MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Hi
Just reinstalled a replacement hard drive after my photo archive one died (all backed up though so no worries).
I'm fed up of searching through a million folders for stuff can anyone recomend a good photo archive program that does the following:
1. Does not alter or touch the files
2. Can have searchable keyword tags applied to pics.
3. Tags can be applied to many images at the same time to speed up archiving (i.e. all pics in a folder get "Dublin Holiday 2006" rather than having to do each image one at a time).
4. Has a field that records where the image is currently so I can get to it quick.
5. Stores a small thumbnail of the image.
6. can handle .jpg .raw .tiff .png .gif and .bmp at least.
A lot of the commercial (kodak, HP) etc ones mess around with the original files and I don't like that.
I think this list is a pretty normal spec and I can't believe someone out there hasn't made a little utilty to do this.
So any suggestions would be welcome,
Badger
Photoshop Elements - 99% sure it does all that
Can't help you with the archiving software but i just upload to Flickr anything that i want to permanently keep. can be taged, searched etc
I thought Elements was just a slimmed down version of photoshop CS3 (which I have).
Didn't know it also worked as an archival tool - OK I'll have a look see.
Any other ideas?
Thanks
dobo - yeah I've got a flickr account but some of the work images aren't suitable for public consumption (Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology, plane crash sites, degradation profiles of human remains etc).
Thanks
It is possible to have privacy settings applied to Flickr images up to the point where only you can see them. But perhaps you don't wish them to even be hosted in the public domain for security purposes etc which is understandable.
It goes well beyond what you are after but have you looked at Adobe Lightroom? It's a photographers wet dream as far as software goes. Apple do Aperture which is similar (OS X Only though I think).
[url= http://www.snapfiles.com/get/photobackuple.html ]Photobackup LE[/url]
I had exactly the same set of requirements, and a few more.
They have made the utility..
Not too sure how much this helps but i've gone from photoshop and olympus master organiser/editor on a £400 pound Dell laptop to Aperture 2.0 on a macbook pro. I used iPhoto for 12 months on the apple because that was the bundled software and you would maybe get away with that alone, it's very good. But for excellent organisation and the tagging/search/rating facilities Aperture is much better.
Also I like the fact that the editing of photos is non destructive, your masters are never touched.
Re back up you've got the time machine option which backs up your entire laptop to an external drive(time machine) Aperture also gives you an option to create a 'vault' on an external drive that duplicates your entire library (masters/versions/thumbnails)
Of course this all rides on you using apple or OS-X..
Just bringing this back to life as I was interested and found another alternative...
Windows Vista has 'Windows Photo Gallery' which actually looks pretty good - shame It's been there over a year wthout me noticing it
I use Picasa too. Has better (free) online galleries than flickr which is the main reason I use it but does all the other stuff.
Microsoft Expression Media (it used to be called iView Media Pro made by a small company in Wandworth who then got bought out and went to Redmond). Well worth the money especially if you are dealing with lots of pictures.
Something on[url= http://www.photo-freeware.net/ ]here[/url]might fit the bill or Adobe Lightroom pretty much does everything you will need