Photo sorting software

[decaf4me Profile Private message]

Does anyone know of any free photo management software that allows you to look at photos thumbnails in a folder and drag/drop them into an order which can then be imported to Proshow? I don't want to buy Lightroom for just that one purpose, but I am frequently using 100+ photos that I want to visually rearrange before bringing into a slideshow.

The Wizard is ok for smaller numbers of photos. But the window is small, so you don't have enouch space to manipulate larger numbers of photos. I would like to be able to utilize the whole screen, changing the size of my thumbnails so I can see more photos at one time. Photoshop and other software have photo tagging, but I'd rather sort visually within my folder. I have Googled for freeware, but it's hard to find this exact feature described and I don't want to take the time to download and fumble through each one to evaluate. What are all of you using to sort your photos specifically for slideshows?

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

I don't think you will find that feature short of something that allows you to rename them in your sorted order so they get read that way. I think Proshow uses standard calls to read the directory and as such, would not see your order that you set up in some other app unless it renamed them to support the new order. Just my $0.02

mikey (I rename all my images when I import them by date/time/camera so they always sort by time shot).

[decaf4me Profile Private message]

I don't think you will find that feature short of something that allows you to rename them in your sorted order so they get read that way. I think Proshow uses standard calls to read the directory and as such, would not see your order that you set up in some other app unless it renamed them to support the new order.)

The Wizard allows me to select all the photos in my directory and rearrange visually, but I can't see enough on the screen at one time to efficiently resort. I don't want to rename the photos...they come from other people so sometimes I need to refer to them by their original names when discussing them. Tagging them is the best I can do right now.

[dsprincis Profile Private message]

I've got a suggestion that I use when sorting photos of the same event from several cameras and I want to keep the original file name: I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager which lets you "precede the existing file name" with a new name. For instance P3090106 could now become 001-P3090106.
The Picture Manager is bundled with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).
Darlene

[decaf4me Profile Private message]

Thanks, Darlene. I'll check that out

[juicedownload Profile Private messageWebsite]

IrfanView has a visual image sorter (drag & drop), and then you can rename your images in that order.
Similar to Darlene's suggestion of The Picture Manager it can add a prefix to your image name.
Then all your images are in order, and you can import them into the wizard.

Tim

[decaf4me Profile Private message]

THANKS, TIM!
Irfanview has exactly what I need. I can change the size of thumbnails, which allows me to see a boatload of photos at one time. This allows me to shuffle & re-order lots of photos as if the photos are spread out on my table. I can create a 'show order' with multiple landscape or portrait photos together so it will be easier to select them as layers for particular slide styles. And the batch renaming allows me to keep the customers' file names while inserting sequential numbers in front of them for the Windows directory sort (to keep them in the order I made in Irfanview.) For someone who deals with multiple CDs of customer photos for one slideshow, this is a great workflow tool!~Tina

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Which gets back to my original comment about not being able to do it without renaming the files in the sorted order Irfanview is one of my favorite utilities (I have even donated to his cause) along with the free Imgburn.

mikey

[rickinsavh Profile Private message]

Try FastStone image viewer. It's free, you can view your photos as thumbnails, several different sizes. You can drag & drop your thumbnails in any custom order & when you select all of your thumbnails & drag & drop them into Prowshow they import in the custom order.