FirstPass Editor 4+

I Love this application. I shoot a lot of pictures in difficult lighting situations (theatre) where a re-do is impossible. Therefore I do a lot of bracketing in both exposure and focus. It is not a difficult task to blaze through a shoot and pick the shots which MIGHT be perfect--but I must do it at full-screen and quickly. I will compare maybe five (or 15!) shots of the same thing to choose the best. Navigation must be quick, rating must be easy and reliable, and when I'm done, throwing copies of the chosen into a new bucket must be easy. This developer had me in mind when he wrote the thing. To be perfectly honest, I had a problem with OSX 10.7-"Lion", but the developer tracked, and solved, my problem quickly. This program does what it says it does without any baggage. It's quick, reliable and I couldn't live without it. Expecially since I no longer have to live with the software that came with my camera.

This is still my go-to app for a first pass through a photoshoot. I run a 13" MacBook Pro with the hi-rez (not retina) display and a 400 or 500 photo shoot is a breeze to go through. I use four fingers, left little finger on the 1 and left index finger on the 5, right index on the down arrow and right middle finger on the up arrow. Trash gets a 1 and possible keeper gets a 5 and everything is viewed full-screen and satisfyingly quickly. There is a miniscule delay before the full rez pic pops into view, but I've usually made the initial decision already, and it's easy to get used to. There may be more intuitive apps out there, but this one gets the job done without me even thinking about the mechanics, letting me focus on the photo decision.

All I wanted was the ability to find a simple, yet inteligent way to download photos from my camera to my iMac.

This program does exactly that. While it does have ever more features, I have not used them.

My only request would be to have the ability to delete the photos from the camera, after the download is completed, which it currently does not support.

Other than that, good app and surely worth the money.

UPDATE:

I found two issues that are very annoying. While I am sure they can fix them - and strongly suggest that they do - is that the windows shows not only the files in the folder, but the files in all sub folders too, without letting you know. The second issue is it cannot sort properly. The file system puts 2 thru 99 BEFORE 100. So, if you have downloaded more than 100 pictures, it cannot sort properly, therefore, you cannot rename sequentially, in the order they were taken.

I bought this because I had to process 2800 images (10MP per piece). I was not looking forward to importing this in Aperture and doing my workflow there. This looked promising. However, it just garbles up all memory (I have a 2010 MBP with 8 GB RAM). It consumed > 4 Gb of RAM. Then, after 30 minutes or so, it crashed. Worst: it had not stored the ratings of the last 100 photos or so I reviewed. I would expect it to store ratings immediately, but I suspect it does it when you close the program. Which is not working if it crashes obviously. Don't know if the sheer volume of photos is causing the problem. Guess I'll use Aperture after all.