Now that digital cameras are cheap and ubiquitous, we can snap, snap, snap away—which comes back to haunt us when we end up shooting hundreds of frames over the course of an afternoon. Storage space is cheap, but managing an ever-expanding collection of thousands of images can make you long for the days when you took pictures on film, 24 at a time.

No matter whether you’re rocking a professional-grade DSLR or you shoot your snaps with an iPhone, having a capable method of organizing your collection and editing your photos is essential. iPhoto comes with every new Mac and it does a lot, but it isn’t the be-all-end-all for every user. So we looked at five other applications that can help you corral and edit your photos; then we collected 10 solid tips for making those photos look their best, no matter which app you’re using. You’ll never regret filling up a memory card again.

PART ONE: CHOOSING YOUR APP

Many use iPhoto just "because it's there." Alternatives exist, but some are pretty expensive. Before you take the plunge, peruse these pros and cons.

iPHOTO '11

iPhoto ’11 just arrived, bringing better Facebook integration, along with an enhanced full-screen mode, better photo books, and new letterpress cards. (Books and cards must be ordered; you can’t print them yourself.) Beyond these enhancements, iPhoto is still the simple but effective organizer we know and love.

Your photos are imported into a central tamper-proof library, which lives as a single file on your hard disk. Once your photos are in the library, you can organize them into albums; carry out basic image enhancements; upload them to your MobileMe, Flickr, and Facebook accounts; email them to your friends; and create some spectacular-looking slideshows.

iPhoto '11's redesigned Edit screen is on the basic side but still gets the job done.

Like many Apple apps, iPhoto combines simplicity with hidden depths. It’s never going to replace the likes of Aperture and Lightroom, but it gets you farther than you expect. The editing tools might not be advanced, but they do a good job, and the Auto Enhance button can transform average-looking snaps in an instant.

The Faces and Places features work pretty well too, though each requires you to put in a little time and effort to get the best results. The face recognition is good but not infallible, and if you don’t have a GPS-enabled camera, it can be tedious to enter location data for your photos manually.

The bottom line. iPhoto (part of iLife ’11, $49, apple.com) is best for anyone who uses photography socially rather than professionally.

PROS

• Simple, fast, and effective image enhancements
• Intuitive and efficient photo-organizing tools
• Superb slideshow templates
• Facebook and Flickr integration; Faces and Places
• Received 4.5 stars from Mac|Life

CONS

• Basic editing tools for quick fixes and nice effects—but little else
• iPhoto uses its own storage system, which can be hard to fathom

PHOTOSHOP CS5

Photoshop is the granddaddy of all photo-editing applications. The name itself has become a byword for photo trickery, and it’s a standard tool for professional photographers, artists, and designers everywhere.

And yet Adobe still finds new ways to improve it. CS5 is now a 64-bit application, though you do need Snow Leopard and lots of RAM to exploit the extra processing power. The new Content-Aware Fill feature can effectively cover up unwanted objects by drawing in detail from their surroundings, and new selection-refinement tools make it easier to extract difficult outlines (like human hair) from a background.

Photoshop stays on top because it's always improving.

Photoshop’s high dynamic range tool has been redesigned to be both easier to use and more powerful, and a new HDR Toner feature lets you create the HDR “look” from a single image, where true HDR uses at least three. The Adobe Camera Raw plug-in uses a new processing system to offer improved definition, and you’ll find more sophisticated noise-reduction tools too.

There isn’t much that Photoshop can’t do, but you will need to know quite a lot about image editing to get the most from it. And photographers will probably have to invest in a separate photo-cataloguing tool (like Lightroom or Aperture)—although Photoshop comes with the Adobe Bridge file browser, it’s soon out of its depth with big photo collections.

The bottom line. Photoshop CS5 ($699, free trial, adobe.com) is best for pro photographers and enthusiasts who have advanced far beyond the basics.

PROS

• Still the most powerful image editor of all
• Industry-standard tool for professionals
• Great new Content-Aware Fill and HDR features
• New RAW conversion tools
• Received 4.5 stars from Mac|Life

CONS

• Very expensive
• Steep learning curve

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 9

Elements is the amateur version of Photoshop, and it’s designed to offer a lot of Photoshop’s features in a much friendlier format for novices. Version 9 is a dramatic step forward for Mac owners, not only because it has some very useful improvements in its own right, but also because it now comes with a Mac version of the Organizer app, which was previously only available in the Windows version (Mac users got Adobe Bridge instead).

Elements' Guided Edits mode actually teaches you editing tricks as you use it.

The Organizer is like an application in itself, storing all your photos in one centralized library. You can tag your photos with keywords, organize them into albums, and even “stack” related images so that, for example, modified versions are always kept alongside the originals.

Elements is designed with beginners and nonprofessionals in mind, so you can enhance your photos with the easy-to-use Quick Fix tools or the more advanced Guided Edits. In the Full Edit mode, though, it’s a much more powerful program than you might imagine, and many of the things that you may think you need Photoshop for can be done perfectly well in Elements, including layer masks. Best of all, at under $80, it’s a mere fraction of the price of Photoshop CS5.

