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Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?
CWuestefeld:
Also ACDSee has a fairly attractive offer at the moment which only runs for another 1.5 days or so, but me being 'unexperienced', it doesnt give me enough time to test it and get a feel for it ...
-tomos (February 02, 2013, 01:11 PM)
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What ACDSee does, it does pretty well. Its biggest strength is that its database is really only an optimization: the primary datastore is the images themselves. All of the data is written into EXIF and IPTC data in the image files. This ensures portability and longevity of the data.
On the other hand, it has some significant holes that it doesn't do. The two biggies in my book are:
* Face recognition - Many modern tools (Picasa, Lightroom, and heck, even the free bundleware that came with my new printer) will automatically recognize faces and tag them with names. I've developed a workflow that uses Picasa to do the job and import its data, but it's rather cumbersome.
* Photoshop plugins - ACDSee Pro claims to be a full-featured image editor, and it is to a certain degree (e.g., non-destructive edit). But Photoshop plugins do a lot of the gruntwork for me (noise reduction, contrast adjustment, sharpening), and ACDSee isn't compatible.
All things considered, I find that ACDSee is still the best option. But like so many other programs, it makes me feel like it's just the least bad one out there.
tomos:
^ thanks CW, that's very helpful info!
I've skimmed through the review again -the one I linked above- (imaging resource) which mainly looks at acdsee's editor - but they also have an earlier review which covers management etc (link). Combined with your comments, it sounds very good (even if it is unfortunately "just the least bad one out there").
Re Editing:
I dont work on many photos, but when I do it's usually a batch of them. I guess if I'm not happy with it's quality here, I'd have to use an external editor - then I gotta find an editor that does *everything* I want, but that's another story ;-)
40hz:
But like so many other programs, it makes me feel like it's just the least bad one out there.
-CWuestefeld (February 02, 2013, 03:43 PM)
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That is one of the most succinct observations I've read in a long time. Well said! :Thmbsup:
Darwin:
I've given up on this category of software, for the reason that CWuestefeld notes above
it makes me feel like it's just the least bad one out there.
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I get by now using Dopus 10 to organize my photos into folders and have a menagerie of different photo editors for which I have licenses and installers and can call up on if I need to edit anything. I have only Helicon Filter 5 installed at the moment but find that I use PaperPort 14 SET tools for just about everything. Helicon Filter will likely be uninstalled soon as I can't think of a compelling reason to keep it on my system... With that thought fixed in my head, I'm off to uninstall it now! I realize that this is highly individual, so take the foregoing with a grain of salt!
cmpm:
I like Windows Live Photo Gallery, after using a few dozen others.
It can do most all of my viewing and editing needs with video support too.
I don't have thousands, just hundreds.
The thumbnail rendering and scrolling and navigation is fast enough for me.
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