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Best photo organizer?

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I've tried many commercial and free software packages such as ACDsee, faststone, etc, and none of them support ICC profiles. is there any software which understands ICC profiles and can do what FastStone or ACDsee do? I'm still trying out photo mechanic.
 
VincentJ said:
I've tried many commercial and free software packages such as
ACDsee, faststone, etc, and none of them support ICC profiles. is
there any software which understands ICC profiles and can do what
FastStone or ACDsee do? I'm still trying out photo mechanic.
Click to expand...
Photo Mechanic is fully ICC savvy and aware of the profiles either embedded into images or profiles described by tags in the images.

-Kirk

Kirk A. Baker
Senior Software Engineer
Camera Bits, Inc.
 
The beta version of FastStone supports profiles.

Two other tools I use a lot also support them: iView MediaPro and BreezeBrowser.
 
Hello Hertwig,

sounds like a new version of your organizer will be coming out soon.

Any ideas when an dwah twill be the upgrade policy for ID-Imager for upgrading from version 2 to 3?
 
Use the one every pro in a right state of mind uses.

Camera Bit´s Photo Mechanic

Its looks like something comming straight from Windows 98 but there´s a reason why many professionals use it - Speed and again speed.

The program is extremely fast to load pictures. Much much faster than everything else i´ve tried so far. Second it has a very fast geniously done rating system (usefull when you have 1000 photos and only 2 is for the newspaper) - Thirdly you can edit the exif info with almost anything.

And last it has the perfect setup with a big histogram and exif info to the right of the screen.

But it doesnt have any fancy graphic - And that is why the program is so much better than everything out there.
 
Hmmm... that's good news, thanks, I'm trying it out now. With ICC profiles (CMS) enabled, it's pretty slow, but if you need it I guess one needs to make do.
Portola said:
The beta version of FastStone supports profiles.

Two other tools I use a lot also support them: iView MediaPro and
BreezeBrowser.
Click to expand...
 
I can't figure out how to display full folder path/tree in picassa. It only shows the folder name. I have a lot of folders and subfolders and it is difficult to find anything in picassa.
 
Photo Mechanic may be a good browser, but AFAIK it is not a real organizer where you can assign photos to different categories and subcategories like iView, iMatch, PSE, etc. I tried Photo Mechanic and saw that it was fast but it did not work as an organizer.

Peter
 
Had a quick look in here and didnt see any comment referring to Microsoft Digital Image Library.

I have been using this product to manage a database of over 14,000 images and find it more than meets my needs.

The latest version has extensive customisable fields and flags that make it easy to find what you are looking for.
 
I'm with you. I have ACDC 6, PS Elements 3, JASC Album 5, and find Microsoft Digital Image Suite to be easy to use and catagorize. I'm not concerned about copying keywords to another system
 
I tried this tool, and it does seem nice, simple, and effective. What I didn't figure out is what, if any, of the metadata entered gets stored in the image. It read IPTC captions and keywords out of my pictures, but that doesn't mean new metadata gets stored back. The documentation doesn't say.

I'd been meaning to test this, but thought maybe you knew the answer. Do you?
 
I believe the metadata is stored in a hidden database not in the picture. I added a label, then looked at the full EXIF using IDImager and the label was not there.
 
I guess this is the same thing that ACDSee 8.0 does--reads metadata on import, but no writes later on. Too bad. That makes a fairly nice piece of software essentially useless to a lot of people like me.
 
I've read thru the notes here, and tried a few tools last year with mixed results.... Maybe someone can recommend one that does these:

1. I organize images into a directory tree. I want the tool to AUTOMATICALLY take the images and use the directory tree as keywords. So, if I have wildlife/mammals/deer/whitetail and wildlife/mammals/deer/mule as directories I want to be able to select ALL the files in the whitetail directory and have the tool assign keywords wildlife, mammals, deer, and whitetail.

2. My drives that hold the images are removable. At home they're plugged into one computer, but when on the road they go into an external drive on the laptop. The tool has to keep EVERYTHING with the image, not in a separate database because I only load one drive at a time when on the road. OR the database needs to be on the drive or in some location that I can copy the thing from machine to machine.

3. fully support D2X NEF, Canon raw, and Fuji S2 Pro RAF files. I don't particularly want it to open the raw files, but I have to be able to see the contents.

4. Some kind of easy-to-use rating system for images that is searchable.

5. CD/DVD support - not just initially. I want to be able to pop in a CD and do the cataloging. AND when searching have the software tell me to put in CD 29 since that's where the wanted items are.

6. FAST, FAST, FAST. A couple tools I used were so slow you could go have dinner while waiting.

7. Some kind of submission manager... If I send a half dozen images to a calendar company I don't want them to go elsewhere. BUT, I also don't want them out of sight forever... So, there should be a way to indicate they're submitted, and how long to hide them, and to notify me the time is up. AND, if they're accepted I should be able to mark them so they aren't reused for whatever period is agreed upon with the company to which I submitted.

The above aren't in any kind of order, they're all important. And equally so is an intuitive interface that easy to use and VERY fast. For example, if I HAVE to manually set keywords and I have a hierarchy of wildlife, mammals, deer, mule I want to select "mule" and have all the other populated. NOT to have to start with wildlife and select every keyword below.
 
