Aftershot or PSP

[Japencho]

I am in the middle of project to import all of my paper photos to a dedicated Windows 7 Pro media server. I already have over 1000 photos digitized. They are organized by folder but's it becoming a problem as many photo's fall into multiple categories. my primary need is organization; tagging, keywords etc. I also need to be able to do light to moderate editing and touch ups.

My wife has a need to do advanced touch ups for her scrap booking as well as being able to easily find the photo's she wants.

It sounds like Aftershot is the prodcut I need and Paint Shop Pro Ult is what she wants. Is that correct for our needs? We're on separate PC's accessing the same photos's from the media server. Will any tagging, keywords, edits, etc. I do with AS be visible to her when she uses PSP? And visa versa?

Sorry for the newbie questions but it' s not clear to me he market for AS versus PSP. Thanks in advance. John

[grubernd]

sounds like you need a serious image database solution, with a shared server-client model, so you both can search images without interfering and also add metadata etc. neither ASP nor PSP offer this. that roughly covers the database stuff.

for the editing.. it all comes down how much you need to do. PSP in general is an image editor, so you edit your image and save it with the alterations. ASP is a non-destructive workflow software, where edits are not applied to the image but rather kept separately as a series of instructions in the xmp file and applied virtually for screen display and only "baked" into an image for output - which is NEVER the original, but only ever a copy. different types of workflow and editing.

i do use ASP for my old scans, but i do all the retouching in photoshop, because removing dust for more than a few little spots isnt really ASPs strength.

having two people work on the same images, possibly even at the same time, is a workflow that requires different software for the database and some well thought out workflow rules, because otherwise you will just create havoc.

[Japencho]

Thank you for the reply. I didn't understand the metadata issue but have done some reading a testing. Let's take out the working on files at the same time and say it's just single user access at different times from 2 PC's to a media server.

As long as the software stores the metadata as part of the file then anyone should be able to see the ratings, captions etc. using any program right? For a test I used Windows Live Photo Gallery to tag and rate a few images. My wife can then open those files and see the ratings within PSP or Windows Live Photo. However if I rate an image with PSP or Aftershot they are only visable by those program which I assume is because they don't stopre the metadata in the file. I think there is a way to import the catalogs or xml files so both of us would be in sync but that seems like to much trouble. I will use Windows LPG to rate, tag, caption and light touchup. She can use PSP for the heavy editing . Unless I am missing something this should work for my needs.

[afx]

As long as the software stores the metadata as part of the file then anyone should be able to see the ratings, captions etc. using any program right?

AS never ever modifies original image files.

However if I rate an image with PSP or Aftershot they are only visable by those program which I assume is because they don't stopre the metadata in the file

No idea about PSP, but AS stores all info in its own XMP file. For other apps that can read standard XMPs, you can explicitly force AS to write them.

cheers
afx

[teknisyan]

You can always download the trial of both PSP and AfterShot. Just go to http://pnoy.me/coreltrials to download the trials of PSP and Aftershot.