Best Photo Organizing Software

[slimfish]

Hi guys...

The dreaded time has come...

I have about 20000+ photos, and now its time to sort them. I have sort of sorted most of my photos so far into folders (with the date and summary of the event as the name of the folder).

I would like to know, what is the best way to sort your photos and also which is the best software to use from you fellow gurus?

As we are talking about about 50gb of photos i think if i can remember correctly, ithink i might be wise to ultilize a software of the ease or organizing, sorting and most importantly SEARCHING.

It should also have a rating function to allow me to for eg. to view only those photos with a 4/5 stars rating and above.

please advice and any comment would be great.

Thanks in advance....

 

[StreetShooter]

Picasa is free, and has a search function. If you've already named your folders with descriptive keywords, it will do the trick. It's also easy to scroll through all the pictures on your hard disk, and use your eyeballs to do a visual search.

Only problem is the database is a little unstable. Just this morning mine disappeared and it started re-indexing from scratch!

 

[slimfish]

Picasa is free, and has a search function. If you've already named your folders with descriptive keywords, it will do the trick. It's also easy to scroll through all the pictures on your hard disk, and use your eyeballs to do a visual search.

Only problem is the database is a little unstable. Just this morning mine disappeared and it started re-indexing from scratch!

thks for your reply...

what do you mean that the database is unstable? and re-indexing, what do you mean?

anyone else got any comments to share?

would appreciate some help... thanks

 

[jmmtn4aj]

Photo Mechanic is an awesome photo browsing, with lots of features that give you important info at a glance, and that lets you tag and organize photos quickly using number or colour coded ratings. Some of it's main features might be completely useless to the average user, like IPTC functions. After all, this program was made mainly for pros who shoot thousands of pictures of assignments. But I like using it because apparently it's one of the faster browsers out there.

 

[slimfish]

Photo Mechanic is an awesome photo browsing, with lots of features that give you important info at a glance, and that lets you tag and organize photos quickly using number or colour coded ratings. Some of it's main features might be completely useless to the average user, like IPTC functions. After all, this program was made mainly for pros who shoot thousands of pictures of assignments. But I like using it because apparently it's one of the faster browsers out there.

what about acdsee? how does it compare to Photo mechanic?

will installin and uninstalling these kind of software to try a few diff ones out... stuff or affect the photos in any way after u remove thw program?

thks

 

[slimfish]

i seems that not many of you guys use a photo organizing software...

hmm... so how do you sort yr photos...

i have been having this concern for a while and would really like to find a solution for it ...

please help...
thks

 

[botoz]

Hi, you may want to take a look at Adobe's Lightroom, I played around with the trial version some months ago but it was too sluggish on my 3-year old notebook. v1.0 was pretty well recieved considering it was a new approach for both Adobe and most users. Apparently, v1.1 was just released to address bugs and shortcomings...

 

[WuffRuff]

I'm glad you asked this qn as I would like to know too.

How about Adobe Bridge? Is that good? Is it easier to use Photoshop with it?

 

[lsisaxon]

I'm glad you asked this qn as I would like to know too.

How about Adobe Bridge? Is that good? Is it easier to use Photoshop with it?

Windows Vista?

 

[Hitman]

I use Picasa. For browsing, organising photos, it's good enough for an average user. Best of all, it's FREE!

 

[westwest2]

I'm glad you asked this qn as I would like to know too.

How about Adobe Bridge? Is that good? Is it easier to use Photoshop with it?

Bridge is not a true file organizer...best to get Lightroom...its fast...

 

[tchoonyong]

If you are a mac user you had the best of both 2 aperture and lightroom which i had are both very powerful organizing software.

 

[buddy]

I have about 30gb of images and use Picasa2 because I cannot find a better alternative. Picasa2 is a great software with really basic controls but as StreetShooter said, it is unstable... my folder list became unsorted for some reason - most likely the DB got corrupted. Was tempted to do the 3 finger salute CTRL-Alt-Shift to reset the database but hesitated bcos I have a lot of comments on the folders. Fortunately, I left the PC alone for a while and it re-indexed itself.

My suggestion for Picasa2 users, name your folders wisely and categorize them based on how you work - for me I organize the folders based on year>subject>camera.

 

[heckcare.der]

If you are a mac user you had the best of both 2 aperture and lightroom which i had are both very powerful organizing software.

which do you prefer?

 

[xray]

which do you prefer?

I'm using Aperture.
It's very good.

 

[Michael]

Lightroom, its a all-in-one solution, lets you sort, modify and organise your shoots and if you need more adjustments, then it links directly into photoshop. LR1.1 now allows you to have multiple catalogues which makes its even easier to manager your photos and to share them among different computers.

 

[ozora]

Acutally for me I don't use a organiser. I just name my folders properly and put them in categories is gd enough.

Acdsee is not bad. can edit and view if you using the Pro version.

 

[Snowcrash]

For the searching part, do you plan to backup or even move your photos to another harddisk?
You can try Iview cos can keep the catalogue separate from the actual files.
For searching, it's wise to start using keywords to be tag to the pictures.

For more info, can try reading the DAM - Digitial Asset Management book. Althought it's more for pro that wants to search fast on their 'assets' that sells.

 

[joshuatj]

I think Iview media pro has been brought over by Microsoft, it's called Microsoft Expression now.
www.microsoft.com/expression/

anyone tried IMatch from photools.com?
I think it's great for price and value.
their official website http://photools.com/

a review of IMatch
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/software/Imatch.shtml

personally I like IMatch because it has the image-AI search.
you can search for similar photos, photos that has a certain shape, etc...
and it uses database, means you can store offline media.