Mac photo management software

[topaz]

As I mentioned on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, recently I learned the hard way not to trust iPhoto for anything, ever. At some point in the last few months it lost the original (raw) files of every photo I've taken since 2005. I'm still trying to figure out just what might have happened, but it looks like it occurred at around the same time I moved my photos from a MacBook Pro running Leopard to a new iMac running Snow Leopard. The problem looks a lot like this (minus the Aperture issues), or this, or possibly this.

The worst part is that the failure was not immediately apparent, since the thumbnail images are all still intact and iPhoto doesn't immediately alert you if there's something wrong like a missing original. So my spot checks on the library after I moved it to the new machine all passed, and I deleted the archive from the old machine months ago.

So anyway. I'm in the market for a new Macintosh photo management tool and am willing to drop some real money on it. I want a tool that:

• does something reasonably smart if I dump a lot of photos into it without guidance (e.g. if I took 1,500 pictures over the weekend and don't have six hours to spend sorting them right away)
• is flexible about how I organize photos when I choose to (i.e. doesn't pathologically insist on saving every batch of photos in a meaningless "event", like iPhoto)
• has solid basic photo editing tools: crop, rotate, curves, color levels, etc. I don't absolutely need liquid rescale or content-aware fill; for that I can always fire up the GIMP
• good metadata management a plus (tagging, keywords, etc)
• isn't going to forget one day where the last five years of pictures went (this is kind of a deal-breaker, now)

Any recommendations? Lightroom, Aperture, something else? Do you like the workflow your tools offer you? What about them?

Comments

[penk.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued by the discussion here - I also have large photo archives that I don't want to lose, and I also do not trust iPhoto - there's too much "we cover up the complex bits" in bad ways there.

Am I missing a version problem - is lightroom only $79? That would make it worthwhile - I'm constantly stung by "Oh, just use photoshop!" "You giving me the $500 I need for it?" "uhh, no. But it's a great tool!" mindset for most adobe products.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

The "upgrade" for Lightroom 3 is $80-100, that's probably what you're seeing. The full Lightroom 3 for Mac is $285 at Amazon. (http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65064073-Photoshop-Lightroom-3/dp/B003739DVY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1289922116&sr=8-2)

There's a "student-teacher" edition available for $80. I may see if we can apply our homeschooling magic to this.

[naiad.livejournal.com]

You should totally be able to get the student-teacher edition. And if you can't get it yourself, you probably know someone who works at a college who could get it for you ;)