I need your advice on a decision I need to make sooner than I thought. A dear friend was recently diagnosed with bladder cancer and is having surgery next week. He said the 5 year survival rate is 15%. I’d like to do a photo project for him.

Subscribing for two years at a time works out cheaper than just a one year subscription, plus Amazon is offering 3 months for free and an extra 15GB of Dropbox storage (more on this later). However, Quicken Inc is only selling one-year subscriptions – two-year subscriptions are only available via third-party vendors such as Amazon. Subscriptions are tied to your Quicken ID and you can install Quicken on unlimited Macs or PCs with one subscription (more on this later). Trial version of quicken for mac.

So I need to find a Mac app to use for Photo mgmt and editing. I’m trying to move to a new MacBook Pro from a Thinkpad/Windows where I have a lifetime of family, friends, and work images and pictures. Things I’ve done in the past 2 years: - Batch edits of groups of images - Basic photo editing (borders, filters, light corrections) - Organizing into themes. (By Geo, by Family member in the picture, etc) Most of the time is probably spent here. What should I use for this on the Mac? The Windows app I’ve been using, ACDsee, does have a Mac version. But it is so buggy it’s not usable.

So I need to switch to something. I still need to use my Thinkpad so ideally there would be a Windows version as well. 2 questions: What would you do if you were me? What are the top 2-3 apps for the job? For a browser I'd suggest 'Lyn'. You can use it without registering in limited capacity, but even that limited capacity still works well enough 'just to browse'. For editing, well, Apple's 'Photos' (included with the OS) can do basic editing, but it's severely limited insofar as photo management seems to be concerned.

The Mac App Store opens to a selection of third-party photo editing apps that are compatible with Photos. Turn on extensions on your Mac After you install apps that include Photos extensions on your Mac, turn the extensions on.

Still quite usable. I've only used Adobe's 'Lightroom' a little. Seems ok, did a nice job on a few sample photos. I'm not sure about how well it handles file organization and management. I also like Google's 'Picasa' photo editing/viewing app. I believe it's no longer being developed, but the last release still works fine with the latest Mac OS releases.

There's nothing particularly fancy here. But it might be all you need. I would advise you NOT to subscribe to Adobe's 'Creative Cloud', unless you want to be locked into paying a monthly subscription fee forever. Stop paying, and the software stops working (at least from what I've heard). You're aware that there's a subforum here at MacRumors for Digital Photography? Hi, I would go Lightroom.

I migrated from Aperture on the mac a few years ago and never looked back. It will manage your images for you and you can edit them in app. For £102 a year for the subscription, you get to use it on 2 machines so you can use it on both your thinkpad and the mac. If you decide to stop paying the subscription, I think the library function still works but the editing stops working. Lyn looks good but is still new.

The full version (not download) of photoshop express has some good organisation features but it is just as expensive as the subscription. I do hope your friend is in the 15%.

Hi MareLuce, Previous responses point to various software ranging from unheard-of freebee online photoviewing (Lyn), to brand new hardcore RAW editor with no library management (ON1), to pro level with a learning curve and a cost to match (LightRoom, Capture 1). There is also the ocean of the likes ACDSee, Corel, Google Picasa etc. I'm afraid people are quick to post what they use but may or may not examine YOUR needs or know enough about alternatives. If I understand, you use a MacBook Pro and want good control over your many photos (moving from PC) for management, and editing. I suspect you're not a pro photographer and use JPG pictures (the 'normal photos'), not RAW (that high end cameras can deliver), and that you may not want a steep learning curve. I suppose you could use neat features geared towards finding & utilizing your photos into projects (as you stated), and easy sharing (always nice). The obvious, totally overlooked answer is Apple Photos.

A poster above dismissed it as 'not to bother with' and I beg to differ, for your use case as for many. Apple's Photos is surprisingly capable, already on your Mac, and upgraded every year, for free (you'll need iCloud storage so it's not entirely free). Above all it gives you key advantages, see list at the end. It's an absolute no brainer.

Because I know the question/dismissal will come from other posters, yes I'm a RAW shooter with a large library, an Aperture user and pissed at Apple. I now use Capture 1 and have tested all the rest, but hear me out for the use case of the OP. I will add were it necessary, that Photos doesn't cover all my needs and cannot be my primary RAW manager & editor (Capture One is). BUT Photos can be a great storage for all outputs (and iOS pictures, I know it's dirty to mix them but a smart album can easily hide iOS stuff) and provides EXCELLENT photo retrieval and consumption features, including creative projects and sharing. As of MacOS Sierra and iOS 10 you also have improved Faces (no they do not synch for now), automatic keywording with computer vision, and 'Moments', which lets you re-discover your photos in ready-to-watch videos!