Image management

[Cristen Gillespie]

I have used Adobe's Bridge to browse my images but would rather not deal with its large overhead. Otherwise I use GraphicConverter (Mac only; http://www.lemkesoft.com/en/graphcon.htm) which is very fast to browse even large folders. I'm expecting a review copy of Portfolio 8 to arrive anytime now, so I may end up using it as well.

I haven't found a reason to pit Bridge against Portfolio, using only one. I use both since their strengths are different and it cuts down on overhead a teeny bit. I use Bridge for the hard drives because their content keeps changing and I don't have to manually update it in Portfolio. I also prefer Bridge's Compact mode to Portfolio's--I'm on v7, so perhaps v8 is better. Bridge gives me access to ACR and Image Processor, among other frequently used PS tools. So I really can't do without it. But I have large numbers of slides I've scanned and put on DVD, as well as digital photos. I have those cached in Portfolio. Bridge just isn't any good for that.

I'll often have both Bridge AND Portfolio open at the same time. I'll use Bridge to look at my folder of unburned files, and Portfolio to look at what I have finished and burned. Keeps me from duplicating my effort by either scanning twice, or fixing twice.

[ktinkel]

I have used Adobe's Bridge to browse my images but would rather not deal with its large overhead. Otherwise I use GraphicConverter …GraphicConverter (http://www.lemkesoft.com/en/graphcon.htm) is one of those all-time great Mac programs (like BBEdit, iData, and a couple of others). I think one of its strengths is its focus: it does one sort of job really well.

We have been talking about Canvas. I wonder how much of its difficulty is that it did not focus. It could be a case of “jack of all trades, master of none.”

I used Canvas extensively when it was an image-editing DA, way back when. But although I had/have every version of the application Canvas through 8, I never warmed to them. It was good at vectors, but had a distinctive interface (and by then most of us had gone through Illustrator, Freehand, and perhaps CorelDraw). It was good at bitmaps, but not as good as Photoshop, and most references to how to accomplish something use Photoshop as a reference.

Canvas was much better at page layout than I ever expected it to be, but Quark, Ventura Publisher, and PageMaker (and later InDesign) owned the serious market. And partisans of Ventura Publisher were unlikely to take to Canvas, or may never even have heard of it.

In a way, it suffered the way Ragtime did. Maybe we just resist all-in-one programs. (Well, until Adobe started gluing theirs all together, but by now users are tired of learning new stuff and accept CS without necessarily loving it.)