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

[J-Mac]

Java - Yes for latest Graphics card driver, no for any alternate shell stuff. No WindowBlinds or anything like that.

Thank you.

Jim

[Dormouse]

from j-mac's screenshots

-JavaJones (April 02, 2010, 04:15 PM)

You've prompted me to look at them again.

First noticing that the 2nd box above the column headers is empty. It's the filter box & I don't know how to get it empty. When I have no filter chosen, it says No Filter. Maybe it would be empty if I had never clicked on it. Can't remember that far back.

Second, the columns far to the right. The last of those is the repeat of the File Name. But this is only partly showing even though the scroll bar is as far to the right as it can go. This must be a display problem of some sort. Could be IDI - sometimes it can take a while to get the display completely organised when you change view; and yours seems to go very slowly quite often (eg. as in changing style). The next two to its left are presumably Bookmarked and In-Sync. That means you are missing 8 columns. I assume that the Column titles for the 3 far right columns you do have aren't showing either?

Maybe, it has got stuck drawing the window.

[cmpm]

Here's one found while browsing some other forums on image organizing.

http://www.breezesys...ezeBrowser/index.htm

not free

[J-Mac]

from j-mac's screenshots

-JavaJones (April 02, 2010, 04:15 PM)

You've prompted me to look at them again.

First noticing that the 2nd box above the column headers is empty. It's the filter box & I don't know how to get it empty. When I have no filter chosen, it says No Filter. Maybe it would be empty if I had never clicked on it. Can't remember that far back.

Second, the columns far to the right. The last of those is the repeat of the File Name. But this is only partly showing even though the scroll bar is as far to the right as it can go. This must be a display problem of some sort. Could be IDI - sometimes it can take a while to get the display completely organised when you change view; and yours seems to go very slowly quite often (eg. as in changing style). The next two to its left are presumably Bookmarked and In-Sync. That means you are missing 8 columns. I assume that the Column titles for the 3 far right columns you do have aren't showing either?

Maybe, it has got stuck drawing the window.

-Dormouse (April 02, 2010, 05:31 PM)

Dormouse,

Actually I might have all the columns; if I scroll across all the way, bit by bit, I can see various other columns. Two specific problems, though: 1) No column headers, even above each column. Running my mouse across there doesn’t help; pointing and dragging does nothing so it isn't just that the separator lines are hidden - the headers are not there. 2) When I scroll horizontally IDI uses ~50% CPU resources, and there is a long lag between moving the scrollbar and the window moving - a long lag. Like three to five minutes to move a half inch or less.

I'll send in another support request and see if I get any reply this time...

Thank you.

Jim

[JavaJones]

Uninstall/reinstall? Does it use .NET or anything?

- Oshyan

[J-Mac]

Uninstall/reinstall?

-JavaJones (April 03, 2010, 02:12 AM)

That's probably something I'll try, but I would really like to get a response from the developer before trying anything. I would think that he would want to get some info from me first, like logs, settings, etc. for diagnostic purposes. That is if he is interested in helping at all - which I am starting to doubt unfortunately.

Does it use .NET or anything?

- Oshyan

Not sure but I know I have .NET 1.x, 2.x, and 3.x installed. Various apps I use have requirements for one of those and thus all three needed to be installed at some point. It would be unusual for a program to need a prerequisite like a certain version of .NET or other platform and not check for it or install it first. At least that has been my experience with the software I use; and I use a lot of it!

Possibly Unrelated Note: In the past I have had a couple of developers tell me that their apps always have difficulties rendering properly on computers with Nvidia graphics cards and that I should try changing out my card for another brand because of that. At which point I told both of them to go sh*t in their hats! Nvidia cards are in more computers than any other brand and my card (along with the last two I have used) is considered a "gaming" graphics card and has the capabilities for pretty extreme 3D rendering and hardware acceleration. (Though I have all that set for "Normal"), so an Nvidia card should be able to handle just about any program I can throw at it. If a developer must resort to specifying which specific hardware component brands to use then I don’t need to use that particular software! More often some software apps have difficulties when related Nvidia software is installed, like the Nvidia Control Panel and their "Forceware" stuff. I am not using any of those for that reason.

Just a thought...

Thanks!

Jim

[Dormouse]

I'll send in another support request and see if I get any reply this time...

-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 10:17 PM)

I would really like to get a response from the developer before trying anything. I would think that he would want to get some info from me first, like logs, settings, etc. for diagnostic purposes. That is if he is interested in helping at all - which I am starting to doubt unfortunately.

-J-Mac (April 04, 2010, 02:24 AM)

Sorry, I thought I had already written and said this, but cannot find it in the thread. 

