Digital Light & Color

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.

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)

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

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... :-)

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

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.

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!

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!

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...

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.