[mtngal]

I'm going to be taking a trip soon that will involve flying by myself, and decided that I would get a MacBook Air (a number of reasons). I'm trying to decide what software to get or install for it, to keep the flash memory (it doesn't have a hard drive) fairly small. It would be for fairly quick edits and the ability to show others (family) the pictures, or else let them have edited files. I am not planning on doing anything particularly complicated on it, and I'll be editing Q pictures (the K5 is going to stay home, I doubt I'll be taking much beyond family photos).

Question #1: If price were no object, but memory is a huge object (I got the previous version of the MacBook Air on sale so there's something like 64GB, not even 128GB on the current new model), what would you recommend?

Question #2: I have the disks/licenses for PSE6 (bought in 2007 for my husband's iMac while my MacBook Pro was in the shop) and also several versions of Lightroom (figured I would use Lightroom 3). I also have the licenses for Topaz Lab's plug-ins, which will work with LR and as I recall, also PSE. While the last time I used PSE I realized how often I use layer masks, there wasn't a time when I really felt deprived by it. The PSE box said it takes about 1 GB, as does LR3. So this is what I think I'll do as I don't have to buy anything and the programs aren't huge. But is there something else out there (like Paint Shop Pro) that is reasonably priced but might offer me more than what I have?

Question #3: Is PSE11 worth the extra cost and size differential over PSE6? If I want to do something special I can always wait until I get home, when I could use my MacBook Pro that has CS6 and LR4 on it, it's not like whatever I put on the Air will be the only software I have available to me. If PSE11 were to support layer masks, I would get it, but I don't think it does. That would be about the only thing I could be tempted by, since I will also have LR3.

[dmort]

I like option 2. My own two cents: I use acdsee and I think it is a superb program. When I want photoshop or DXO I use it, but for most things, acdsee is fast, a small program and gets the job done. Also, you can oftentimes get a deal on online storage - for a while the software was $50 and came with 40gb of online storage. But, if you don't have to spend money, why would you spend money? All the software you listed can take care of all the things you said you wanted to do!

And btw, I have a 64 gb macbook air as well - the first generation model. I don't even bother with it for photography! I use my epson p6000 or I borrow my wife's sony laptop (which I forget the model number). I run a windows 8 tower, so obviously I don't pack that up for road trips!

[percy]

The MacBook already has iPhoto installed - why not just use that for basic editing :-)

[mtngal]

The MacBook already has iPhoto installed - why not just use that for basic editing :-)

Thanks for the replies. I normally carry my 17" MacBook Pro, but then I rarely fly and the extra weight is not normally a big deal. But I'll have a plane change both ways and there's no way I can manage everything on my own. I really mainly wanted to have something with a Thunderbolt port so I can have the files on a hard drive as well as the cards. Then it occurred to me that some of the family might like to see what I've taken and that perhaps I should also have a way of editing.

I'm not comfortable with iPhoto, I found it too heavy-handed and I got frustrated with it. I'm happier with PSE, I've been using Photoshop since Photoshop 3, not CS3. On the other hand, I would be happy considering another small program if it is worth it. I'm not entirely sure about how I'll use the MacBook Air long-term.

[boriscleto]

Pixelmator

[dmort]

If you disregard editing, you can just use an hdmi cable to send the pictures over to the tv?

[jogiba]

Question #1: If price were no object, but memory is a huge object (I got the previous version of the MacBook Air on sale so there's something like 64GB, not even 128GB on the current new model), what would you recommend?

The 2012 and 2013 MacBook Air has a maximum of 8GB or RAM and 512GB SSD with the 2013 version using PCI Express. My 2011 MacBook Air has Core i7, 4GB RAM and 256GB SSD.

[mtngal]

Pixelmator

That's an interesting looking program, I might check that out more.

