Star and Lightroom or Aperture

Here again is Photoshop's wonderful simplicity: I took a simple image of a rusty star on a short pole, and then twirled it in PS, followed creating numerous layers of the same image using various painter filters, and finished it all by heavy manipulation of the tonal qualities.
I've been toying for some time with the idea of moving to one of the two major photographic management software programs on the market: Adobe's Lightroom or Apple's Aperture. I've tried both and must say they are a major step up from the programs such as Apple's iPhoto or Adobe's Elements. Although those are both fine programs in their own right, they don't come close to these two bruisers for tracking large (OK huge) photo collections while also allowing the pro or semi-pro such as myself to import, modify and export photos with ease.

Naturally there is a learning curve and I would urge anyone to try them on for size first. Frankly I went with Lightroom because I got a huge discount coupon when I bought my new Canon EOS 40D.

I've been using Lightroom now for more than a week and have so far imported more than 10,000 photos --about half my total I think. Anyway, I love this program.

It is very straightforward, slick, and easy to use -- in fact the program is quite intuitive. It comes with very little instructions beyond the basics since so much of this you'll be able to figure out on your own. I enjoy the way it allows me to create collections with a smooth simplicity, and then export a particular collection either by uploading them via one of a number of website templates (included of course) or burn them to a disc.

You can check out an example of an uploaded collection by just clicking here.