Here are Hert's most recent posts on the IDI Forum. You'll see that they are generally helpful and aimed at finding solutions. His last visit had been 22nd March (but I notice that he's just visited on 3rd April, but not posted). I would imagine that he might be back after Easter, and that you will get a response then.

[Innuendo]

Possibly Unrelated Note: In the past I have had a couple of developers tell me that their apps always have difficulties rendering properly on computers with Nvidia graphics cards and that I should try changing out my card for another brand because of that.

-J-Mac (April 04, 2010, 02:24 AM)

These days I prefer ATI cards myself, but I have owned Nvidia cards in the past & what I can tell you from my experience with Big Green is that their driver eco-system is more varied and diverse than ATI's is. This is neither a good or a bad thing. It's just the way things are.

With ATI driver releases are very controlled. There's one driver release each month & you can be darn sure that what's in the newest driver release solidly builds on the driver that came before it & beta driver releases, while they happen, are very rare.

Nvidia has a different way of doing things. In between each official driver release posted on the web site there can/will be anywhere from 1 to 20 unofficial beta driver releases that can be found in the wild. Sometimes they are leaked and sometimes they are released by Nvidia's partners on their web sites to get the latest code out to their customers ASAP. The trickiness with Nvidia drivers is that one beta driver may have a bug fix or workaround that a later beta driver won't & for that matter the next official driver may not have it, either with the missing code either showing up in a later official release driver down the road or maybe never at all.

What all my wordiness is saying is that when you own an Nvidia graphics card and experience problems it doesn't necessarily mean you need a new card (Unless you have one of the hardware-defective 8x00 cards). All problems mean is that you need to use a different driver...maybe a beta driver...maybe a driver 1 or 2 revisions behind or ahead of the one you are using now. Experiment and you'll almost always find a fix to the problem without having to lay out any money or swap any hardware.

[J-Mac]

Possibly Unrelated Note:
What all my wordiness is saying is that when you own an Nvidia graphics card and experience problems it doesn't necessarily mean you need a new card (Unless you have one of the hardware-defective 8x00 cards). All problems mean is that you need to use a different driver...maybe a beta driver...maybe a driver 1 or 2 revisions behind or ahead of the one you are using now. Experiment and you'll almost always find a fix to the problem without having to lay out any money or swap any hardware.

-J-Mac (April 04, 2010, 02:24 AM)

-Innuendo (April 04, 2010, 09:05 AM)

I only install Nvidia's latest officially released driver, and my only deviations from that are if my computer's graphics performance drops severely or I start seeing sudden nvdisp.dll crashes; in that case I drop back to the last good driver. Unless a really bad driver is installed I still don’t see why a program should balk at having an Nvidia card. And remember, I didn't hear anything like that from IDimager - I just mentioned it because I did get such excuses a few years ago from another developer. And finally I have not had any similar issues with any other apps with my current driver. Just sayin'.

Thank you.

Jim

[Dormouse]

I haven't seen huge amounts of discussion about nVidia cards in the IDI forums, but I did see this post (quite old now).

[J-Mac]

I haven't seen huge amounts of discussion about nVidia cards in the IDI forums, but I did see this post (quite old now).

-Dormouse (April 04, 2010, 12:54 PM)

Thanks Dormouse.

That post appears to advise about settings in the Nvidia control panel that might improve Idimager's performance. Doesn’t mention any problems in IDimager though.

Jim

[Dormouse]

Doesn’t mention any problems in IDimager though.

-J-Mac (April 04, 2010, 01:21 PM)

No. It's just I'm not clear whether it is a specific problem in your IDI installation, or whether something is getting it so bogged down that it doesn't finish everything. I can't really see that it will just be down to your graphics card or settings, otherwise I'd've expected more people recognising the problem.

[JavaJones]

There's one way to potentially find out if it's graphics card related. Go to the settings for your graphics card driver and set acceleration to None. If it still happens, it's probably not related to your card or drivers.

- Oshyan

[Innuendo]

Unless a really bad driver is installed I still don’t see why a program should balk at having an Nvidia card.

-J-Mac (April 04, 2010, 12:43 PM)

My advice isn't specifically for Nvidia cards only. All drivers have bugs. Sometimes those bugs in graphics card drivers from any manufacturer may affect the way programs draw their elements on the screen.

[J-Mac]

There's one way to potentially find out if it's graphics card related. Go to the settings for your graphics card driver and set acceleration to None. If it still happens, it's probably not related to your card or drivers.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (April 04, 2010, 04:40 PM)

Did that - it's set to None right now. Didn't help unfortunately. I think it's the program.

Thank you.