I thought about just keeping the files on lots of cards and using an HDMI cord to display them on a TX (and take a micro card reader to transfer the files to one of their computers) didn't give me a back-up and ran the risk of me getting my cards mixed up or accidentally leaving one of them somewhere. So I really wanted the back-up. I did think of shooting just jpg and uploading to zenfolio as I went along, but that assumed a wireless connection and that's not assured in this case. I thought about an iPad, but while I could get the pictures onto the iPad easily, I couldn't figure out how to get them off it onto the hard drive.

I know I could have bought an Air with more SSD, but I wanted to keep the cost to a minimum, so I bought one with 64 GB, the cheapest (and last one) that was available on sale. Really the editing is secondary to being able to move the files onto the hard drive.

This whole project is such an impulsive, un-researched thing for me. I know what's driving it at the moment, but it's so unlike my usual way of going about purchasing anything over $100. After I bought it and was thinking about putting LR and PSE on it (since I have the disks), I realized that I had just bought a computer without a disk drive. So I immediately, without any additional research, ordered a super-drive (which will arrive Monday). As I was reading through various things, before I got the computer home to play with, I discovered that I could share my DVD drive on the MacBook Pro. Too late to cancel the super-drive order (oh well, it's always nice to have a second DVD player). I spent last night learning how to set the laptop to share the drive and installing LR and PSE6. I had previously downloaded a couple of solitaire games (got to do something on the airplane) and think I've got it mostly set up with what I want - I still have 34GB of memory. I downloaded but have not yet installed the several Topaz Labs plugins I use on a regular basis, I assume they are compressed and I'm not sure how much memory they will take when expanded. I'm trying to decide which of them I really need (DeNoise because I'm only taking the Qs, Detail most likely because I have favorite settings in it for minor sharpening pretty much for sure, Clarity is a maybe as I can do pretty much the same thing with LR along with ReMask, which I need to look at and make sure it will work with PSE - it might be easier to do selections with it than PSE. Wait - I said I wasn't going to do heavy editing, didn't I? Sigh!).

[boriscleto]

That's an interesting looking program, I might check that out more.

Personally I use Aperture, with Pixelmator linked as an external editor. But Aperture is overkill for a MacBook Air. Aperture weighs in at almost 1GB and it really need 8GB of RAM to run comfortably. Pixelmator is just 80MB...

You don't get noise reduction, but you can get Noiseware to do that.

[calsan]

If you've had any apple hardware for less than 14 days, you can return it for any reason.
I would return the super drive AND the air and just get an air with a bigger ssd.

[IchabodCrane]

....

I'm not comfortable with iPhoto, I found it too heavy-handed and I got frustrated with it. I'm happier with PSE, I've been using Photoshop since Photoshop 3, not CS3. On the other hand, I would be happy considering another small program if it is worth it. I'm not entirely sure about how I'll use the MacBook Air long-term.

Is iPhoto's problem the file system it creates for itself? I personally don't mind it as I can always use a batch export of the files and then do what I wish with them.

[mtngal]

I almost have the air set up, just that I stupidly deleted something that included the updater for PSE. I tried to re-install PSE over the original one but it didn't include the updater. Then I tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling it and that didn't work either. I'm not too broken-hearted about it, the program itself comes up and LR works, though it gave me a weird error message when I tried to use LR to delete some files on the external hard drive (not something I have to have, can always remove them from the LR catalog and delete them from the hard drive manually). I'm not entirely sure LR3 is 100% compatible with Lion. Since the only thing in PSE that would have updated in Camera Raw, I'm not concerned as I'll use LR for that. Tonight I should probably actually try using PSE on that computer, just to make sure that everything does work.

The iPhoto's file system was a major (but not the biggest) stumbling block because I couldn't quite figure out where it was putting the files, and then it seemed to create files I didn't want. Since space is an issue with the Air, I'll keep all files on the portable hard drive. The other thing was that I thought iPhoto hard to get the way I wanted it to. Adjustments seemed to be either not enough or too much. I used a trial version of Aperture for a month and much preferred it (would probably have bought it but was already using LR and Adobe gives a bigger academic discount than Apple does, so LR was cheaper for me).