10-08-2011, 06:45 PM
None of the things mentioned besides iPhoto is appropriate, they are glorified Finders.
Digital Asset Management software is built on the philosophy of non-destructive edits. This means never throwing things away. At some point it becomes impossible, conceptually, to do both that and just store the selects, which by definition aren't masters but "become" them.
So what you do is put your selects, or "versions" into their own library---you no longer deal with a library that has "too much" in it. Not hard to do with iPhoto, or Aperture, or Lightroom. And on a larger scale it's what professional organizations such as newspapers and magazines and other electronic libraries do with their images, using software no one here has ever heard of. (I used to manage the archive dept. at a major newspaper.)
The consternation comes when people use DAM software for presentation or permanent storage of what they like and editing/versioning functions without proper segregation of each purpose.
Digital Asset Management software is built on the philosophy of non-destructive edits. This means never throwing things away. At some point it becomes impossible, conceptually, to do both that and just store the selects, which by definition aren't masters but "become" them.
So what you do is put your selects, or "versions" into their own library---you no longer deal with a library that has "too much" in it. Not hard to do with iPhoto, or Aperture, or Lightroom. And on a larger scale it's what professional organizations such as newspapers and magazines and other electronic libraries do with their images, using software no one here has ever heard of. (I used to manage the archive dept. at a major newspaper.)
The consternation comes when people use DAM software for presentation or permanent storage of what they like and editing/versioning functions without proper segregation of each purpose.