Which photo management software do you use (if any)?

[paulhillion]

As my collection of photo's is growing daily I'm guessing there's software out there that would make my life easier in keeping track of them all. Any recommendations?

Thanks.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

If you are PC-based, my personal favourite is ThumbsPlus (http://www.cerious.com). Another popular program is iMatch (http://www.photools.com).

Regards,

[petiot]

I personnaly use iView which is a real good software (reads raw as well). Phoa is excellent tool and free (but doenst support raw yet).

I personnaly stay away from softwares like iMatch, ACDSee, etc which mix editing photo management and many other functions. This end up in big and complex software (33 Mb installer alone for iMatch!!! :shock:). A counter example is Phoa, which does exactely what it is supposed to do: photo management (weight 2MB). Let encourage good software engineering!!!! ;)

Hope this can help.

Dan

[ejwebb]

I have just been struggling with this question myself. I have tried ACDSee and Photoshop Album and my biggest complaint is that they are a bit slow and complicated. I agree with Petiot in that it would be best to get something small and fast as long as it allows flexible, easy categorization (without moving files in folders), large & fast preview and the ability to open the files quickly in a separate photo editor. I will try the suggestions.

[Man of 1000 Ages]

You might also give Picasa a try. It's sort of the "iPhoto for Windows." Google recently acquired the software and it's free to download:

http://www.picasa.com/content/download.php?sourceid=pic&subid=more

[cmM]

I've never used anything like that. What is the purpose of such software? To keep track of your photos?
In my opinion, that software can be easily replaced by an organized directory structure, and consistent file naming.

[timmyquest]

I break my photos down into orginized folders.

Pictures
Month-year
in each month-year folder i have the shoots "Family get together 28th"
In each individual folder i have a "finals" folder where all the keepers, PS'ed are kept.

Once i get my file server up and running i will backup all the finals and keep them in order by month-year.

PS's browser works like a charm.

[Vita Rara]

I use iPhoto on the Mac. I shoot raw and use C1 to make smaller aproximate 3MP versions of the pictures. Then I put those into iPhoto.

I additinally use the comments fields to do categories by putting "Category::Landscape" as a for instance in there. Then I use a smart album and have that get all the photos that have "Category::Landscape" in them. This allows me to place the photos in multiple categories.

Then I rate them. This way I can for instance get all of my dance photos that have more than three stars.

Mark

[ejwebb]

I've never used anything like that. What is the purpose of such software? To keep track of your photos?

The beauty of the software is that you don't have to spend time moving files around in the file structure and you can find photos that cross categories. You can download the pictures from your card to the computer in generic folders by date and not spend time reviewing and moving each picture, struggling over the proper category, etc. In addition, a picture can be in several categories at once so you don't have to spend time thinking about the proper category. For example, say I have a close-up of a flower - I can tag it as "nature", "flowers", "close-ups", etc. to facilitate searching later.

I have downloaded and tried the Photoshop Album trial version. Basically you open the folder and review thumbnails, dragging categories that you created onto the thumbnails as appropriate. You can then search in many different ways/combinations to get what you want - "John" and "Grandma" for instance. It was incredibly fast to categorize several hundred photos this way (have not done more because I am looking at other software options) - only seconds apiece. You can also cull the bad photos as you go and delete them from the category listings and/or the hard drive itself.

A few of my concerns are future upgradability (reason to stick with a big name?) since re-categorizing thousands of pictures if a software is discontinued is probably not fun. Also, while I do not use RAW much now, I might in the future so compatibility is an issue. And finally, I have not seen how these software packages deal with the moving of files/folders once they have been categorized - this could be an issue but moving files may not be as necessary once you are using the software.

[ejwebb]

I break my photos down into orginized folders.

Pictures
Month-year
in each month-year folder i have the shoots "Family get together 28th

I do this as well but it is nice to be able to pull in thumbnails of all of my daughter's pictures - regardless of date. If I am just wanting to find a photo of her and am not sure when it was taken it is much easier than opening monthly folders and sub-folders. Once I get a few years out with thousands of photos the hunt through the folders method doesn't seem appealing!

[cmM]

ooh....okay, I see it now. It's a cool thing. Still, for my purposes it's unnecessary.
Let me tell you about my photo management technique.
I have one partition on my computer dedicated to photos. Within that partition I have directories such as "July", "August", etc... -> withing those directories I have directories such as "29(fishing)"->withing those directories I have file such as "aug29fish1.tif"

In other words, if I look at it, I have my pictures arranged by date and by category, and the file name tells it all, as well as my folder names. I am the best software on the market :wink:

[Cordell]

Anyone use any of these apps for archiving? I have ThumbsPlus, but can't figure out how the archiving feature works. I would like to burn to CD/DVD and remove the actual photo from my hard drive and use the archiving feature to immediately know which CD/DVD I burned the image to. Any ideas here?

Cordell

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Anyone use any of these apps for archiving? I have ThumbsPlus, but can't figure out how the archiving feature works. I would like to burn to CD/DVD and remove the actual photo from my hard drive and use the archiving feature to immediately know which CD/DVD I burned the image to. Any ideas here?

Cordell

Archive the images to CD using standard burner software and give the CD an unique name. Then get T+ to scan the CD and these images will be added to the T+ database. Providing you have chosen to create off-line thumbs, you can browse and search the database and T+ will prompt for the CD when it is needed.

Regards,

[Cordell]

Providing you have chosen to create off-line thumbs, you can browse and search the database and T+ will prompt for the CD when it is needed.

Regards,

Not to be an idiot Roger (and of course I apologize for hijacking the thread), where do you make the change to create off-line thumbs? And is it just that simple because I've been using ThumbPlus since version 4 :oops:

[paulhillion]

[quote]A few of my concerns are future upgradability (reason to stick with a big name?) since re-categorizing thousands of pictures if a software is discontinued is probably not fun.

A concern of mine which is why I'll probably end up sticking with Adobe Photoshop Album. I really like the look of 'iView MediaPro' but I can't afford to spend $199 on the software!

I'm at the moment downloading the trial version of 'ThumbsPlus' to see how that compares to PS Album.

Thanks for all your replies.

Regards,

Paul.

[ejwebb]

Although... even a big name will yank a software if it is not selling :shock:

Didn't Iview have a $50 version? I hit their site briefly and was going to look a little more closely tonight.

I have seen other references to Thumbs Plus and will take a look tonight - thanks for the feedback. The CD archiving is also an attractive feature that I had not thought of. :)

[JoeTampa]

I use CompuPic Pro for the basics: Organizing, moving, very basic level correction, rotating, reszing, and text overlays for proofs. Very handy software.

http://www.photodex.com


- Joe