Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

(1/65) > >>

MrCrispy:
All I want from an image organizer is -

1. Fast and reposnsive. I'm working with over 10k pictures
2. Ability to select a folder in the tree view and see all pics in that and its subfolders
3. Tagging support for XMP and IPTC. Import and export
4. A proper way to organize/filter views based on tags
5. File monitoring for new folders/pics
6. A nice UI with support for multiple zoom levels

I've tried nearly everything out there - Photoshop Elements 5, AcdSee, Picajet, IView etc. This category can be divided into 2 segments

- the lightweight viewers such as XnView, FastStone, IrfanView
- full blown organizers like the big 3 above
- other apps like Picasa, Corel Paint Shop Pro etc

So far, Photoshop Elements is the only one which offers halfway decent support for organizing based on tags, but of course Adobe support only XMP and nearly everyone else likes IPTC. PE is also about as fast as a hippo crawling through molasses while drunk. It also has some really neat 'features' such as maintaining its own album db which is not in sync with the filesystem, taking forever to add 'watched' folders, slideshows taking up 100% cpu and so on.

I mean, all I want is say XnView along with the ability to filter based on tag combinations. I don't want/care about a million different image editing tools (I have Photoshop for that) or slideshow effects. Picasa has a nice UI, is lightweight, but is completely braindead about tagging. Also, its amazing that not a single program seems to support #2. I also want some software to add picture tags directly from Explorer, at the file and folder level - i.e I want to be able to say - tag all pics below this level with 'xyz'.

Is there anything else out there?

nudone:
ACDSee will do #2, but you will have to manually select the sub folders to view. Directory Opus will do #2 with a couple of clicks but it doesn't have tagging.

if you are prepared to work the way ACDSee wants you do work then it's tagging ability does the job - it's not as good as Pho Elements but once you get used to it you might find it acceptable.

murratore:
Take a look at IDimager.

It supports nearly all of your wishes... -> www.idimager.com

elpresi:
Hi,
about #2:

ExifPro is a very nice viewer that does show subfolders.
http://www.exifpro.com/
And IviewMediaPro also does, and uses IPTC/XMP tags, all in a very nice GUI.

iphigenie:
I think it's because there are so many different needs... and so many different ways to get organised.
I tried a few recently (since i was planning to scan 1500 or more negatives and already have quite a few images from digital cameras)

Quite a few were totally inadequate with what i wanted to do, which was be able to tag my images with multiple tags (type of image, what's on it, who's on it, where is it etc.) mostly by ticking categories which i control and adding some keywords. And be able to do that on multiple images at once. Then be able to search quickly. Display speed was also a big requirement, i don't like waiting for a page of pics to load.

A lot of image manager tools are simple browsers with a bit of iptc/exif support, very family/casual in emphasis.

I liked idimager and imatch a lot for managing and tagging images. As I recall (it was November) there was much to like about both and quirks in both, but one of the two was much faster (i think it stored even thumbnails in its database) and the other more "transparent" to be able to write scripts that integrate with but alas was a pain when getting images from the scanner.

Acdsee was a bit weaker on the categorisation/management than the two above, but adequate nonetheless. In the latest version the quick image edit tool has some very good defaults, which really surprised me. The photoshop elements little management module was actually quite slick to use but was not very useful on the import side of things (i guess they expect people to use Bridge or some other workflow tool, or be simple and just move files around) and it lacked some of the features the others had.

Anyway I bought an older version of acdsee as everyone told me they were faster, and it still had the basic features that i liked on the scanning workflow side. It makes scanning one strip of negatives after another smoother than the others did, and it's also the only one i found that allowed me to edit all exif fields, so i could change the camera field from the name of the scanner to the name of the camera the picture had been taken with, and set the iso of the film etc. (and for the ones where i still had the notebooks, the aperture and shutter speed). I also like that acdsee stores almost everything with each images which means it's highly compatible with everything else, so I can switch to something else once all my importing is out of the way.

I'm probably going to re-evaluate some of the same programs once all the negatives and slides have been scanned, to decide between upgrading to the latest acdsee (where the management tools have improved and there are more database-like features) or picking one of the other management tools, idimager or imatch probably

Idimager (http://www.idimager.com/) and imatch (http://www.photools.com/) are worth a look, both of them. They're both small independent developers who are quite active in their forums and listening to their customers.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page