Best soft to organise pictures

[photomaster]

Have you tried Picasa, the free software from Google ?

I think this soft is simply amazingly fast, and probably the best to instantly locates and organises all the pictures on your computer.What do you think?
You can download it Here

[david seale]

i use it the most. heck, i even use it for quick image editing. its much easier to batch resize too.

[Sonny]

Picasa2 is a great piece of software!

[johnastovall]

I find Bridge in Photoshop CS2 works just fine along with OS-X's spotlight and smart folders

So I don't need anyother tool.

[Huck]

Originally Posted by Sonny

Picasa2 is a great piece of software!

I thrid this motion......LOL Its a great tool. Plus its FREE!!!!

[Stephen]

Picasa is a memory hog therefore I uninstalled it. Open the progam and let it run for a few minutes and then do a Control Alt Delete and look how much ram that program uses. It was impossible to use it while PS CS2 was running. I have 1 gig of ram on a 3.0 HT Intel chip.

[blonboy]

i use ACDsee 8.0. Its certainly not free, but when i have a TON of photos from a shoot - it gives me the ability to RATE them as i browse thru them. I give the shots a rating from 1-5 (or dont rate one at all), and then i can SORT the images by rating. Makes it SUPER nice and easy to pull out the good ones. Just my .02.

One other outstanding feature is the ability to add captions and keywords to EACH photo.

Ive recently been scanning BOX after BOX of old photos (by the way, you can use acdsee to scan directly into a .PSD format), and I use the CAPTION feature to enter in all the information that people have written on the BACKS of the photos. Plus, later on if Im looking for a certain photo, i can search either captions, or KEYWORDS ive attached to each photo. Its a powerful tool.

http://www.acdsee.com/

[rwwright]

i like iview mediapro. not free, but lots of features, works well with all my photos, lets me catagorize, fairly fast, etc.

[johnastovall]

I have serious reservations about any of Google's "free" software after the security issues with Desktop search and the possiblity that Picassa's "Hello" may have or be exploited as spyware.

TANSTSAAFL is a good thing to remember when something is free.

[nguyenhm16]

For those Mac users out there, I just got my copy of Aperture 1.1 last night. Paid $150 academic. I'm still learning how to use it but so far I love it, handles RAW much better than iPhoto (most equivalent to Picasa on the Mac), RAW conversion itself is "good enough" for me, I love its nondestructive versioning system, and roundtripping to Photoshop is a no brainer. Only downside is that it requires a fairly beefy system, especially with regard to video card and RAM, especially the video card, though I heard it runs great on the Intel Macs out right now except for the Mac mini (probably because they have the X1600 GPU).

For those who don't shoot RAW, iPhoto is great too, I just didn't like how it handles RAW and how it was a hassle to roundtrip to Photoshop -- it basically creates a JPEG, which ends up as a duplicate in your library after you're done with it.

[Ben]

I just use folders and setup my own filing system so it'll sort properly, and I can find whatever I want really quickly.

YYMMDDName
ex: 060304Galveston

I use CamelCase for readability (stemming from my programming days)


Then inside that folder I have my raw files and another folder called "Processed" where I keep my proccessed JPGs.

I can easily find pictures this way.

I also use Adobe Bridge.

[sbp]

I am playing with this from morning. I like it, infact I love it. I will use. I have 2 gig memory on home computer and I don't think memory should not be problem for me.

[Wil_Bloodworth]

You 1st need to know what kind of organization. Do you want software that will extract EXIF and/or IPTC info and allow you to categorize the images that way? Or do you simply want to organize your photos on your drives?

Do you save all your images on a hard drive or do you archive them on DVD and only recall them when you need them?

Personally, I don't do any organization based on keywords or the metadata residing inside the images files. Forgetting archiving for a minute, I organize my images on my hard drive like so...

[Drive]:\Images\YYYY\MM\DD - Event Name

So, for example, if I shot an FC Dallas game on the 18th of March 2006, it would be on my hard drive in this location:
Z:\Images\2006\03\18 - FC Dallas vs. Somebody\

The RAW (I only shoot RAW) images go in that root directory. After I've converted them to JPG, they go in a subdirectory named "Processed". Then I weed out all the junk ones and rename them all... into yet another subdirectory named "Keepers".

For renaming, I use BUSINESSNAME_DATE_IMAGE_WAS_TAKEN. For example, ParkImaging_2006_04_30_08_32_29.jpg.

Once they've all been renamed and they're in the Keepers directory, I ususally resize them to a manageable size and I'm done... the smaller resized images go under the Keepers directory in a directory named "Small". Then I'll create a web gallery for that event and upload all the small ones to it.

Then I burn the RAW images and anything else that will fit for that shoot onto a DVD and only keep the Keepers and Small directories on my hard drive. I'll keep them there for a while until I no longer 'think' I'll need to access them... then I'll just delete all of them from the PC.

Maybe that's more than you were asking for but everyone else seemed to cover the "software" side. If you take a buttload of images like I do... no hardware will be able to handle the load and be quick enough to handle them all to make you productive.

That's my $0.02...

- Wil

[DPetito]

I have been using Faststone. It is free but a modest donation is encouraged. This is quite nice to use and has a host of features. Not ACDSee Pro (which I am demoing and like)but close enough for browsing and light editing. I am waiting for either Lightroom or Aperture for Windows before making a plunge.
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

[brad]

I hate the fact that Picasa does not honor the directory structure on the drive when it does its categorizing... so if I have two directory trees...

Alicia and Chris/Final

and

Alex and Kevin/Final

Picasa classifies them both as "Final" .. completely throwing away the fact that one is Alicia and Chris and the other is Alex and Kevin. Bleh

I need something that will thumbnail and archive everything out on CDs/DVDs so that I can look for a photo by keyword or whatever.. and then have the software tell me which disc its on.