Change is taking place on the computer screens of photographers. We are moving - some would say 'have moved', in the past tense - from using a bank of programs to work with our photos to using an integrated environment. That's the surface view… beneath that, there's perhaps a bigger move from destructive to non-destructive photo editing.
Traditionally, a photographer would download their photos into a browser program, then work on the best of these in an image editor and then store some or all of these images, to call them up again using a cataloguing program.
I call this the 'shopping mall' approach, where the happy shopper flits from specialist shop to specialist shop (yes, I'm British, so it should be a 'shopping centre' approach, but that summons up dread images of drab concrete everything-for-a-quid gulags for me).
Now, the engaged photographer might use a single program to cover virtually all the functions of a browser and a cataloguing program, and most of the work of an image editor, too. I call this the 'department store' approach, where everything is under one roof. Given that no-one can pin down a precise name for the new generation of photo-handling software ('metadata database editor' is probably the most accurate), 'department store' is as good a name as any.
"Shopping Mall" or "Department Store"?
To test these two approaches, we used both with the same set of images, both downloaded, renamed, stacked and sorted using the program's own methodology.
This meant two sets of the same data files on the same computer, but what's a gigabyte more or less. The software chosen needed to be 'industry standard', as in it receives universal praise already in what it does and can work on both PC and Mac without any great hardship on either side.
With these criteria in mind, we chose Photo Mechanic 4.5 as browser and Expression Media (the Microsoft-based replacement to iView Media Pro) as cataloguing program, together with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom as the integrated approach, with its five-in-one modular design. (Mid way through the test, Adobe updated Lightroom from Version 1.0 to Version 1.1, but essentially the same findings apply to both versions.)
Lightroom divides itself into Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print and Web modules, each designed to have the same basic look and feel, but perform very different functions geared for a specific use (with names like Slideshow, Print and Web, you can guess what these uses are).
The Library module is the core of the Lightroom ethos, though, and most of your time is spent in this space, determining which of your images makes it through to the powerful Develop module and then to be included in a slideshow, printed out or put up online.
Both Photo Mechanic and Lightroom are exceptionally good at pulling images off a camera's card, renaming the resulting files and storing them. Both have an extremely useful option of storing the files in two separate places when downloading ('ingesting' in Photo Mechanic speak), meaning you can create an archive of image files on an external disk from the outset.
Photo Mechanic has two distinct advantages over Lightroom here, but unless you are a hardcore press photographer, only one of them will be genuinely useful.
Regardless of your photographic genre, you will move from 'ingesting' photos to sorting them quicker with Photo Mechanic than Lightroom - how quick depends on your computing power, though. But if minutes make a difference, Photo Mechanic wins out. Press photographers also love the idea that you can append and modify IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) metadata easily from the image ingest options box.
That early lead soon slips away, though. Lightroom's Library module is an extremely powerful browser in its own right, with components designed by an army of photographers to make the photographer's life easier. And that means Lightroom quickly becomes second nature.
In fairness, some of that intuitive nature is due to being able to flip between Library and Develop modules at will. If you prefer to sort and sift all your photos and then work on them, or run a first sort, process the potentials, then second sort, Lightroom will accommodate you. A browser can only wait until you have passed your pictures to another program.
A similar scaling occurs between Lightroom's asset management compared to Expression Media. If you are the kind of photographer that uses the words 'asset management' a lot (and not just to look smart) then you probably need something stronger than Lightroom.
People who regularly manage thousands of data files on a regular basis (as opposed to simply storing them away somewhere) and who need to store sound files and video files will choose Expression Media.
For the rest of us, the need for something other than Lightroom becomes less important. It's also here where Lightroom 1.1 improves considerably on the first version, in that its libraries and catalogues are now portable and batch keywording has become easier than ever.
Conclusion
I've been holding out as a supporter for the shopping mall approach. And, in fairness, there's still mileage in this method for certain photographers. If you are working as a news photographer, wanting to download JPEG, caption, sort, crop, resize and send images to a picture desk at great speed, it's still impossible to beat the speed of a good browser like Photo Mechanic.
If you have an extensive library of images that you need to access on a regular basis, it's hard to better a dedicated cataloguing program like Expression Media.
Ultimately which one you choose here depends on your shooting style. If you nail images in camera and shoot loads of JPEGs, the speed of Lightroom may discourage you. Otherwise, the Lightroom approach is hard to fault.
So are the days of the 'shopping mall' over…? Not for everyone, but for most DSLR users, we are all 'department store' users. And that's probably how it's going to stay.
