I’ve got a problem with management. No, not the one that pays me, but the one that attempts to keep order in my photo collection. I love almost everything about my MacBook Pro… except that I can’t ever find the picture I’m looking for to save my life. I appreciate that the computer tries to be helpful by saving pictures taken on the same date as an “event,” but more often than not what I end up with when I download pictures from my phone are a dozen separate events full of pictures that in no way relate to each other. I take random snapshots, not full blown photo shoots. I’ve suffered in silence for years, but no longer. I need something other than iPhoto in my life.
The fact is I like to curate my own files. I like personal control over where they’re going and what ends up in them. I know that’s a very un-Mac thing to say. Steve wouldn’t like my inability to give up manual file management to the system. He’d probably yell. A lot. I’ve come to terms with that, so what I really need is a simple photo editor for Mac that lets me run the show when it comes to building file hierarchies, sorting, and naming images. It’s possible that iPhoto would let me do this if I found the right way to ask it, but so far it’s been a no go.
My research mission for the week is to find just such an app. First stop is the 30-day free trial of Aperture 3 to see if it’s file management system is more likable than it’s consumer-focused cousin. After that it’s possibly a side trip to Photoshop Elements for editing and good old fashioned manual file management to keep myself organized. I’ll let you know how it goes. If anyone has any other ideas, I’m all ears.
JEFFREYTHARP.COM 
Hey just wondered if you found a good way of manually managing and organising your files?
I’ve just bought an iMac and have really struggled with the transition…As a Windows user, I’m a total control freak when it comes down to my file and folder structures – I like to have everything it it’s right place, all carefully structured and backed-up – but everything about the Mac scares me – it seems to try and control my files and stash them away in strange hidden locations.
Frankly I just want a really good hierachical file manager that generates and shows thumbnails on the fly, like Directory Opus, so that I can do my own thing without being tied into some secretive kind of hidden library or Mac specific file structure.
Until I filnd this…it’s dual boot into Windows 😦
Sadly, hiding your files is precisely what the Mac is built to do. Fact is, Apple doesn’t want people tinkering with that kind of thing. We’re supposed to just trust the machine. I’m not there yet myself. I haven’t found a satisfactory way to manage my photos yet, but I have been able to “force feed” a basic file structure into finder. It’s definitely not as elegant as they way I had files organized, but it seems to be the compromise that both the computer and I can both understand. As far as back ups, I’ve surrendered and just have the whole harddrive backed up locally and again to the cloud. If it’s worth doing, I guess it’s worth overdoing. Knowing that at any given time there are two complete copies of every file I have lets me rest a little easier at least.