Photo organization and archiving ...

[afaceinthecrowd]

Just wondering what everyone is using to keep track of all of their digital photos and scans?

I've tried Adobe Album, ACDSee, Picasa and a few others. They all seem a little too "jelly beanie" for my tastes. I don't want to remove red eye and email snap shots to grandma in a new screensaver or calendar if you know what I mean 😀. I just want to be able to keep track of my photos and digital image files .... something that integrates with Photoshop would suit me. I tried out Photoshop Elements 3 but it takes so long to launch and then you are met with a bunch of wizards ...

Anyone have any suggestions? I didn't mind Picasa too much as I found it a little leaner than the others.

TIA

dan

 

[T_om]

My recommendation for a database manager for photos is always the same... iMatch.

http://www.photools.com/

In my opinion, it has the most 'bang for the buck' of any program on the market. It has a learning curve. However, once you start seeing the power built into this program you will be amazed.

It is entirely capable of handling a stock photography portfolio consisting of hundreds of thousands of images and its database function allows you to recall any shot in seconds.

Inexpensive too.

Tom

 

[Doug]

Adobe Photoshop has a nice Browser feature... I use a similar browser feature in a Mac shareware program called GraphicConverter. This displays thumbnails of all the photos in a folder/directory, and you can open the full-size file by double-clicking the thumbnail. I usually save full-res edited scans intended for printing into a folder created for that purpose, so browsing that folder will display thumbnails of all of them in one scrolling window. Similarly, I save lower-resolution edited images intended for posting online or email etc into a specific folder. I usually leave the browser open on that folder for quick access to favorites to share here.

All scans are named with my file name plan based on date: YYMMDD-XX for year/month/day that the roll was finished and the individual neg number. So the Browser shows all pics in date/roll order naturally.

I also keep detailed records of all subject and tech data for each roll of film in a FileMaker database file, so if I'm looking for certain subject matter by word or particular camera, lens, or film, then that's an easy search. Knowing the date/roll number I can then find it quickly in the GraphicConverter browser window.

Years ago I used Extensis Portfolio (and its ancestor Aldus Fetch) to catalog clipart. It's just as useful for cataloging scans, but I'm happy doing it the simple "browser" way. Many Mac users like iPhoto, but I got discouraged when I discovered it was actually importing my scans into its own native file... which soon got huge and slow.

I back up my hard drive alternately to two other hard drives, one of which is kept in a "fireproof" safe. And the original scans are on CD too, for what that's worth.

 

[afaceinthecrowd]

Thanks for the tips 😀

As always ... the forum members have the answers!

dan

 

[alansoon]

If you're looking for heavy-duty apps, check out iView MediaPro or Extensis Portfolio. I use the latter to keep track of some 7,000 images.

 

[peter_n]

And if you're looking for a freebie that is really good, try Picasa.

 

[GeneW]

I'll offer my file-naming piece again: http://www.northernjourney.com/photo/articles/filenaming.html

I keep to the KISS principle. I keep thumbnails of all my images, with the same filename as the full-size 'digital negative' images, and I can use Windows Explorer or equivalent to search my drive for keywords. I've used image management programs and they're very good, but they require more discipline and commitment than I'm willing to spend on them. My (devalued Cdn) $0.02

Gene