Thanks Missionman for your posts :-)
I have been really busy with stuff, so I haven't put a lot of effort into sorting this out recently.... Things are calming down now so I will hopefully have a little more time to focus on taking photos!
So this is where I am at........
I went crazy(better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, right? My wife doesn't understand lol and finally having kids in highschool is paying off lol) and now have the following software on my mac:
*Photoshop Elements
*Lightroom 4
*Iphoto
*
Aperture
*CS6
So far I have liked how Lightroom catalogs stuff, but because I used Elements first, it's probably why I like it the most :-) It helps to have the walkthrough editing..
I have tried a couple ways of doing things, but none have worked reliably. I have come to the conclusion though that it is not due to any of the programs, but rather the fact that my original files are stored on the NAS, which while great as a back up, doesn't seem to work so well when I am using heaps of files to feed a catalog. I did get it to work as part of time machine but in the end that isn't going to work as time machine just creates a copy which would mean that the file has to be originally stored on my laptop, and that was what I was trying to avoid due to space...
So what I think I might try, is to purchase a one or 2 TB portable drive which would only contain picture files, and when ever I wish to play around with the photos, I just plug it in...... I am assuming that this will work better than the NAS, but if I am wrong, please tell :-)
Now to the
workflow....
At this stage I plan to do this:
*Copy all my photo files on to the portable drive
*Use
Aperture to create my one and only catalog, and also use
Aperture for photo importing from camera
*Edit individual photos by selecting CS6 or Elements as a plugin through
Aperture.
Now, how does all that sound? Will this work? Any better suggestions?
And another thing, how does batch processing work for
RAW files? Can
Aperture do this? I am finding that I am processing a
RAW file individually, and one photo will end up a little different to the next... And how will doing all this affect the original files on the portable drive?
I am planning on doing a heap of reading, and in future I might be able to sort some of these questions out myself, but I am a little short of time right now... In the meantime I really appreciate the ability to ask questions here. So thanks heaps :-)