Software for a new Mac: Lightroom, Aperture, Microsoft Office, iWork '08 and Google Docs

We photographers generally need to buy at least two additional pieces of software to get a brand new Mac up and running. Although every Mac ships with iPhoto it is not powerful enough for serious digital photography. Serious photographers will need to add much more powerful photo-editing software into their computers.

Apple would like me to push Aperture 2 which is their professional image library and Raw file conversion software here. Again, I must admit that I am an Apple Store for Business Affiliate but that I am not a paid endorser of any product. I do enjoy using Aperture 2 but I have chosen to make its rival Adobe Photoshop Lightroom my main photo-editing program.

I am not going to bash Aperture in anyway in this blog. I like Aperture but I make my living teaching digital photography to cross-platform audiences. Since Aperture only works with a powerful Mac, for me Adobe Photoshop Lightroom was an easy choice. I made Lightroom my software of choice simply because I need to teach and work with both Mac and PC audiences.

Your needs are different then mine. Please do your own research and find the image organization tool that you like best before you plunk down money on one of these products.

No matter which image management software you choose also remember that both Aperture and Lightroom are designed to be speedy workflow enhancement tools. These programs are great for getting images into the computer, for creating a well-organized image library, and for file delivery but they both have their limits.

For serious retouching, local corrections, and complex pixel manipulations nothing beats Photoshop CS3. Neither Lightroom, nor Aperture, is designed to replace Photoshop CS3. Neither program can do all the things that Photoshop can do. Photoshop is an expensive and complicated program, but in the end it is still the most powerful image enhancement tool on the planet.

If all that do with your computer is to work on images then you do need not need to read any further. For most of us though photography is only a small part of our everyday computing needs. Most photographers will also have to reach a decision to be made about which word processing and everyday office task software to choose with a brand new Mac.

For Mac users there are a couple of options in this category of software to consider.

Option #1: Microsoft Office for Mac. Office is the biggest fish in the pond. The Mac version includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage which is equivalent to Microsoft Outlook on the PC.

Microsoft Word is the world’s standard for word processing and Excel dominates the spreadsheet market. If you are used to using Microsoft Office software in the PC world, or if you need to share lots of documents with others, then this is a smart thing to add to your new Mac.

Option #2: iWork ’08. I have Microsoft Office for many years but I am growing increasingly fond of Apple's iWork '08 suite. I like iWork’s word processing application, Pages, far better than Microsoft Word. I feel like it is much easier to use and far less cluttered. With each version Word just seems to get increasingly bloated with features that I don't use yet it's basic problems never seem to go away.

It is worth point out too that Pages can both read and write into Word’s “.doc” document format. This means that if someone gives me a Word document that I can open it into Pages, work on it, and then save it back out for them using Word's ".doc" format. Basically, I get the ease of working in Pages plus the compatibility with Word this way but it is a little roundabout.

For creating presentations, I think that Keynote is much easier to use and far more intuitive then Microsoft Powerpoint. I am using Keynote these days for almost all of my lectures and presentations. It is a great program for photographer's who need to put together a lecture or arrange an elegant slideshow.

The only place where I think Microsoft Office for Mac has a leg up on iWork '08 is in spreadsheets. It's not that I don't like iWork's spreadsheet application, which is called Numbers, but I am just so used to Microsoft Excel that I hate to change. Fortunately, spreadsheets are not a big part of my daily routine so this is a rather minor issue but again your needs may differ.

I think that is enough for this post. Really, buying a Mac for photography is pretty straightforward. Decide on the hardware first and then get the appropriate image management and office task software. I'll have more specific hardware shopping suggestions in my next posts. As always, I appreciate your comments and welcome your questions.