Jim

[Darwin]

I'm really beginning to understand the purpose of this thread (I'm a quick study!). I have licenses for exifpro and for PhotoCollector and also for PaintShop Pro, which has some organizational capabilities (not tested by me, yet) built in. FRUSTRATING! I'll elaborate later, but after not bothering for a long time, I've reinstalled exifPro and PhotoCollector and am attempting to get organized again...

[superboyac]

I'm really beginning to understand the purpose of this thread (I'm a quick study!). I have licenses for exifpro and for PhotoCollector and also for PaintShop Pro, which has some organizational capabilities (not tested by me, yet) built in. FRUSTRATING! I'll elaborate later, but after not bothering for a long time, I've reinstalled exifPro and PhotoCollector and am attempting to get organized again...

-Darwin (April 05, 2010, 08:35 AM)

Seriously!  I was excited about exifPro also because it was so lightweight and fast, but it lacks in a lot of other ways.  I haven't played with photoCollector extensively, but it's not that great either.  I'm coming to the conclusion that this is one of those cases where you're going to need to use multiple software to accomplish the tasks that we are expecting one application to do.  I've read that this is the case on forums where they discuss DAM (digital asset management).

For me, this is my suit of software:

Maxview
I use this as my quickview application.  My picture filetypes are registered for maxview.  It is really quick when double-clicking on files to open or view.  It also handles basic editing like cropping/resizing/rotating easy enough.

ACDSee
I'm using ACDSee for browsing pictures, I always have.  It also has a "quickview" module, but maxview is way better for that.  But ACDsee has gotten slower and slower, and the latest interface change I felt was extremely counter-productive.

Photo Mechanic
I don't use this much, but I've heard this is THE program to use if you are dealing with a ton of RAW files.  It's speed in handling RAW files is apparently unmatched.

??
I don't know what I'd use for organization.  That's why i'm following this thread.  I'm not a big photo user, so i don't have a lot of pictures.  But if I did, I don't know what program I'd use.  Tagging, cataloging, etc.  I don't do any of that.  My photos are organized just by folders and files.  I'm actually amazed that nobody has recommended a clear cut favorite in this thread...it's been a while!  In my experiences, I've found that the applications that can do this well are really really slow.  Like Lightroom.

eps & ai files
Adobe Bridge is the only option here that can read these files and browse with thumbnails.  Actually, there's a program called STS Thumbnails which can also read ai and eps files, but it's a pretty klunky program itself, and sometimes it can't read everything Bridge can.  On the other hand, bridge crashes a lot.  These are the only two software that I know of that can do this.

[Darwin]

Yeah... exifPro is frustrating (for me) because it STILL chokes if it encounters an error when creating a catalogue. By choking, I mean it pops up a warning and then sits and waits for the user to click "OK" before continuing. Frustrating if you're attempting to create a catalogue for 20 or 30 GBs of images and don't want to sit in front of your computer while it does its thing. The other frustration is that there's no way to add pictures to an existing catalogue - you have to create a new catalogue. The catalogues created are horrifically large as well.

PhotoCollector is just plain BUGGY. I get Access Violations that I can only exit out of by using TM to kill the process when trying to create my index with it. From past usage, a big frustration is that there is no option to use a Folder tree view to navigate your pictures - it's all done by year, date, or tag. The tagging system sucks because you can't reliably search your index using it. You search it by creating Filters. Often the program will hang trying to search for a filter but if it successfully filters everything, there is a good chance that what you are looking for, and what you KNOW has been tagged that way, won't be found.

I've just tried both and only successfully created an index for exifPro. PhotoCollector is being banished again and I am considering banishing exifPro as well.

Must have patience. Patience. Yeah, yeah, how long will that take?

I'm going to try the organizer built into PaintShop Photo Pro X3 next...

This is all just bringing back bad memories and reminds me about WHY I dumped the whole "organization" idea in the first place and just use DOpus 9...

[Darwin]

Well, I'm quite pleased with my cursory use of PSP Pro X3's organizer. Once I got the hang of setting up Smart Collections, it works really well. Time will tell, of course...

exifPro (with regret) and PhotoCollector (no regret) have both been banished from my computer once again. If PhotoCollector ever gets an update, and the bugs/functionality issues are addressed, I may revisit either or both of them. FWIW, I love exifPro's Viewer. PhotoCollector's viewer is a close second.

[Dormouse]

I don't know what I'd use for organization.  That's why i'm following this thread.  I'm not a big photo user, so i don't have a lot of pictures.  But if I did, I don't know what program I'd use.  Tagging, cataloging, etc.  I don't do any of that.  My photos are organized just by folders and files.  I'm actually amazed that nobody has recommended a clear cut favorite in this thread...it's been a while!

-superboyac (April 05, 2010, 08:55 AM)

There cannot be a clear cut favorite. It depends on your own needs and preferences.

