Mac photo software - any good?

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El Capitano

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Name
Mark
Edit My Images
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I am thinking of purchasing a macbook -this would be my first step into the mac world (except ipods and iphones).

I am a noobie, but I am getting more into my photography every day, and would like to try and do more with the photographs after I have taken them.

Is the program that you get as standard on a macbook any good for editing and touching up and enhancing etc? (ilife i think its called?)

Any info would be great.

Oh and while we are on about macbooks - whats best iwors or microsoft office - are they compatible???

Many thanks guys...and gals.

El Capo!
 
Hi Mark, Macs standard program is Iphoto has very basic editing capabilities and is not really suitable except as a organiser/library, they also do Aperture which is more powerful ,raw converter, sharpening and basic cloning/retouching which i used for a while but now use along side Photoshop elements 8 for Mac which for what i need at the moment is fine plus i don't feel up to stretching to CS4 as yet. If you do go down the Aperture route there is allot of talk currently that Aperture 3 is imminent, mind you this has been going around for 3-4 months plus Elements 8 comes with bridge as an organiser and is compatible with Iphoto and aperture if you want to use these
 
Thanks Simon.

So iphoto doesnt do as much a the sales person would have you believe, thats good to know.

What editing software do people recommend for a complete newbie / idiot?
 
iPhoto is actually very powerful and is more than capable of doing normal edits. Removes blemishes, saturation, sharpening etc

All depends on how much you know will depend if its too easy for you

Amy
 
I used iPhoto for basic stuff and soon realised it was not sufficient for my needs, so tried the Aperture and Lightroom trials. I went for Aperture as I preferred the organisational side of things, but after a couple of months, I realised I needed a little bit more so went back to Lightroom and haven't looked back. I process in LR and Photoshop if needed, then put my finished products in iPhoto.
 
To be honest I dont really know anything about editing - this is my first step into it.

I think maybe iphoto would be sufficient for me to get started - as long as it is easy to ue etc.

If I wanted to make the step up from iphoto - how much am I looking at for a dedicated editing software?
 
Elements 8 is £65-70 max, Aperture 2 around £129
 
Thanks everyone,

looks like iphoto could be a decent starting place for myself.

Mark.
 
El Capitano said:
Thanks everyone,

looks like iphoto could be a decent starting place for myself.

Mark.
Click to expand...

It's not a bad program to be honest and fine if you're shooting Jpg images and will do fine to start with. I played with it for the 1st time last night and it's ok.
 
What impressed me about iPhoto is that it will read RAW files, and it's controls are reasonable sophisticated, but not complicated.
 
iPhoto is a pretty good piece of software imo - I have Lightroom 2 now which is more powerful but I still think iPhoto is pretty good.
 
iPhoto is aimed at the consumer market and Aperture is their professional offering really...I used iPhoto for a while before buying Aperture and thought it was pretty good for getting started. Once you have used it for a while you will probably want to move on....
 
Don't fall into the trap of "I'm a keen amateur / semi pro photographer so I MUST have pro software"

iPhoto comes with a mac for free so try it if it does all you need then great, if not you MAY need to spend a little more. Elements 8 for mac is £50 from Amazon and will do all but the very fancy high end digital manipulation.

on RAW file iPhoto can adjust
White Balance
Exposure
Levels
Contrast
Saturation
Definition (Adobe call it clarity)
Hightlights
Shadows
Sharpness
De:Noise
Temperature


Don't forget that Canon gave you with your camera a fantastic RAW processing package in DPP, once you learn how to use it, it will match or better anything else for RAW CONVERTING.
 
For what it is worth; if you buy PSE 8 you will find mountains of guidance, tips, videos and magazines showing how to do huge amounts of things from arty to basics. If you have an idea what you want to achieve it's fair to say that someone has, likely, done it in PSE and loaded the video on YouTube of how they did it.
 
if all you need is to remove blemishes, crop, red eye removal, white balance adjustments, sharpening, noise reduction then iPhoto will be fine.

These are the basic photo edits you'll need, anymore and you'll want to go for something a bit more advanced
 
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