Apple Mac OS X

If you're a Mac user, you already have many of the applications necessary to manage your photo library at your disposal.

Integrated into the Operating System is a means of viewing high-resolution thumbnails, creating contact sheets on the fly, displaying preview images, creating slide shows, reading metadata, and advanced searching. There are also two important apps that come bundled with the OS that allow you to edit images.

Preview Even the Mac OS's native image file viewer, Preview, has the capability of adjusting levels, exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance and sharpness. You can even create sepia-toned images. Perhaps the most important feature is the ability to view an image's histogram in color.

A simple panel provides sliders for adjustment. You open the original, make the necessary adjustments, and save the image as a copy. It is indeed rudimentary, but the algorithms are quite good, and it works in a pinch. Preview can be extremely handy for repairing image files. On some occasions, Photoshop will not open a file, but Preview will, and will allow you to re-save the image, clearing any errors that prevent Photoshop from opening the file.

iPhoto For non-destructive editing, iPhoto allows you to save changes as metadata leaving the original images in space-saving JPEG format unchanged.

Here the tools are quite sophisticated, with the inclusion of definition, shadow and highlight dynamic range adjustments, sharpening and noise reduction. Point and click white balance with manual trim are also included. You can edit the images in the library itself, or enter a full-screen mode that minimizes the interface elements.

I find myself using these features seamlessly along with my dedicated apps. Since I'm already using Aperture, I use iPhoto solely to manage slide presentations on my iPhone, iPad and iPod, all of which I use to present portfolio work to clients and colleagues. But I find it's features and performance fine for all but the most demanding work.