[Charlotte]

Does anyone know of a cataloguing software that will sort photo's into multiple categories? E.g. I want a particular photo of my daughter to be filed into 3 different categories: 'Naomi', 'Holiday' + 'Portraits'. Get the idea? I want to keep my original photo's in one place, but also be able to categorise each photo into multiple projects, without having to copy them all over the place. At the moment, I have several copies of photo's in different folders, and when you're working with RAW files, that's a lot of duplicates taking up extra space. Also, I sometimes lose the exif data along the way.

Can anyone help?

[jockwav]

Have a look at this,i think i am going to try it.
Welcome to Preclick - Home of the free photo software

[sejanus]

If you're using an Apple you could do it with 'aliases', which Linux and Unix types will recognise as links. Store the pictures in one directory, say, in date order, then create aliases in other directories, which point to the picture.

So, to take your example: You might call the original '20060621-Naomi in Spain' and store it in your main picture directory. Then you would make an alias and store that in your family directory and so on for as many categories as you wish. The aliases can have the same name as the original or different names - it's up to you.

The aliases take up zero space on your drive (although, if you do 'Get Info', the computer incorrectly reports them as taking 64KB of space - that seems to be a 'feature' of the Finder) and have the advantage that you can make indefinite numbers of the things.

Thanks to the wonders of the Aqua interface, you can display your pictures in the finder, if you employ the 'colum' view. If you don't mind a little command line hacking, you can do all sorts of clever listings with them, using the 'find' and 'sort' commands. Much of this applies to Linux as well, by the way.

[danpen]

Have a look at Picasa from Google, I recently installed it for my mum, it's free but has a nice interface and I believe you can use keywords to do what you describe. Although I've not used it so you'd have to try it out to be sure.

Photoshop Essentials has a reasonably good photo organiser and you get a good editor too, it can definitely do what you ask and a whole lot more.

I use iview Mediapro but it's a little on the expensive side, don't know your budget but you'd have to really want the advanced features to make it worthwhile.

iMatch was pretty popular a while back and is still good for a power user but the interface is a little dated and the developer (a one man band) seems to be struggling to get a major update out.

There's alway ACDsee but I've tried that a few times with different releases and always found it rather buggy and crash prone.

Most of those have free trials to download so why not have a look and see what you think.

[stepheno]

Have to agree with Dan. If that's what you want to do then Picasa is good and it's free.

[Charlotte]

Thanks for your responses everyone

Jockwav, I followed that link; am not keen to run the download, instead of save to disk, like it wants you to. One of the reviews listed a few 'cons': * Direct camera acquisition not implemented, * Can't view EXIF information, * No zoom. So 'nah' to that one, thanks anyway.

sejanus, many thanks for your detailed 'how to', but I'm not on Apple. However, your description may be of use to ppl who are Apple users

danpen + stepheno, funny you should mention Picasa, because I just installed it right before logging on here It came with an external drive I got for Xmas Been having a quick look at it, and it uses the 'tag' system that other cataloguing prog's use. I've never bothered tagging photo's before (a tedious-looking process), but looks as though it's the only way to sort photo's into multiple categories.

Another option is to use a portfolio prog, like MS Works Portfolio or KlipFolio, which I've just remembered I have, and which I'll investigate to see if they'd be any good for my objective.

The best bet sounds like Photoshop Essentials, as you sound very confident, danpen, that it will catalogue photo's into multiple categories. Is this using the tagging system, though? Because if it is, I have a dozen prog's that will do that.

Well I hope other members will also benefit from the info contained in this thread, as I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to organise my photo's in this way. So thanks for your input, and anyone else who has information or ideas on cataloguing photo's is very welcome to add them in.

Meantime, danpen please could you confirm the method used by PS Essentials which you mentioned? Many thanks.

[fionaB]

organise? photos? ummmmmmmmm.lol i wish i could. i keep all my photos from each shoot in a folder which is named after the location and the date.... and thats it! lolol

Fi

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted by fionaB

organise? photos? ummmmmmmmm.lol i wish i could. i keep all my photos from each shoot in a folder which is named after the location and the date.... and thats it! lolol

Fi

Me too, Fiona (except my folders are just numbered ) that's why I'm looking for a "smart" programme

[danpen]

You sound like you have some very specific requirements why don't you just download a few apps and try them. I certainly wouldn't rely on things you've read on the internet 'cause we all talk cr@p and it's only when you've really tried something that you'll know if it suits you or not.

