Photon, the speedy digital photo workflow app and labor of love from Mike Bernardo's Green Volcano Software, has been updated to v1.1. Photon differs from Aperture, Photoshop, and the like by focusing on the front end of the photography workflow. Importing RAW images from DSLRs is fast, and Photon's stacking feature simplifies sorting and culling your photos. The update includes:
- An overhauled caching engine to improve import speed and responsiveness
- A "Discards" stack for unwanted image files that provides a direct route to Trash
- A "File stack" feature for moving existing files to a new spot on your hard drive(s)
- Improved memory card download performance
- The ability to save and recall stacks when re-launching the app.
Thanks to Mike B. for the tip!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-10-2008 @ 6:33PM
tukan said...
damn, you have to be a REAL pro making hundreds of photos if you need to break your Lightroom/Aperture workflow with a $70 app designed just to pick your "keepers" - not to mention that deleting stuff in the era of cheap hdd stuff is not entirely popular anymore IMO
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5-11-2008 @ 1:17PM
tim said...
ya, this is a little weird when there are other apps out there that do this, and some are free. if you are shooting in RAW, chances are you already have lightroom, aperture, or even iphoto to do this. bridge does this too if im not mistaken. if this was free, then maybe it would be something to write about.
5-11-2008 @ 5:36AM
robogobo said...
needs batch renaming. maybe it has it, but I don't see it on the website.
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5-11-2008 @ 1:21PM
David Schloss said...
"Photon differs from Aperture, Photoshop, and the like by focusing on the front end of the photography workflow."
Actually, one of Aperture's biggest strengths is the front-end of the photographic workflow. All of this stuff is already in Aperture.
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5-11-2008 @ 7:24PM
Mike Bernardo said...
Hi. I'm the developer of Photon. Just wanted to drop in and say thanks for taking the time to post your comments. I sincerely appreciate the feedback.
If you don't take a lot of photos, and you're happy with iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom, then Photon may not be for you.
However, if you're a pro or advanced amateur that is shooting hundreds or thousands of photos per shoot, you may find some value in Photon. I've heard from pro sports and wedding photographers who say that out of the thousands of photos they take for each shoot, only a small minority of them ever gets looked at more than once. They don't want to clutter their image database with 90% of images that they really don't care about.
Photon is designed for these types of workflows where you really need a fast, targeted, pre-processing app that doesn't require an import into an asset manager before you can start reviewing your shoot.
Also, Photon is less than half the price of some of the apps mentioned here, and some others that are even more specifically targeted to ingest/review/culling. I don't think there exists a free app which even comes close to providing the same functionality. If you know of one, let me know!
Finally, @robogobo: No batch renaming yet, but it's in the queue!
Thanks!
Mike Bernardo
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5-13-2008 @ 6:51PM
tukan said...
Well, now that you've mentioned sports photographers and not cluttering the databases it makes a lot more sense, although I'll just stick with Aperture for the time being - good luck with Photon, it certainly looks slick ;)