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Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?
Darwin:
I've been playing with the trial of Photo Collector and really like it. It's way more responsive and less resource hungry than Corel Snapfire Plus (which I have a license for but really don't use) and searches reasonably quickly (I have 12k pictures for it to wade through...). Only niggle so far is that it took almost (didn't time it) an hour to load my "My Pictures" folder and its subfolders and then another 59 minutes (displays a timer, so I know) to generate thumbnails. Once that's done, though, you're set. I really like the "tagging" system, which is quite flexible (see screenshot above for an idea), and the fact that the developer is promising support for digital camera video formats in a future release.
I'll keep playing around with it. So far, it is the first Photo Organizer that I can actually see using. The others that I've tried have not made a lot of sense to me and/or I have simply not used due to the learning curve/cluttered interface, etc. Photo Organizer looks to be different.
I'm going to go through MrCrispy's wishlist and see how much correspondence there is between it and Photo Commander... I'll post back today or tomorrow with the results.
Darwin:
Well, that went more quickly than I thought it would, though I don't know if I've adequately checked out each of Mr Crispy's points (love that username!) with respect to Collectorz Photo Collector . However, here goes:
1. Fast and reposnsive. I'm working with over 10k pictures. I have over 12k pictures in the database that I generated using Photo Collector. I tagged some obscure pics from a few years ago, shut down the program and then searched for part of the tag. The results were returned in about 10 seconds, which I don't consider too bad at all.
2. Ability to select a folder in the tree view and see all pics in that and its subfolders - not currently. Views are independent of the folder structure in Explorer. However, looking at the users' forum, an Explorer view is in the works. I have and use mp3 Collector which already has the Explorer view implemented and it works really well.
3. Tagging support for XMP and IPTC. Import and export. Definitely supports IPTC but I can't find anything about XMP from within the program or on the website. I also have no idea where to look for this in my own files, so I can't check it out.
4. A proper way to organize/filter views based on tags. Yes, this is one of its strongest points.
5. File monitoring for new folders/pics. Not that I can tell. However, if they get Explorer view up and running (see above) this will be a non-issue as you simply navigate to the new folder and/or file and from the context menu select "add to database". This is how it works in mp3 Collector, anyway. Also, the scanning for photos on your harddrive feature includes a number of options for dealing with a photo that is already in the database including update the database entry (if the photo has changed), ignore it altogether or replace it.
6. A nice UI with support for multiple zoom levels. The first half is subjective, but I would argue that the answer is yes to both.
Two issues worth noting are that donationcoder still has a 50% discount running on Collectorz.com software and that the licenses are for life - ie come with lifetime upgrades. So far, I am impressed. It's a heck of a lot more responsive and less resource intensive than anything else that I've tried.
MrCrispy:
I'm going to have to try Photo Collector out, thanks for the mini-review!
A bit more about XMP vs IPTC - the whole photo tagging things is a big mess and no one seems to agree on how to correctly implement it. But there's a standard called IPTC Core that seems to be thw way forward. Check out iptc4xmp.org for the gory details. I wouldn't care for it but I spent a lot of time tagging my photos in PSE before I knew that most other programs don't do XMP.
Ruffnekk:
On Giveaway of the Day they now have Zoner Photo Studio 9 for free. It might be worth checking out! At the time of this post, the offer to get it for free still lasts around 20 hours... so hurry ;)
Zoner Photo Studio 9 is the new way to manage your photos. Have you ever bought photo software and found it’s missing something? With Zoner Photo Studio 9, this will never happen. With Zoner Photo Studio 9 Professional you get an all-in-one photos program for every step from acquiring photos to readying them to organizing them to sharing them.
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Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?
Darwin:
Thanks for the link about XMP. The developers of the Collectorz series love feedback/suggestions/requests and XMP compatibility might be something that they be willing to add. From what I can tell, Photo Collector is in heavy (if not blazingly quick) development with a lot of functionality to be added.
I just noticed the Zoner Photo Studio giveaway, too. They're giving away the Express version with a 60 day trial of the Pro version thrown in. I wonder what's missing in the Express version? I'll have to go take a look...
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