Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?
Dormouse:
I currently have about 250K images, disorganized into some 4K folders that people lumped them into, taking over 100GB with more coming once in a while. By and large they are JPEGs with a handful of GIFs and PNGs, no RAWs.
And last but not least, I want it to be FAST, both when indexing and when searching.
Does such application exist?
-zevel (April 11, 2010, 07:02 PM)
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The answer should be yes, depending on precisely what you mean by FAST. Especially for indexing. And depending on what you want indexed and what else you want it to do. Complex changing of tags and hierarchies of tags could also take a while across a huge number of images if the tags are attached to the file rather than simply living in the database; with images most info is usually kept with the image so that tagging etc is independent of the program that created them - but it will have an impact on speed if you want to do a lot of complex changes.
There's nothing in your post to suggest that the program needs specific image cataloging abilities. Does that mean that a general cataloging program/database would be fine? Or is there something else you need it to do (such as read/index the EXIF)?
All the programs mentioned in this thread are specifically intended for photos and photographers. They are looking for a lot of specific features that you may or may not need - with an overhead in speed that you appear not to want - and permit changes of tagging structures, but do not expect that this will happen very often.
Dormouse:
Dormouse. I was just kidding you. Look at the sentence I was talking about - I know what you meant but to anyone not reading through the thread it probably looks bewildering!
-J-Mac (April 07, 2010, 09:37 PM)
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I realised that you were (almost) certainly kidding me - and that you would have read the thread - but then realised that for anyone without the patience to read the detailed info in the thread everything I said was virtually meaningless. I hope people will at least understand what I was trying to get at now and only have to read the thread if they are interested.
Personally I'm not using RAW images - like I mentioned I don’t get to take many meaningful shots anymore and mostly work with older photos; though that presents its own challenges. Have you ever tried to digitize and them repair/optimize old, old tin and silver pics?
-J-Mac (April 07, 2010, 09:37 PM)
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I've done a bit of this but not much. Played a little is probably a better way of putting it. Looking to see what happens when I do, but putting off the job of doing my best with them until I have time. And hoping that the technology will be better/easier then. :)
Did you ever get any response from IDI support about the problems?
Having now gone through the forums in a bit of detail, it strikes me as possible that a number (probably a small number) of users have found aspects of v5 working very slowly on their machines. And much more slowly than v4. Although there was an extended beta period, the final release is still in relatively early stages and I would expect that a lot of improvements will emerge as time goes on. It's always a problem to tie down when speed is the issue because what the program does is so complex that some things (like the original indexing) will take a long time and so users get stuck in not knowing whether it is taking longer than it ought - as originally happened with you; so maybe not everything is reported.
zevel:
The answer should be yes, depending on precisely what you mean by FAST. Especially for indexing.-Dormouse (April 12, 2010, 07:13 PM)
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When the colection was somewhat smaller, I tried Adobe Lightroom. It took 4 or 5 days to index the collection on my (admittedly underpowered) machine. That is *not* fast.
And depending on what you want indexed and what else you want it to do.-Dormouse (April 12, 2010, 07:13 PM)
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I don't know yet. I'm new at this.
Complex changing of tags and hierarchies of tags could also take a while across a huge number of images if the tags are attached to the file rather than simply living in the database; with images most info is usually kept with the image so that tagging etc is independent of the program that created them - but it will have an impact on speed if you want to do a lot of complex changes.-Dormouse (April 12, 2010, 07:13 PM)
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Firstly, I'm OK with everything residing in the DB, provided that I can:
- Export the DB into the EXIF/IPTC if I want to switch programs.
- Move the images around between folders and have the changes reflected in the DB (I'm OK doing it within the program).
Secondly, changing the tag structure can be handled on the query level, without having to retag anything. That may complicate and slow down the queries though.
There's nothing in your post to suggest that the program needs specific image cataloging abilities. Does that mean that a general cataloging program/database would be fine? Or is there something else you need it to do (such as read/index the EXIF)?-Dormouse (April 12, 2010, 07:13 PM)
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I'd like to view the files as thumbnails when I operate on them or see the results of a query. Additional image-related functionality can be detecting similar images (although I have VisiPics and Similar Images to do that). I probably would not need photo-specific functionality though.
All the programs mentioned in this thread are specifically intended for photos and photographers. They are looking for a lot of specific features that you may or may not need - with an overhead in speed that you appear not to want - and permit changes of tagging structures, but do not expect that this will happen very often.-Dormouse (April 12, 2010, 07:13 PM)
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Well, I have somewhat atypical requirements. Maybe one of the programs will fit the bill, even if I end up not using 90% of its capabilities, or maybe you could recommend something else (or another place to ask the question).
Thanks for your help!
Dormouse:
If you are going to look at image cataloging programs, my inclination would be to suggest iMatch as your 1st port of call. It will handle the numbers and is very scriptable and is a relatively pure cataloging program. I haven't looked at it recently though, and really couldn't say whether it will do everything you listed in the way you want - though I think it ought to, and would think Mario might well code it if the need were pointed out.
But I can't help but feel that you really, really don't want the loss of speed that will go along with the features you don't want - all the reading of info you have no interest in (assuming it is there in the jpgs), all the writing of info into each image. I'd expect image catalogers to read the images in less than 5 days - but 100GB across 250,000 images is not likely to be quick. And you will need to keep your anti-virus away from your catalog and image collection.
My suggestion would be to look at one of the tagging programs that works through a database. They should have relatively light overheads for your needs (though you would have to look into how you'd write the info into the images at some stage). It would help if the underlying database were one in wide usage. I don't have much experience or expertise in these, but other people here might.
JavaJones:
OK, I'm giving Lightroom a serious try now, and dammit it's not making it easy to love! :mad: I'll spare the details for now until I get some more experience with it (and maybe do a proper write-up). For the moment all I want to know is whether it's possible to have it auto-import new photos. I see there is an auto-import function but all it does is import photos that I save to 1 specific directory (which must be empty when I first setup the auto-import function), and then it moves them to some other folder, etc. What I'm looking for is something very simple like Picasa has. I save a new image to one of the (100s of) watched folders and it detects this within a few seconds or at most a minute and then adds it to its catalog (without interrupting my workflow).
Here's my scenario: I use an image cataloger and "developer" to organize, rate, tag, and ultimately "develop" most of my photos. However there are several significant functions that - while not needed all the time - do come up occasionally, and require external programs. I tend to want to edit and save to separate files rather than save over an original (no surprise there), so when I'm done with these external tasks I end up with new images, usually saved to the same folder as the source. Here are a few examples: Photomatix HDR processing, Autopano panorama creation, Photoshop collage creation, etc. I use each of these apps to create new images based on other images so naturally I want to save them with similar names back to the original folder.
Picasa handles this beautifully. Can LR really not? So far all I've found is a plugin which isn't free (though it's very cheap). I'm willing to go the plugin route, but even the plugin seems more laborious than Picasa's approach. I'm off to do some more Google searching. *sigh*
- Oshyan
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