Elements will definitely allow you to categorise your photos in different ways, add images to multiple categories and then find them based on boolean searches of those categories. I don't have a clue what you mean by "Is this using the tagging system, though? Because if it is, I have a dozen prog's that will do that." do you expect the software to magically identify what's in your pictures without you tagging them? If so, good luck, and let me know which program you use, I'd love a copy.

I'd advise you to think carefully about anything you use to ensure that when the company that makes it decides to support it no longer you don't loose all that work in cataloging, mediapro and imatch are capable of writing "tags" into the iptc keywords field and so is elements (with some limitations) so that another application could use them later if required.

To go back to my original point if you know what you're looking for, try some demos, all I mentioned above plus things like Corel Snapfire, Canto Cumulus, Extensis Portfolio, IDImager all have free trials and only you can say if they have the features you're looking for.

I've tried most of these and Mediapro covers most of what I want but still requires you to assign keywords to images in order to search by those attributes later. It takes about 5-10 minutes per shoot (of maybe 50 images) to allocate location and primary subject, hardly onerous.

I catalogued about 6000 images when I first started using it took an hour a night for about a week. They automatically get the date from the EXIF and that makes life a whole lot easier.

I have no duplicates of any image but have anything between 2 (normal) to 5 (very unusual) keywords assigned to any image.

cheers

Dan

[orangepeel]

well u have the same cam as me so I assume you also have picture project.

Why not use that? Set the keywords on the images then use the search to recall them again.

Be aware, any of the programs you use will require a significant investment of time & effort updating and maintaining the keywords. What is worse is that each system is completly incompatible with any other.

My advice would be to use the OS to categorise you images rather than any image software. At least that system is capable of moving from one PC to another without the pain of trying to work out how to backup application databases.
This would involve using sensible directory names and file names. Sensible as in the file/folder names contain the keywords.

[Charlotte]

Thanks for your reply Dan. I'm just looking for advice + to draw from other members' experience + will make my own choice at the end of it all - without having to try out a multitude of prog's for myself, which is what I'm trying to avoid having to spend time doing + why I asked my question in the forum I just wanted to find out if any other members had come across an exceptional cataloguing prog. No, thankfully, not everyone on the web talks cr@p Dan

And yes, I would like a prog to magically know what's in my pic's + sort them accordingly (who wouldn't) but failing which, what I'm realistically after is something along the lines of a Windows Explorer interface but where I can choose to see (a) a tree of all photo's (in their relevant folders), then to be able to switch to a view which (b) lists each category, e.g. 'Portraits' showing all photo's therein, then switch to a different view (c) which would show me a particular photo showing all the categories in which I have placed it. In a nutshell, that's what I'm after, i.e. different views with different sets of information relating to my images, + if I can't have all that, then I see no point in spending hour upon hour (albeit over a period of time) cataloguing my photo's. I would then much rather just continue to sort them manually using Windows Explorer. Having said all that, I just had a thought - strange though it may sound, Excel might do the job I'm after, so I might look into that.

Good point about there being no universal tagging system which all cataloguing prog's can recognise + use - this answers one of my questions. Thanks for your helpful list of suggested prog's Dan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks orangepeel, I think you're right, I'll just stick to the 'method' I've used all along, i.e. sort them manually via Windows Explorer

[danpen]

That's another of the reasons why I use Mediapro, it rights IPTC keywords which are supported by most of the applications into the files on demand. That enables you to move to another application with the images already keyworded. I use an image uploader to add copyright and author info, bridge to do an inital rating and bulk keywording, then import into mediapro with all that info attached.

Using just the OS is fine but unless you have multiple copies or hard to maintain links you'll never have the flexibility to do what you describe and have images in multiple categories.

Have a look at The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers there's an interesting forum on there where they discuss nothing but this topic.

cheers

Dan

[Charlotte]

Thanks for the link Dan - I downloaded a sample chapter of The DAM Book some time ago, and have been meaning to look for the book, as it seems very good. I shall certainly go + have a look at the forum

[Dabhand16]

I've got a couple of album apps, Corel Photo Album 6 and Adobe Photoshop Album. I think they were freebies with other programs. Niether will allow 'explorer' type browsing within the app, but they do both work on the 'tagging' system. They both store images in one place, and you can search on keywords to locate specific groups. I did try to use them, as like you, I think the central image store with a search facility must be the best way to store pictures, but I found it a real pain to do the tagging. After trying for a while, I'm now not sure that I would want to spend the time to tag or keyword every image.

A couple of things strike me. This site has a keyword system that presumably works from a central database, that is all of our images, and perhaps the software that drives this part of the site can be used independantly of a web-site? Also PS has a keyword facility - file info - that enables keywords. the downside being, of course that you have to open the image in PS to do it. The plus side is if you decide to only tag/keyword your best efforts, then this will probably not be so much if a chore.

