What programs to use

[Dave Weller]

After a really bad thunderstorm that fried my old PC, I have now invested in a Imac computer. My question is what programs should I invest in for photo editing or what would you invest in. I apologies for the ambiguity of the question, my thoughts photoshop for one (if it is not overkill for my needs) and what else I don't know.

[Dan Brown]

I would recommend PS and whatever proprietary software to match your camera system. Lightroom also. These should get you going, if you are a little familiar with them.

[James Prudente]

PSCS5 is my personal choice for several reasons, great raw conversion in Bridge, much better noise control than previous versions, reasonable easy file management.

Jim

[Chris Ober]

It depends on what your needs are and what you didn't specify.

A lot of people use Photo Mechanic (http://www.camerabits.com/site) to quickly browse and cull their images. Lightroom and Aperture are popular choices for management and conversion but may be overkill depending on you needs (or wants). Cheaper and or free alternatives for editors include Picasa, Gimp, Canon's DPP, iPhoto, Photoshop Elements.

[Myer Bornstein]

I have been utilizingPhotoshop and tried bridge, but did not like it. Have incorporated light room into my workflow and find that I do a lot of my preliminary editing in the light room and finish up with Photoshop

[Dave Weller]

Thank you all for your input, I do have canon dpp, and I have tried other programs on my old PC, gimp I probably would rule out. I have been using previously corel PSP photo. I am leaning towards photoshop, and maybe aperture or lightroom. I have been pleasantly surprised with iphoto and the quality the mac produces with the photo's I have downloaded.

[John Chardine]

I use Photoshop CS5 and Photo Mechanic on the Mac. The latter provides superb digital asset management (DAM) facility but no image processing, but that's fine because I have all that in Photoshop. I recognise that lots of people use Lightroom or Aperture but IMO these do not provide all the DAM facility that Photo Mechanic does (I've used all three), and their extensive image processing features are redundant if you are a Photoshop user. However, if my goal was to do DAM and processing in one place, I would definitely look at Lightroom or Aperture as a single app solution.

[Dave Weller]

Thanks I will check photo mechanic out, I wasn't aware of that one

[Robert Amoruso]

John, Interesting take on Photo Mechanic for DAM. As I still have not adopted a system, I will have to give the a look. Thanks.