Which software program is best for photo management?

[gary_hendricks]

Hi all

I'm interested in finding out which software program you guys find most useful for photo management. Thanks.

[Steve Cifra]

What do you mean by management? Organization? If so, I like Adobe Photo Album 2. I like the calendar feature for finding photos quick. But, this is the only thing I have used. I normally just have a folder for every month.

Steve

[RichC]

Picasa is my choice, and it's free...http://www.picasa.com/download/index.php

[ssidlov]

Photo Album (elements is really an add-on to it) is not bad, but PhotoAlbum strips the EXIF from the data, it seems.

SD-Viewer which comes with the Panasonic Lumix cameras, is designed to seek out media cards and copies all the photos with the EXIF data to folder(s) with the date that the photos were taken, sorts and creates the folders all by itself. You can groups the photos into albums later by drag 'n drop of the photos. Deleting albums does not delete photos. Allows printing, rotation, resizing, compressing, and emailing of photos. DOES INDEX PRINTS. Handles Movies.

I would also like to mention that PhotoAlbum has a very bad habit. :( Those thumbnails you see...those are real. And Photoshop stores them in a hidden system folder on your C drive (no matter where you actually installed the software). And it gets bigger and bigger. :eek: A few hundred photos and you'll have 10mb tied up in this file. This is bad form, IMO. An easy way to prove this is to exit the program and go to where the uploaded photos are stored. Then move one of the photos to somewhere else on your hard drive. Photoshop will not be able to find it, but the thumbnail will still be there. I do not know off the top of my head if other Adobe products are as poorly behaved.

[BowtieZ28]

My favorite is ACDSee. Current version is 7. I use it every day and have used it for years and it's great. You can find it at: http://www.acdsystems.com/English/index.htm

As for free:
Irfanview @: http://www.irfanview.com/
Picasa @: http://www.picasa.com/index.php?tid=Y2NpZD0zODY2

Try them out, each person seems to have their on tast in what program they like.
Good luck,
Bowtie

[ssidlov]

I was looking at another thread, and it made me do this google:
"service print exif information" which led me to the AGFA digital photography course http://www.agfanet.com/en/cafe/photocourse/digicourse/lesson11/cont_chapter05.php3, and to one of the recommended software products:
http://www.photools.com/im0001.php

This software handles TIFF, RAW, JPEG formats from many major mfgrs. It allows editing of the EXIF/ IPTC information. It can manage photos storeed on DVD/CD formats, and if you have catorigorized the photos on those disks, it can tell you which disk the photo you are looking for is on. You can draw a SKETCH of the photo you are looking for and it claims it will find it.

It does WATERMARKS, and Copyright Statements.

Integrates with Photoshop, etc. Works with Photoshop layer information.

It costs $60. It has a 30 day free trial.

[scout_22]

Picasa is my choice, and it's free...http://www.picasa.com/download/index.php

Question:

Is there a simple way of cleaning up/organizing my pictures...I just downloaded Picasa, and it seems I have a LOT of dup's....any suggestions, or should I just go through each folder..??

Thats what I get for having 5 users on my PC!! hahaha

Mike

[RichC]

I think the easiest way to find duplicates in Picasa is to use the search function. Type in whatever in the search box and it will display the resulting thumbs.