Software Options Ex Expression Media

[djb]

I have recently purchased the second edition of the DAM book and am working my way thru it as fast as possible.  Great piece of work - exactly what I had hoped I would find - thanks for all your work Peter.

A bit of background to explain my current dilemma: I am a independent photographer using Bridge, ACR and Photoshop for all current workflow.  I have a huge gap in my workflow with the lack of catalog software.  Hence buying the book.  I have a two week "holiday" coming up at the end of this week, which is the best opportunity I will have to "stop" the world while I try and migrate to a new system (familiar feeling?!).

I am halfway through chapter 3 and realized I am not going to finish the book in time to be fully educated and source software before I leave.  I jumped ahead and scanned some other chapters to find that, as far as I can tell - there is a strong recommendation towards using Expression Media in a similar workflow process.

All great.  I thought.  Decision made - not to go with Lightroom, but to buy Expression Media.  However..... as noted on other forum entries - Expression Media seems to have vanished as a purchasable product - all links on MS site go round in circles with no option to buy.  Couple this with my long term distrust of all things MS, and worried by comments about lack of future development of the product, I now have the dilemma.

So - any help or ideas would be appreciated.  Purchase lightroom and deal with the downsides.  Use Aperture (which I also have, but have not used).  Find a way to get a copy of EM and keep fingers x'd.  Any ideas, with a tight deadline (!) would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.  Dave

[djb]

I've been scouring other posts to try and find some answers, and realised some additional info might help source an accurate answer:

I also use DNG Converter.
I shoot between 150 and 500 images per week on average.
I shoot 90% stills.  On occasion I shoot some video, and see this expanding with the abilities of my new 5DMII (smile), but this is not a major concern in current choice - I feel an answer to this problem may be available when I have a volume of video which requires cataloging.

Hope this adds some useful info
Thanks
Dave

[johnbeardy]

Go with Lightroom. The book's most important points are guiding principles, not particular software recommendations.

Video is currently a problem, but Lightroom's goal is to manage every media format that cameras can create.

John

[djb]

John

Thanks for the extremely prompt reply.  It is much appreciated.  And I understand your point about video.  Decision made.  Thanks for your help - hopefully this will make life a lot easier!

Regards
Dave

[mwall]

I understand the gaining popularity of LR, but can it save metadata back into any RAW file as iView/Expression Media can?

-Mark

[johnbeardy]

Not into a raw file, but it will save to an XMP sidecar file. It will save into DNG, JPEG, TIF, PSD.

John