My advice for this sort of program is always twofold.
1. Only use programs where you can easily export the data you have worked on to use in a different program.
2. Try programs that have the features you need. Buy/use the one that suits you best. Do not get sucked into buying programs at a degree of complexity that is greater than your need. You will spend time learning them, you will find them confusing and difficult to use, and you will have to spend lots of time relearning them because you won't be using them often enough to retain familiarity.

This is all just bringing back bad memories and reminds me about WHY I dumped the whole "organization" idea in the first place and just use DOpus 9...

-Darwin (April 05, 2010, 09:27 AM)

Nothing wrong with using DOpus. The main reason I originally chose it against the competition was that I thought its use in working with images was much better. And I still use it for lots of (simple) image management processes.

[J-Mac]

Well, I'm quite pleased with my cursory use of PSP Pro X3's organizer. Once I got the hang of setting up Smart Collections, it works really well. Time will tell, of course...

exifPro (with regret) and PhotoCollector (no regret) have both been banished from my computer once again. If PhotoCollector ever gets an update, and the bugs/functionality issues are addressed, I may revisit either or both of them. FWIW, I love exifPro's Viewer. PhotoCollector's viewer is a close second.

-Darwin (April 05, 2010, 10:21 AM)

Hey there stranger! I used PSP from V.6 or 7 through PSPX until I installed Windows 7 - I have since heard that PSPX works on Win7 so I might reinstall it - but I didn't use PSP's organizer component. That used to be a separate program; think it was Paint Shop Photo Album. It was really bad. Took forever to catalog the images and then took forever every time you wanted to find or retrieve any images. No one generally liked it at all on the PSP Usenet group - lots of long-time PSP users there.

ACDSee was great from V.6 through the 2009 release. Then it wouldn’t run on Win7, though it was listed as compatible on the Microsoft Win7 Compatibility site. Works OK on some machines but on most it slowly stops working. Something about not using the Win7 Libraries correctly and it eventually mucks everything up. ACDSee won't fix it but says to just wait for the next version. Bleh.

I could have purchased PSP Pro X3 pretty cheap but was concerned about that spyware/anti-pirating service it installs. Not that I planned to pirate it but I just hate that stuff running on my PC because Corel wants to make sure I don’t pirate it. Used to be able to disable it on PSPX but I discovered that the same hacks don’t work on the X3 version.

IDimager Pro would be OK for me but apparently it doesn’t agree with something about my computer - haven't figured out what that is yet.

SuperboyAC has the right idea: you need more than one app to properly organize your images, if you have a lot. Most I found use something like ExifPro or similar apps for general quick organizing and viewing and then use IDimager Pro for their serious catalog work. Of course I don’t think I need quite that serious of cataloging! So why am I here??  Arrgghhh!!!  Magoo, you're done it again.

Jim

[J-Mac]

BTW, I forgot to mention that I have also been using the free Faststone Viewer for viewing photos and even some light editing - it's quick, looks very nice, and hasn’t done anything to piss me off yet!!   

Thanks!

Jim

[tomos]

This is all just bringing back bad memories and reminds me about WHY I dumped the whole "organization" idea in the first place and just use DOpus 9...

-Darwin (April 05, 2010, 09:27 AM)

Nothing wrong with using DOpus. The main reason I originally chose it against the competition was that I thought its use in working with images was much better. And I still use it for lots of (simple) image management processes.

-Dormouse (April 05, 2010, 01:05 PM)

I've requested some minor improvements re working with images in DOpus - e.g.
ability to open file currently showing in (standalone) viewer in an external editor;
ability to copy path of file currently showing in viewer;
better zoom-in capability in viewer


I'm amazed how little file managers cater towards working with images - if you move to pretty much any app designed specifically for working with images, you're going to miss lots of goodies you usually have in your file manager.  And vice-versa  :-(
These day pretty much everybody has photos so it would be nice if the file-managers catered a bit more to that.
Also if you work with images (but not photos) you're very much neglected


But I guess by image 'organiser' tagging is pretty much a must - otherwise I think I'd stick with DOpus too - as I have it  ;-)
Like Superboyac, I'm watching this space for tips

[tomos]

Re Exif-pro:
AFAICT it's cataloging features are really intended for keeping track of stuff on external drives/discs
- there's no other advantage to cataloging that I can see

Tagging is limited (I think you can create tags via a text file but without any hierarchy)
It's a great programme for sorting a batch of photos using the default tabs 1(good) to 4(print)
Great viewer

[cmpm]

I like Pictomio, not bad as an organizer either.
Enough options in the library tab to checkout.
Plus it can handle as many pics you have.

http://www.pictomio.com/Default.aspx