The bottom line. Photoshop Elements 9 ($79.99, free trial,
adobe.com) is for beginners and enthusiasts who want quick results without complex tools.

PROS

• Great for starting out and learning as you go
• Comes with Adobe's excellent Organizer app
• Clever "Photomerge" technology for panoramas and other image-blending tasks
• Now supports layer masks
• Received 4.5 stars from Mac|Life

CONS

• Choice of editing modes and tools can become confusing
• Lacks a few high-end Photoshop tools that you may eventually need

APERTURE 3

Aperture is one of a new generation of “nondestructive” image editor-slash-organizers. This means the enhancements you make to your picture are stored in the Aperture library and not applied directly to the image files, which are kept safe and untouched as “master” images. The advantage of this is that you can always go back and change or undo the edits you’ve made to your photos, but the downside is that you’re relying on a single database for all the hundreds (or even thousands) of image adjustments you’ve made. As of version 3, Aperture is now a very powerful image-editor as well as a cataloguing tool. You can apply both global and localized image adjustments, and while you’ll still need Photoshop for layers and montages, Aperture can do pretty much everything else. It’s easy to set Aperture up to use Photoshop as an external editor, too, and it handles “round-tripping” perfectly, storing Photoshop-edited files alongside the originals in your library.

Aperture's interface reminds us of iPhoto on steroids.

Aperture’s real strength, though, is its cataloguing. It’s quicker and slicker than its main rival Lightroom at both handling and displaying large numbers of images, and its system of projects, folders, and albums gives you great flexibility in the way you organize your photos without forcing you into a particular filing system on your computer.

The bottom line. Aperture ($199, free trial, apple.com) hits the sweet spot for professional photographers and keen enthusiasts looking to upgrade from iPhoto.

PROS

• New and improved photo-enhancement tools
• Flexible and powerful photo organization
• Fast thumbnail display and searching tools
• Excellent full-screen browsing and editing modes
• Received 4.5 stars from Mac|Life

CONS

• Lightroom still has the edge for photo editing

ADOBE LIGHTROOM 3

Lightroom is Adobe’s answer to Aperture: a photo organizer and editor that stores all your photo data (including image adjustments) in a single database—your photos are stored separately in regular folders on your hard drive. Adobe’s Camera Raw software is built in, so you can browse and edit RAW files just as effectively as JPEGs. In fact, Lightroom’s editing tools are its main strength, allowing you to carry out a whole host of basic adjustments, as well as more sophisticated alterations such as graduated filter effects and localized “painted” adjustments. Because it’s a nondestructive editor, the original image files remain unaltered, and you can go back and experiment with different adjustments at any time.

Lightroom's dark interface lets your photos pop but also feels cluttered at times

Lightroom’s photo-organizing tools aren’t quite as impressive, though. Running on the same hardware, it’s noticeably slower than Aperture at displaying and scrolling through thumbnails, and the dark-toned interface feels more cluttered, too. Frustratingly, the system for organizing Collections (albums, in other words) is entirely separate to that for displaying the folders where the photos are stored on your hard drive. Lightroom’s organizing tools are in some ways more obvious and direct than Aperture’s, but they’re also more limiting.

The bottom line. Lightroom 3 ($299, free trial, adobe.com) will appeal to professional photographers and keen enthusiasts with fast Macs and huge photo collections.

PROS

• Excellent image-enhancement tools
• Very well-integrated with Photoshop (as you'd expect from Adobe)
• Support for the widest range of RAW formats of any photo app
• Received 4 stars from Mac|Life

CONS

• Thumbnail display can be sluggish
• Folders and Collections don't integrate at all

PICASA 3.6

Picasa is to iPhoto what Android smartphones are to the iPhone. It’s Google’s version of an all-in-one photo-cataloguing and editing program, and while it’s been around on the Windows side for a while, it’s only recently arrived on the Mac.

Where iPhoto imports pictures into its own library, Picasa works like a file browser, showing you the contents of your picture folders, and updating them automatically if you change or add to your pictures. Photos are displayed in a single catalog, though, so it’s one step ahead of Adobe Bridge, and Picasa is extremely fast at searching, even when you have tens of thousands of pictures.

If you can get used to its quirks, Picasa packs a lot of functionality into a free application.

The photo-enhancement tools are good, too. They’re not particularly sophisticated, and they certainly don’t rival a proper image-editing program like Photoshop or even Elements, but you can do some clever and useful things such as geotagging, face detection, and graduated filter effects, as well as regular, everyday tone and color enhancements.

Picasa also integrates with Google’s free web albums, automatically synchronizing any changes you make online or in the Picasa app. Compared to other Mac applications, though, Picasa is pretty odd, both in the way it displays folders and in the design and operation of its image-fixing tools. But hey, it’s free!

The bottom line. Picasa 3 (free, picasa.google.com) will appeal to cheapskates, Google fanatics, and any iPhoto defectors looking for a fast, simple, and free photo-cataloguing tool.

PROS

• Displays photos in their original folder locations
• Effective image-enhancement tools
• Extremely fast keyword searches
• Integration with Google's web albums

CONS

• Quirky layout and controls