Switch to full style
Discuss photography techniques, equipment, etc. here.
Post a reply

management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 10:18 am

I have not seen this topic covered, or I missed it somehow. If so sorry.

How have you been managing all of your digital photos. I have tried to edit the EXIF data and add the keywords that I want. But I have not found a good program to search on the keywords. For example, I would add the keywords 'Tom' 'Jim' & 'Cat' when all three were in a photo. But if I tried to search for Tom, Jim Cat, the software would find any photo with any of the keywords in.

I ended up just gettin frustrated and would skip the EXIF data and just save my photos in a folder for each year with subfolders for each month. in hopes that my memory would work to find the photos again. Then every year burn them to a dvd for safekeeping, besides with my normal backups

So, does anyone have an ideal system?

Thanks

Re: management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:11 pm

Adobe Lightroom works great but it's not cheap and has quite a learning curve.

Doug

Re: management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:15 pm

Lightroom is so worth the cost. :D

Re: management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:17 pm

I use photoshop elements organizer for this purpose.

Cathy

Re: management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:29 pm

A google search will turn up a few free or almost free choices but I can't recommend any -- might have missed one however. But I'll second the PhotoShop Elements Organizer. You get Elements as an editor and organizer comes bundled with it. Even better is the bundle with Premier Elements -- all three for ~50% of the cost of Lightroom. Yes, there are reasons to Lightroom despite the cost, but I'm happy with that combination.
Dick

Re: management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:17 pm

Try ACDSee Photo Manager

Jean-Paul

Re: management

Fri Feb 10, 2012 5:12 pm

You might want to pick up a copy of "The DAM Book" (Digital Asset Management
http://www.amazon.com/DAM-Book-Digital- ... 0596523572 ) - there are a lot of things to consider before you pick a scheme since once you go in a particular direction, it is very difficult to change to a different one later. Personally, I liked IMatch and the features it had. http://www.photools.com/ - if you search the net, you will find a number of tutorials from folks using it. That said, no two people have quite the same set of requirements on what they want to do when they "manage" their digital media. Do a bunch of searching are reading first - you will find a number of things pop up that are of the type "hey, I hadn't thought of that". The first thing I do when I bring images in from the camera is rename them all based on the EXIF time/date stamp and which camera it was (mine, wife, daughter etc). Then save the images in a folder for each month under one for the year.

mikey

Re: management

Sat Feb 11, 2012 2:07 pm

I would second iMatch. I have used it for ten years. It started with 30 kids on a swim team and how to track them. iMatch is quite powerful and the developer is responsive to adding new features.

-Vernon

Re: management

Sun Feb 12, 2012 6:39 pm

Thanks for your input. The IMach program does look good. I'll take a look at the trial version to see how well it works for me.

Re: management

Tue Feb 28, 2012 9:27 pm

I just wanted to add here, that before I had Lightroom, I was never, ever able to organize my photos. I have since got everything organized, tagged with keywords, and love the program for for editing and use it for printing also. Yes, it is not free, but if you are a photographer, and take literally thousands of photos in a year, it really is worth it.

Best of luck, whatever your final choice,
Maggie

Re: management

Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:46 am

If anyone is in the market, Amazon's deal of the day is Lightroom 3 for $89.99.

Kathy

Re: management

Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:04 am

Oh oh - I was going to order some stuff from Amazon today - that may have pushed me over the edge on Lightroom (many folks - especially family will tell you I went "over the edge" quite a while ago :twisted: )

mikey

Re: management

Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:18 am

Lightroom 3 is very tempting right now because of the reduced pricing, but you might want to hold off because I believe Lightroom 4 will be out in March.

Doug

Re: management

Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:31 am

From what I've seen of Lightroom 4, it has some improvements over Lightroom 3 but the big improvement in Lightroom was from version 2 to version 3. For me if I was considering version 3 for ninety bucks or version 4 for 300 bucks, no brainer. I would jump all over version 3.

Bart

Re: management

Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:33 am

Sigh - isn't anything simple any more ? :evil: Douglas does appear to have a valid point - here is a link to some Lightroom 4 BETA info so it is close to a release
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

Seeing Bart's comment, maybe I'll just tell my wife to look out the window at the first robin of spring and quickly add it to my order :-)

mikey
Post a reply