Photo Filing System

[tombriggs]

My worst dreams come true whenever anyone asks me for a copy of a photo that I took months or years before .... to find it, if ever, takes an enormous amount of time unless I know the month it was taken (currently everything is filed by date). There HAS TO BE a better way ... any suggestions will be appreciated.

[Winfried]

Try a DAM a digital assets management System.
I use IMatch since 2003. The current Version is IMatch 5.
It is not only usefull for images but also for many other types of digital assets (i.e. files)

[tombriggs]

Thanx, Winfried ... I just downloaded the trial version of IMatch 5 but wish there was a tutorial ... a little complex.

[Winfried]

Well, that is the problem with all powerfull tools...
Start with "First Steps" from the Help System.
If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask.
There is also a very helpfull community http://community.photoolsweb.com/

Ok, we have a small problem: PWP doesn't support the .xmp-metadata standard very well....
ping Kiril... :-)

[Staylor2]

There is also a similar program called XnViewMP that is cross platform compatible and is free. You can check it out at xnview.com.

[Dieter Mayr]

Tom, how many pictures are we talking about ?
I run the free version of Zoner Photo Studio 16 to manage about 30 000 photos (constantly growing of course), no problems.
I know there are users with well over 100 000 pictures using Zoner Photo Studio.
https://www.zoner.com/
If you choose this road, be aware to have a lot of work keywording all your existing images if you haven't done already.
When I choosed this solution I spent several weekends keywording and geolocating 20 000 photos.
But as benefit of the work you can search easily via the keywords then.

[tomczak]

I've been on a quest for a simple portable image organizer/keyworder for a while now. Nothing struck my fancy yet, but just discovered something that looks ok, except I don't know yet how it works (or if it works at all):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/d ... 8f81896d4d

Microsoft freebie: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools version 2

Would anyone have some experience with it?

Cheers!

[tomczak]

Already got into problem with MS Pro Photo Tools - it doesn't want to read Fuji .RAF files - requires a codec, it says. Where do I get one?

Cheers!

[Dieter Mayr]

Maciej,

This seems to be the lastes RAW-codec package available:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/downloa ... x?id=26829
Date 22. April 2014 ... but it has 2 Fuji cameras in the list at least.
Maybe you are lucky...

[Winfried]

Before deciding for a system to manage photos and other digital files there are some points to consider since the choice of such product is a long lasting decision. It is quite easy to switch to another photo editing program or raw-converter. But migrating to another database product isn't that easy. So you have to be careful with your choice.
The price should be of lower importance:

• how is the reliability of the product and the company. Apple is not reliable to this aspect. They dropped Aperture. Even smaller companies can be more reliable.

• How to migrate (just in case) from “your chosen” product to another? Is there a way to dump the information from the database in some text-format (sql, xml, csv). Without such a feature it is nearly impossible to migrate to a new/other product (just in case).

• Which metadata standards are supported. Are the specification of the http://www.metadataworkinggroup.com/ implemented?

• Metadata are a mess. Just a small example: The rating with stars (*) is handled differently by different companies. Or the color-labels (green, blue, etc.). These are just text-strings. So if you use a program with a German Interface, the program would expect “grün” or “gruen” and therefor will not show the right color. Or another stupid example: normally if there is no label in the metadata than there is no label field. The “leading” industry standard for raw converters “Capture One” just puts in the string/color “none” to show that there is no label.
  So being compliant to the standard of the metadataworkinggroup is not a bad idea.

• Handling of sidecar files. Can the system be adjusted to honor PWPs *.wfl files?

• What kind of files do you have and which of these are supported?

• How can I “plugin” different applications? Can I use different photo-editors, raw-converters, text-editors, … with this system or am I forced to a specific raw-converter (i.e. in Lightroom)

Unnecessary to mention that a "leasing-model" or a "pay-per-month" licence is not a good idea for using such a tool.

There are quite a lot of aspects to consider. To my opinion there no “global” solution, but here are some decent solutions. Since your mileage is different the solutions are different.