Photography occupies several different niches in my life. One of
them is recreational. When I am playing around with digital images in
my computer for the heck of it, I certainly don't watch the clock. I
might spend two hours experimenting with different treatments of one
image and enjoy every minute of it, regardless of whether I end up with
anything I feel is worth keeping.
I also have a part-time job that includes taking pictures of
instruments and putting them on a store website. This lets people in
distant locations can get a look at an antique mandolin or carefully
peruse the only worn spot on an otherwise mint-condition guitar. At
work, I am definitely goal-oriented: I want to provide photos that are
as consistent, detailed, and accurate as possible. On the other hand,
taking these photos and getting them ready for the Internet can't take
too long, or they would cost more than the budget allows. An efficient
image processing routine is obviously useful in such a context.
The first image processing program I worked with on my home iMac was
Adobe Photoshop LE. (Officially LE stands for "Limited Edition." I'm
sure the fact that it could also stand for "Less Expensive" is
coincidental.) I had previously used the full version of Photoshop on
other computers. The LE version came with our scanner, and I found it
included most of the features I used frequently. It far surpassed the
program that came with my digital camera, and it is still the photo
program I've had the most experience with.
When I went to process my first batch of photos at the store, I hit
the "Graphics" tab on the launcher and saw only one photo processing
program: Adobe PhotoDeluxe.
PhotoDeluxe is LE's even less expensive sibling, and I had never
used it before. A bit of hunting through the various tabs revealed many
of the more basic features I was used to working with in LE. I needed
to rotate some of the photos, trim them, adjust brightness and
contrast, make them uniform sizes to fit well on a page together, and
compress them enough to make for reasonably fast loading time. All
those features were available in PhotoDeluxe.
The catch was, they weren't easily available in the order I wanted
to use them. PhotoDeluxe has several sets of features strung together,
and once you've used one item from a series of tabs, you have to click
on every other tab on that set, whether you want to use the feature or
not, and then click "Done" in order to get to a different set.
Moreover, you can only work with one image open at a time.
This is no big deal if you're only doing a few photos. But as I
swiftly discovered, doing similar processing on each of 60 photos this
way meant a lot of clicking. I began to notice symptoms of
repetitive stress in my hand after less than an hour of working this
way. I figured there had to be a better way to do the job, so I set out
to find it.
At the library I found a book on digital photography and read about
programs that process batches of photos all at once. Unfortunately, all
the programs mentioned in the book were for PC only, except Photoshop,
and the full version of Photoshop is pretty pricey. Being opposed on
principle to paying lots of money for features the store was unlikely
to use, I figured that Photoshop was more than we needed and continued
my search for low-cost programs that included batch processing.
I typed relevant phrases into the text boxes of search engines,
followed promising threads in Mac email list archives, and winnowed
heaps of image processing program descriptions and user reviews at Mac
download sites.
Eventually I found two good candidates: GraphicConverter ($35) and
Epson Film Factory ($29.95, free
with some Epson printers). Both programs are available as free trial
downloads, although the trial version of GraphicConverter disables the
batch processing feature. Of the two, GraphicConverter has far more
features. Judging from comments and reviews, it's a favorite of many
professional users [that includes LEM - ed]. At the shop, however, we
have staff members who are new to computer graphics. They found the
Film Factory interface easier to understand, so that's the one we went
with.
The Epson trial gives you 30 days to use the fully enabled program
before you have to pay for it. This gave us time to check it out before
paying its modest price. Besides its photo-editing features, it offers
an organizational framework for keeping track of your images.
If you're looking for a basic, inexpensive, beginner-friendly
program, and especially if you need to do batch processing with such a
program, you might want to check out Film Factory. If you need more
features, and especially if you need to convert between different image
formats as well as doing batch processing, GraphicConverter is
certainly worth exploring. It's hard to beat the trial price in either
case. 
