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General discussion

Looking for photo organizational program

Aug 12, 2009 4:40AM PDT

I frequently have to sort through huge quantities of images. My ideal program would show me a slide show AND WHILE the image is large, give me the option to rate/tag/geocode-it/delete/skip/comment and then give me the ability to sort by date taken, ratings, and to find by tag.


Due to the size of the photos, it has to be desktop software. I run Vista 64.

Am I dreaming or does this software exist?

Discussion is locked

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(NT) Adobe Lightroom is awesome, I love it NT
Aug 21, 2009 7:22AM PDT
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portfolio 8
Sep 14, 2009 10:22AM PDT

we use Portfolio 8 for the stand-alone user by Extensis. We are using this Data Asset Management software to organize and store the metadata for the thousands of historic images we are digitizing at our local historical museum.

We love it. it is very comprehensive, you can do a lot of stuff with this software, but we've found that it is relatively easy enough to customize to our needs.

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A Good Application to Organize My Photos
Nov 12, 2009 7:55AM PST

I still haven't found anything that does what I'd like. I'm a developer so I've written my own. I've outlined the major features below and I'd appreciate anyone's feedback. I know there are more good ideas out there and I'd like to hear them. Understand that this is a work in progress. I'd be happy to make functional versions available for review if we can figure out how to get it to the folks who are interested.

Here is what it does today.

I copied most of the UI of Microsoft's Vista Photo Gallery.

Left pane has folders and tags, middle pane has thumbnails, you can adjust the size of the thumbnails with a slider.
If you fly the mouse over the thumbnail, it brings up a large window with the image metadata.
You can drag selected thumbnails to folders and it copies or "moves" the image files to the new folder.
If you double click on a thumbnail it shows the fullsize image with metadata and allows you to modify the metadata
It uses the Desktop Search Engine to store the metadata and perform searches


My application looks much the same as Photo Gallery and has the same features mentioned above but it also does the following:

1. The folder icons are graphics that tell you if there are images and/or audio and/or video files in the folder. You can instantly tell if you have a) photos only, b) photos and music, c) photos and videos, d) photos, music and videos, e) music only, f) video only or g) music and video files. I look into the folders as you open them to see what kinds of files it contains and choose which folder icon to display.

2. Photo Gallery only lets easily you look in "special" folders like "My Pictures" or "My Videos" by default. You can look in other folders by "adding" additional folders that reside anywhere on your system.
My app lets me see and navigate to all my drives both fixed and removable upfront. I can plug my camer into a USB port and see the photos directly from the camera.

3. I hate the P1010485.jpg names my camera gives image files. When you drag one or more selected thumbnails from the middle pane to a folder, it not only moves the image file to the new folder but it renames the file to the folder name with a unique suffix (_0001.jpg). Then it updates the image metadata by removing the keyword that contains the old image file's folder name and adds the new folder name as a keyword to the metadata.

4. If you rename a folder, it will create a new image file name with the new folder name. It removes the old folder name from the image metadata keywords. And it adds the new folder's name as a keyword in the metadata.

5. Photo Gallery only lets you add keywords (tags), modify Rating and specify a title. I expose and edit Title, Keywords, DateTaken, Author, Subject, Rating, Comment and Copyright. I also show you which camera was used to take the picture.

6. I don't like the way Photo Gallery lets you remove tags. You need to select them and then get a context menu and select the only option: "Remove Tag". I show you the metadata fields in text. When you fly over the text with the mouse, I make the text editable so you can quickly make any changes you want. Keywords are shown together separated by semacolons. you can double click on a word and it is selected. The delete key removes it or you can start typing over it. Ctrl-z undoes the previous action. I'm working on a way I can make the same changes to multiple photos.

7. Photo Gallery doesn't let you change the DateTaken. My wife and friends are always sending me pictures taken when their cameras have bad Date and Time values set. I allow you to change the date and time the images were taken so when you sort by DateTaken you'll see the photos in the order they belong.

7. When you drag one or more thumbnails onto a tag, Photo Gallery applies the tag as a keyword to the metadata of all images selected. I do the same but I've added a check box to each tag so you can select one or more tags and dragging a thumbnail to one of the checked tags adds the text of all the checked tags to keywords in the metadata of each image file.

8. I have trouble find my photos in Photo Gallery. It gives me the filename but not the full path in many cases. I have thousands of photos. I hate struggling to find them. I display the full path of each file with the metadata.

9. Many times I want to do more than just "Auto Adjust", "Adjust Exposure", "Adjust Color", "Crop Picture", or "Fix Red Eye". I have an Edit menu option which brings up GIMP if it is installed so I can really manipulate the image. I could as easily bring up another photo editting application like PhotoShop but it costs hundreds of dollars for much the same functionality. GIMP is OpenSource and free.

10. I haven't done it yet but I'm considering breaking up the tags into categories. I'll let the user define his categories and then when he adds a tag he can specify which category it belongs in. I'll probably add Places, People, and Events tag categories by default.

11. I really want video and music included. I'm working on the video and audio files now. The folders show whether they contain audio or video but I haven't written the code yet.

12. I use the desktop Search Engine to find images that match a certain criteria just like Photo Gallery.

13. I don't organize the photos by date taken yet but I will. I've done it before and its easy.Change To:
Suggestions:
Antone'sAntoine'sAntonie'sAnton'sanyoneAntoni'sAntony'sanemone'scanyon'sanion'sAnson'sAntonsanonsanemonesintonescanyonsanionsAndonisunyokes

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Try Loop Sofware
Dec 22, 2009 7:08PM PST

I recently downloaded Loop, a new software for creating photo albums and portfolios. It's really quite different from everything else I've seen...it has a beautiful interface, it's very easy to use and can handle lots and lots of images and videos. I created my portfolio in no time (I am a graphic designer) without even looking at the manual. I think you should give it a try. Have a look at http://www.looprealtime.com