Moving Photos - serious question

[dale_weiss]

<p>I am a 63 year old film/print/darkroom guy and am entering the digital age. i have three digitals, a Nikon cool pic 2200 and an L 110 and a Kodak ZD710. I have installed on my computer Photo Explosion. Now, each of these cameras comes with its own software so you can down load and edit photos. BUT, how do you transfer (export/import) from one program to another. So far the only way I have figured out is to keep transfering from the card or burn a CD. There must be a way to just move a photo from say Nikon View to Photo Explosion. I am at my wits end on this one. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.</p>

[tonybynum]

buy lighroom and save yourself hours and hours and hours of time and eliminate the hassles altogether.

Times is short and you should be out taking photos not spending all your time at the computer . . .

[brad_smith8]

<p>Is there a reason you don't have your photos in one centralized folder, and then open them from there in any program you want? Or are the photos from different cameras incompatible? If so you'll need to convert them (preferably to TIFF or DNG), so that (hopefully) they can be opened in any of the programs.</p>

<p>And yes a single program that can handle many formats like Lightroom, Photoshop or Elements is a great idea.</p>

<p>As to specifically how to import/export to/from your existing programs, please consult your documentation.</p>

[photo5]

<p>Picasa, a free photo organization program from Google, is a good way to get your photos organized. I use it on my PC and don't feel the need for Lightroom at all.</p>

[tonybynum]

the reason to get LR is so that you have one program, that can read, edit and catalog all your flies - tiff,

raw, dng, jpg, etc., export to the web, and print in a non destructive environment that does NOT need to

create new image files that are impossible to keep track of. therefore, you can shoot raw and never alter

the original files and LR does not care where you store your files, it will remember and even tell you where

you put the files so long as you dont move them outside of the program.

 

If you dont processes many photos and you like the thought of using multiple programs that dont play well

together, and you like to keep track of various files and files types, stick with the system you have. If, on

the other hand you want to be a photographer and spend more time in the field, get lightroom, learn how to

use it, and youre in business. . .

[n-j]

<p>i would recommend lightroom too;<br>

the "free" dng format preserves full raw-editability with the bonus that most "raw-processors" keep their "settings" as initial dng-settings;<br>

so exporting to dng ( there's even a free tool from adobe ) and importing to LR would be a clean and future proof solution.<br>

regards</p>

[dale_weiss]

<p>To Dave - I have Picasa also and am now using it. I have figured out a way now to transfer and it only takes about a minute to do. I like to keep multiple files so that I can play with them on a day when not taking photos. Thanks</p>

[JeffOwen]

<p>I have over 40,000 photos in my pc (all backed up) taken with a variety cameras over a number of years. Each camera has it's own way of transferring it's photo files and recommends different programs to edit and work on the images. I have tried several of these programs and to be honest they all try to be too clever doing their own ways of tagging, marking and ordering them into different groups.<br>

What I use is the standard file handling system used by Windows that can be accessed by running explorer.exe . This will open the display called My Documents. Under the 'My Pictures' folder I put all my photos into sub folders broken down by the Year and then by Year-Month-Day-Title. Keeping this system in a consistent and ordered fashion helps me to locate any of my many photos.<br>

If I am just viewing them I use the free program called FastStone. This program will also do basic editing like image enhancing, rotating, cropping and printing. For most of my photo work I use Photoshop.</p>

[n-j]

<p>@jeff</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Under the 'My Pictures' folder I put all my photos into sub folders broken down by the Year and then by Year-Month-Day-Title.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>i do sort my pics by the same hierarchy, but i let lightroom do this for me; on import it asks you weather to move,copy,... your photos from any location; so i copy all my pics from card to disc; next step would be to tell LR how to organize the; i tell it "by date : Y :m :d ; Import, got my meta, got my hierarchy ( on disc and in LR );<br>

so you see no need to work around LR; it's a fool-proof app;</p>

<p>cheers</p>