In search of program that will help me organize my photos

the link worked for me. I just copied the link from my Win 10 page to paste here for you.
http://freepicturesolutions.com/free-duplicate-photo-finder.html

On that page the Contact Us link is http://freepicturesolutions.com/contact-us.html and broken today.

Thanks for the link to the Duplicate Photo Finder! I'm running it right now and it looks like an awesome tool!

I am looking for a free tool to find and delete the duplicate photos. Thanks to you for referring the Duplicate photo finder.
http://www.ashisoft.com/duplicate-photo-finder.htm

I have spent a full time week trying to organize my family archive
(100K+ photos mixed and copied on several drives).
The problem is that it takes ages to scroll through all of the photos and delete duplicates... seeing images side by side is not a perfect way if you have thousands of images. I actually liked Picasa but is no longer maintained. There is also Imageranger which can sort and show you photos by number of copies found. These days I try to put images directly to the corresponding folders as soon as I attach my camera. Better to spend ten minutes now than weeks later.

But at least, when you are just looking at "your own body of work" you should have a clear yes-no decision for any pair of image files - either identical or not. That is, if you just copied what your digital camera produced into multiple locations. It gets a lot more complex if you start manipulating the photos afterwards - cropping, lightening/darkening them, rotating them (that should no longer be necessary when you are using the most recent technology with an orientation flag in the EXIF data.)

It gets infinitely more complex when your images come from different sources - either yourself scanning in your old analog images from prints or negatives or slides - two scans of the same source image will never be identical and so you may have the "same" picture not being bit-by-bit identical. You may even have different resolution scans from different times using different quality scanners and you probably used different naming conventions at these different times as well.

So, ideally, you would want a program that can give you a "similarity" rating between two pictures or between any pair of pictures in a set of libraries. That would be a great help, but it now still leaves you with the need to visually compare the "similar" pictures and decide which one to keep. Following that is the need to consolidate the naming into one standard or to enter the lot into some image library system that can hold all the metadata needed to stay on top of the mess (with all the caveats and issues that had been discussed in this forum earlier.)

A really great study subject would be the various "similarity" algorithms one could use for this kind of comparison. I would love to hear if someone has already published something on that. I know Google use something in their search engine when you search for images, and the author of Visipics must also have done a bit of research, especially his software offers a slider to adjust the stringency of the comparison.

I also loved Picasa back in the days until they removed the face recognition capabilities. Now I would recommend Picular (https://picular.com) which is a tool focused on getting your photos organized in an intuitive and rather fun way with much help from artificial intelligence. It's still available by invitation only but anyone can apply.

The only photo organizer I know for sure that can do bulk delete of duplicates, instead of compare side-by-side and delete one by one(usual approach of a primitive duplicate finders software) is Phototheca from Lunarship (https://lunarship.com)

The post did not indicate what iOS version Photoshop elements works with the best

I have been using Adobe Elements 7 for years and just upgraded to the latest version this week. I use for business and personal use and love it. It is a hefty program and I love the ability to tag photos by family, name, place. Multiple tags are possible and it seems the new version has face recognition, but I haven't gone there yet.

question molly, I have pix that are from the new era iphone camera and pix that are scanned, I would like to get them all on my hard drive, can you help me?

Do you have a Dropbox, Microsoft One Drive or Google Drive account?

With one of those 3 accounts you can upload your photos from the phone to the Cloud and get them on your computer. Drop box needs you to install software on you computer as well as phone. I love my Dropbox account. You can use this link to sign up for Dropbox. https://db.tt/4LNTjWsb
I am not sure exactly , but you will get at least 5 GB of free storage with Dropbox.
.
.Once the files are in the cloud, you can open the folder, grab the pics and save them to a folder on your computer. Piece of cake

Yes I can help to organize iPhone pictures and scanned! Email me for help or try this,

If using PC,
- iCloud for PC is a program by Apple that is suppose to sync your iPhone camera roll to your PC so you can organize easily with your scanned images/existing set. EXCEPT iCloud for PC has never worked. For over four years I have periodically tested it and it just doesn't keep up with the sync. I recommend plugging your phone in copying those pictures to Folders with descriptive text. Or, have your iPhone Camera Roll sync to Dropbox or OneDrive on your computer and copy your phone pictures from that Source into the desired folder.

