One of the fundamental laws of physics is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Take, for example, the photographs that I have taken over the past 20-25 years or so. It seems that for every roll of film I shoot, there is an equal and opposite need to find some place to store them. In the beginning it was easy, most of them were stored in the trashcan. As my photography improved, and as I began shooting more and more film, the problem of how to store these images became very real.

I've multiplied the number of trips I've taken, by the number of rolls I've shot, by the square footage of space left in my office, and I can tell you I'm in deep trouble. If I don't get them into slide sheets and into my file cabinets soon, who knows what will happen.

Oh! Did I mention that I still need to scan them into the computer, and somehow find a suitable slide filing system and along with a way to keep track of the business end of things? I'm thinking the trashcan is looking better every day!

In reality I do manage to somehow get through these panic attacks and continue to take lots of photographs. I remember about a year ago, Moose Peterson sheepishly touting all the advantages of going digital. "Here's all my images stored right here," he said as he held up the tiny Compact Flash card.

Well that's great Moose but then what do you do with them? Well I know I left myself open for this one. At this point I'm thinking of that law of physics again, after all, as great an idea as digital is, you're still going to have to figure out how to store and track the images, right?

Moose quickly pointed to his laptop and said let me show you. "I've been working and perfecting my own image management system called DigitalPro, and this is the new upgrade that I've been working on." Leave it to Moose to have provided his own answer to that law of physics. By now most of you understand the point here. No matter what method we use to capture an image, there is the continuing problem of what to do with all those images afterwards.

Moose's experience as a professional wildlife photographer has certainly taught him the value of time. Less time in the office translates to more time in the field. With DigitalPro 1.2 Moose and his friend David Cardinal of Pro Shooters LLC software developers, have written software that allows you the ease of shooting images in digital format, downloading them to your laptop, and editing these images before you even leave your shooting location. Of course I'm jealous!

Those of you still paying your chiropractor from the last time you spent hours bent over a light table, will appreciate some of the fine features of DigitalPro.

1. DigitalPro's Web Gallery: Has flexible HTML templates and can handle the EXIF shooting data from your camera recorded at the time the shot was taken. 

2. Batch Captioning: This feature has been upgraded with memorized term lists, allowing you to add key words and copyright info etc. 

3. Powerful Tools for renaming, rotating, and filing tools. 

4. Rotation and Reversal: You can highlight and rotate your image easily by clicking the rotate button. (It does it without re-saving or altering the original image). 

5. Submission Tool: For web, client and editorial submissions. 

6. Digital Light Table and Digital Loupe: You can quickly edit and review images for sharpness at high resolution. 

7. Slideshow: Preview your images easily for quick display. 

8. Image tagging: IPTC captioning of important photographer information. IPTC allows you to associate text with the image in the database including information on the photographer, a title, a description, copyright information, and even assign a priority to the image.

9. Re-formatting your Flash Cards: Once the shooting information is downloaded to your computer, DigitalPro can automatically do this for you. 

10. Resizing and formatting tools: Used to create proof sheets  for submissions. 

11. Printing Templates: There are more printer templates in DigitalPro 1.2 so you can access the printer properties such as the borderless feature of the newer Epson inkjets. 

12. Travel and Return feature: You can duplicate your image folder for travel on your laptop allowing you to edit on the road. When you get back to the office you can return or copy this info back to the permanent folder on your hard drive.

The Bottom Line
This list is just a quick overview of some of DigitalPro's most prominent features. I strongly recommend that you go on line and take advantage of the opportunity to download a trial version. (Sorry, PC only at this time). I could explain all the little details of this program, but you'll understand it a whole lot better if you just play with it for a while. While we all know Moose is a Nikon shooter, this program supports the Canon system very well (gasp!).

As Moose would probably put it: "You've got a "killer" program here that is just the ticket for making a photographer's life a little bit easier."