I7 quad processor with 8GB of memory and a SSD, that's why I like Fastone, it's quick and dirty, and does the job very well, I just wish Mac had something similar.

Lewis, I agree, in icon view in 'Finder', you can resize the previews, but if you want to browse a folder to 'insert' an image onto a webpage, or browse an image using mail, this resize image functionality is not there, although I'm sure there is somewhere a geeky workaround. I think Vaughan suggestion of previewing images in finder, and drag/drop into mail is the best option, although not ideal. Where it does get stuck though is say for example I want to quickly put an image on my site (in Pbase), I click on the 'upload image' button, and a browser window opens, I point it to the folder with the images in, but no way of resizing the thumbnails like you can in Windows.

Have tried Tansmit and Cyber duck as FTP clients, but they don't have thumbnail preview.

Also tried Outlook for Mac (trial version), and it still doesn't have the sleek functionality as Outlook for windows, I think it's partly because Mac split into two distinct applications Email and Calendar, which even in Outlook for mac, this split is still there, so (for example) you can't see your upcoming appointments in the E-mail front end as you can in windows outlook.
 
Last edited:
Les McLean said:
Have tried Tansmit and Cyber duck as FTP clients, but they don't have thumbnail preview.
Click to expand...

Have you tried Finder > Go > Connect to Server... (or use the shortcut command-K)? It allows you to connect to a FTP server and browse it in finder.
 
neil_g said:
isnt finder FTP read only or have they corrected that? i know it was something like that why we dont use it.
Click to expand...

From Apple help

FTP servers

With read-only access you can copy files from the server, but to copy files to the server you may need another FTP application. Choose Apple menu > Mac OS X Software to find FTP applications available for Mac OS X.


But it works :) Thanks Henrica :thumbs::thumbs: at least I can browse my server images as thumbnails, now if I could configure it to return a http url address so I can 'insert image' within my posts on TP (and similar forums), I'll have cracked that conundrum.
 
Glad it worked for you. I wasn't aware that connect to... only allowed read only access when connecting to a FTP server but at least it allows you to download pictures from the server, I guess.
 
Henrica said:
Glad it worked for you. I wasn't aware that connect to... only allowed read only access when connecting to a FTP server but at least it allows you to download pictures from the server, I guess.
Click to expand...

Connect to server... is 'read only' only for FTP connections. If you connect, say using SMB, then you get Read Write as well. Can you connect any other way apart from FTP?
 
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