I useACDSee, but if CompuPic people would ever update CompuPic Pro it's much faster and does various things that ACDSee won't (I had to organize 14000 photos and CompuPic helped do it FAST!).
Glen Barrington said:
The problem is, there aren't many program titles that fit the EXACT
niche that you are looking for and that ACDSee fills. I too am
disenchanted with ACDSee, but I still haven't found a new title
that I like better, so I keep putting off my overdue upgrade of
ACDSee V6.

You might also try Thumbsplus by Cerious and Compupic by Photodex
(the proshow gold people). Each has strong points, but just
because they didn't ring my bell doesn't mean they won't be right
for you.
--
Stop the Insanity!
Diet and Exercise Kills!
Click to expand...
 
DavePinMinn said:
I've read thru the notes here, and tried a few tools last year with
mixed results.... Maybe someone can recommend one that does these:

1. I organize images into a directory tree. I want the tool to
AUTOMATICALLY take the images and use the directory tree as
keywords. So, if I have wildlife/mammals/deer/whitetail and
wildlife/mammals/deer/mule as directories I want to be able to
select ALL the files in the whitetail directory and have the tool
assign keywords wildlife, mammals, deer, and whitetail.
Click to expand...
Extensis Portfolio will do this - you set it to parse the file path. However, IMHO it's generally a mistake to use your folder structure to analyse images - what if a picture contains a whitetail and a wolf - which folder then?
DavePinMinn said:
2. My drives that hold the images are removable. At home they're
plugged into one computer, but when on the road they go into an
external drive on the laptop. The tool has to keep EVERYTHING with
the image, not in a separate database because I only load one drive
at a time when on the road. OR the database needs to be on the
drive or in some location that I can copy the thing from machine to
machine.
Click to expand...
Again, Portfolio will do this as it's especially strong on offline storage. Optionally you can carry a 2000 pixel jpeg version of your files - these are held separately from the database so you can easily dump them if your laptop's short on space. If the drive's letter changes when it's attached to the laptop, it's a one click process to point all the records to the new drive letter. iView 3 has improved its handling of offline storage, though that's at the cost of much bigger catalogue files (previews are held inside the catalogue file).
DavePinMinn said:
3. fully support D2X NEF, Canon raw, and Fuji S2 Pro RAF files. I
don't particularly want it to open the raw files, but I have to be
able to see the contents.
Click to expand...
iView is better than Portfolio here, though Portfolio 7 supports the D2X nef and reads the white balance. Version 7 has rotation issues with Raw (ie doesn't pick up any rotation set in the camera maker's software) but the forthcoming version 8 has made big steps to fix this. Its support of the DNG format (which might appeal in your multi camera setup) is much better.
DavePinMinn said:
4. Some kind of easy-to-use rating system for images that is
searchable.
Click to expand...
iView has it, and in Portfolio it's a simple matter of adding a custom field for ratings. I've done that, and set it up to read ratings that I've set in Bridge (I use a purely DNG approach).
DavePinMinn said:
5. CD/DVD support - not just initially. I want to be able to pop
in a CD and do the cataloging. AND when searching have the
software tell me to put in CD 29 since that's where the wanted
items are.
Click to expand...
Comments under removable drives apply. Portfolio does this well, just as you describe in fact. It uses the disc's volume label, so you need to set this in your burner and label the physical disc.
DavePinMinn said:
6. FAST, FAST, FAST. A couple tools I used were so slow you could
go have dinner while waiting.
Click to expand...
Nothing's ever fast enough.
DavePinMinn said:
7. Some kind of submission manager... If I send a half dozen
images to a calendar company I don't want them to go elsewhere.
BUT, I also don't want them out of sight forever... So, there
should be a way to indicate they're submitted, and how long to hide
them, and to notify me the time is up. AND, if they're accepted I
should be able to mark them so they aren't reused for whatever
period is agreed upon with the company to which I submitted.
Click to expand...
Again, think custom fields. Here I'd add one called "Calendar company", another called status, another on that date. Both Portfolio and iView can do this. Or use a separate caalogue?
DavePinMinn said:
The above aren't in any kind of order, they're all important. And
equally so is an intuitive interface that easy to use and VERY
fast. For example, if I HAVE to manually set keywords and I have a
hierarchy of wildlife, mammals, deer, mule I want to select "mule"
and have all the other populated. NOT to have to start with
wildlife and select every keyword below.
Click to expand...
Your "mule" example is spot on, as there's nothing that really does this well. Hierachy interfaces tend to worlk downwards with wildlife as the top level whereas you want to work upwards. iView has introduced a new controlled vocabulary tool - now sure how good this is though. Portfolio has lots of drag and drop features, so I know of users with spreadsheets listings of words and their synonyms - the user drags a cell and drops "mule, donkeys, asses, equine, mammals", etc. This seems to work quite well for those users. You can also implement scripting solutions that you set running while you're asleep and that loop through updating records (Portfolio can even have SQL back ends though this is at a price).

Overall, I don't think there is yet a perfect solution. iView has led, Portfolio has annoyed a lot of people but version 8 has significant improvements. It is especially good at offline storage and also watching folders and acting automatically. The new version 8 has a super feature that lets you create presets for certain folders, so you define that anything added to the whitetail folder will mean they are automatically assigned the keywords "animals", "critters" as well as the keywords that are in your folder path. These presets also let you assign values such as the potential calendar companies, set images' status to "possible" - almost like triggers in a database program.

Also, because nothing will meet your exact needs, it's important to have scripting capability. Again, this is where Portfolio is strong, iView less so, and iMatch is very strong (it's up to you whether you can live with its interface)

John
 
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