Lots of photographs - looking for a good approach

along with the 100s of hours of video footage we have on this current project,
the director must have shot about 5000 still images as well!

i'm wondering what might be a good way to have them easy to preview and select.

believe it or not, i've never used iPhoto!
but looking at it, it seems pretty good for what we want,
except the media is not ideally where i'd want it, which is on our media drives. (or is it?)

i want a way to quickly look through them,
make some selects, and pull them into FCP.
what are other people doing?
(or are there some tutes or articles i should read?)


thanks,
nick

Have you considered Adobe Bridge? Big display of images (like iPhoto), sort them any way you want, then drag and drop a thumbnail onto a Finder window set to where you want them. I'm not sure iPhoto works that well (I don't use it).

What OS are you on Nick? You could always just change the folder with the pics in to icon view and increase the size of the icons, which should show you a mini version of each. Then just import what you want the normal way, or by direct drag and drop from the folder.

If there's some kind of logic to them you could sort them into bins too, which would make the searching easier.

I use Quicklook. Click on a still, press the space bar, they are viewable pretty large. UP and DOWN arrow between the shots


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

ok, thanks,

yeah, I love quickview,

our director has all his stills in iPhoto, and just pulls the ones he like to the desktop (so yes, like Adobe Bridge, i guess), and gives to us,
but that means we'll get more and more dupes.
(we also have all the stills on our drives, organised into event folders much live our video rushes)

I'll bet FCPX can do something interesting.
seems great for skimming and selecting.
have to see how it goes with sharing....


nick

I'm an old fashioned guy and use GraphicConverter. You can see the folder structure, thumbnails of an entire folder, and use the cursor keys to view them quickly. (Of course, you can also use it to convert your source media to whatever you require in terms of scale/size/crop/aspect...) The interface is a bit clunky, but it works well and you can try it in demo mode (I don't remember how long. Before I bought it, you could use it indefinitely for free, it just took longer on startup.)

Stefan

--
macpro 2x3 ghz dual core intel, 10.6.8, FCS 2

I have used every one of these methods one time or another, and they all have value, but for large image jobs, I incline toward Bridge for its comprehensive image format metadata, file sorting and reorganizing, easy renaming, file-opening-into-Photoshop capabilities. And 5K of images says to me "Cross that Bridge!"

Be on the lookout for CS6, the last shrinkwrapped version of Adobe Master Collection, which of course includes Bridge, refines new features found in CS5 apps. Or bite the bullet and fly into the cloud.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytips:
Copy clip Attributes with Command-C
Paste selected Attributes with Option-V
Remove selected Attributes with Command-Option-V !

Your Final Cut Studio 2/3 KeyGuide™ Power Pack.
Still available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com