adm wrote:

I'd like an answer to this question as well. I've given iPhoto a fair shot,
but for my (RAW) use, it still fails dismally. I hope they improve it soon.

I use iPhoto to catalogue and arrange my photos. It has a lot of power
under the hood so to speak, if you can unearth it thought!

One very powerfull feature is the 'smart album' feature which is just a
custom search feature in DataBase terms. With this I can add comments to
any photo and it will automatically appear in that smart album if a
match is made. So, depending on the setup, a patricular shot can appear
in multiple collections, say, in an album collecting beach scenes, blue
sky scenes, etc. All without moving or duplicationg the original of
course.

Cratring custom slide shows for projection at particular events is very
easy this way. I think of the 'Library' as a drawer full of individual
film rolls which is fixed and unchanging - and I do the sorting and
arranging with Smart Albums.

I also really like the option to painlessly ordering prints to be
delivered to friends and family without me having to use a printer
myself - excellent service! There is a similar process for e-mailing
reduced sized images as well. I find the slide-show process very
painless - we often show friends our latest trip photos on the laptop
this way, accompanied with music of our choice, this can then be
authored as a Quicktime move or burnt onto DVD if need be, all very
painless and quick.

It is a little unfair to critisise iPhot for not being as good an editor
as Photoshop, IPhoto is free, Photoshop is the most expensive image
editor out there. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

My workflow is to use iPhoto to catalogue and arrange my work - but I
have it setup so that when I double click on the image it opens
Photoshop. I believe this is possible with RAW files as well. I can't
test this out yet as iPhoto does not support my camera yet (dam!) but as
soon as it does I will get iPhoto to store my RAW images, but produce
the final print image or whatever usiing the RAW converter in Photoshop.
I don't really like the Browser in Photoshop myself.

I think the search for one programme to do everything is a long way off,
so for me I am happy to use a few tools to get the job done. I hardly
ever print out stuff these days, its mostly for screen viewing and
projection to audiences in the main (like slides I guess!), and
sometimes lots of trip photos printed on A3 to hang up in the house so
we can see lots of images of our holidays at once - saves boring friends
with paper photo albums!