If using Mac,
- iPhone pictures should be syncing to your computer via Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library
- you can import your scanned images into Apple Photos and change the embedded year/date using the Adjust Date/time under the Image tab. I would recommend taking it slow. Scan 1978 pictures into a folder, for example, then drag all those pictures into Apple Photos. After import, it will be in your "Last Import" category (from your sidebar) and you can create an Album to match the original "1978" and batch change the date at this time. One folder at a time will ensure that each are imported as you want. I would also test 5ish images to import/change date/export, for example, and make sure that when you Export those pictures, the files DO Export. About five years ago I imported images from a photo cd and now my Photos catalog can't resolve/find those images. I have to do them again...

Organizing for PC users,
I too am so disappointed that Picasa is no longer supported and Windows Photo Gallery. Both programs allowed for easy organization, facial recognition, editing of images, and adding tags/keywords. Google Photos doesn't do any of these tasks, I don't recommend. For Windows users, I recommend using Folders. Simple Folders. That way you are not going to get caught with all your images in a catalog of a program that goes out of business. And, you can share that Folder set with all Mac, PC, Dropbox, Google Drive members, etc and maintain the integrity of your original organization. To edit images, use Photoshop Elements or the MS editing program. To change the embedded file date, I use File Date Changer.

Organizing for Mac Users,
Oh my Apple Photos is tough to use. For my own images and clients, I organize as if we were using a PC folder structure. I create Folders by Year and then Albums of my life events I want to find. For example, Thanksgiving, Prom, Softball Tournament in Spokane and so on.

And then...to share my catalog with my family, I export the entire collection 1x/year using the program Photos to Disk. I upload this Folder structure to Dropbox and share the link with family. It is not a pure match to my collection but that is okay because I don't include the recipes and receipts that I so often take pictures of as well. My Albums are all searchable, and intuitive to my family so they can easily find the picture of being a pirate or all of Halloween. Without descriptive text on Albums, they won't every look, I just know it. And yes smart search is getting smarter but it still misses the details.

I agree, Adobe Lightroom is amazing. So much functionality and the #1 for many but it is a catalog...so we have to get the files out at some point and it is also so robust that is hard to learn all.

My last soapbox message! I deal so much with clients material that have passed away or want to share their legacy before they pass away. Your effort to get all memorabilia in one place, sort out the best, scan, and bring into one digital collection to share, is the best gift you can give them.

Keep up the good work everyone!

Molly

Unfortunately Google has discontinued Picasa and it can no longer be downloaded. Such a shame as it was a great program - I still use it. Google Photos has "replaced" it but is a nowhere near as good a program with many shortcomings. If you can find someone who has Picasa on their computer, get a copy of their exe file and set it up.

I still use Picasa for all of my photo downloads, managing, editing and text application. I see Google's discontinuing it as a major mistake. Google photos is extremely limited and cumbersome. It does not have the necessary flexibility required. It is unfortunate that we users have been abandoned.

I use to use Picasso but Google quit updating it so switched to the Google Photos that replaced it. If you have a gmail acct it will automatically back up your photos to your Google account. It also has an assistant program included that finds duplicates and will help organise your collection and make animations and other stuff. Best of all it is free.

I used Picasa for years and loved it. Then one day, I found all my photographs shuffled and in all sorts of strange places on the computer, as if the evil little genie had picked them up as a pack of card and threw them into the air, fall where they may.... It took me weeks to retrieve, redate, rename them and put them into viable folders. Obviously I deleted Picasa, an d I now use FinePix for editing and store my pix on the computer and on a separate external disk.

I hated Picasa. The very first day I installed it and it decided that my pics needed to be shuffled all around. I have them all in folders by date and if I need something I can usually find it fast enough. I do need to do some more organizing, but it is such a daunting task with around 50,000 photos.

Firm supporter of Picasa as well. It face detection (since it is all local, no AI supported from far away) is just amazing.
Sadly discontinued, but still works, and no intention to stop using it.