Like Fiona, I've stayed with the windows folder system with names and dates. I do also use folders to copy selected images into, so I do have some related images in one place. However, this is also not the answer. Obvioulsy, the more images you deal with, the more important this issue is, so maybe the answer lies with the way that the pros and picture libraries manage images. My guess is that the pros will only be storing a very small percentage of what they shoot, so doing the keyword admin is not such a big deal, and the libraries probably use the indexing that is already done by the people submitting the images.

So maybe that is the answer. A two tier system where you keep the bulk of your stuff by folder name/date, and the ones that you will want to revisit you can keyword for future reference.

In the meantime, if you find another way PLEASE let us know, and if we get there first, we promise to tell you.

[stepheno]

An interesting thread and I reckon I have been down just about every route available. I used to be an avid tagger and then thought to myself "this is just plain daft". As 'Peel said earlier I found I spent more time tagging than shooting and editing so I just don't bother now.

I have a filing system which works for me and renaming is done in a jiffy.

[RichardLDawson]

Even though the question was about software this seems to be at least partly about workflow. Here's mine.

I've only been shooting for about a year and half, but I have been a software beta tester and and database admin for many years. I've learned that using software to do things like cataloging is great until that one time that things don't go right.

For photos I have developed a simple system of organization like what Fiona has.
I have a set of folders...

Animals
Events
New Stuff
People
Places
Things

I have 'People' further seperated into 'Female', 'Group' and 'Male'.

I have the camera dump pictures into a folder under 'New Stuff' with a date as the name. I'm using the Canon Digital Photo Pro software to do that part. I shoot all RAW so this works great for that part. At this point I decide what shots I want to continue processing and what ones I don't. Using DPP I make any adjustments I want to for WB, sharpness, etc. These are saved to 16 bit TIF. These files are huge, usually 48 MB or so. I don't always need that much detail, but I've found it to be a time saver if I already have them in that format when I do any hand editing. Having the extra information available in the image makes a world of difference in what you can do in the editing software.

At this point if the images are all reasonable I process them through Photoshop converting to JPEG and saving them. at about 350 dpi. I don't know what you folks in Europe use to measure resolution. Can anyone clue me in here?

If I intend to upload particular images to the web I process them again using DPP (It has a batch mode) to lower the resolution and shrink the image size to 600 x 400 and 133 dpi.

At each step in the process I save the files into a new sub-folder. So under a particular Category such as 'Places' I might have something like the following;

Places
\2006-10-14 Chimeny Rock, NC
\DxO
\JPEG
\RAW
\TIF
\Web

Now, I know that this will take a large amount of disk space. The above folder set is for about 165 original shots. With all of the intermediate steps it fills about 3.9 GB of disk space.
I agree completely about the amount of disk space it takes. This system works for me. Remember, I have worked with computers for years and have a bunch of disk storage already. Disk space is VERY cheap compared to my time. I remember when a 5 MB hard drive was $10,000.

For those that have a home network you can get NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives for extremely reasonable rates. If you don't have a network, USB and Firewire drives are just about as inexpensive.

Also, I HIGHLY recommend a DVD burner for your backups. If you don't backup those images to a seperate disk you are just begging for trouble.

I have tried to keep this at a very high level for simplicity. I hope it will help someone.


Thank you for your patience.
Richard

[danpen]

I used to use a folder structure and found it hard to find things and a pain to maintain, keeping duplicate copies in order that an image might be in more than one category was a nightmare and keeping links up to date instead added a management overhead I didn't want.

I use Downloader Pro to move all my images from cards to disk (creates date named folder structure and time based file names automatically), it also adds Copyright info etc. to the IPTC fields. Once I've done the inital cull and star rating (with Bridge)
I tag everything with the location, that's usually no more than one or two locations per shoot so it's just a case of highlighting however many files and each location's done in one operation. I then look at everything with more than one star and do any further tagging.

I did get in a pickle when I was trying to tag every individual person, type of flower, bird etc so now I have some generalised tags that'll get me mostly there eg -

The Kids
Dan's Family
Claire's Family
Friends
Garden Birds
Birds of Prey
Spiders
Butterflies
etc.

With these, location and the date (automatically from the EXIF) I can find anything from my 9000 photographs really quickly I have no duplicates (apart from backups) and each image can be in any number of places. I have all of this metadata stored in the iView Database (which can be read without iView) and stored as IPTC fields in the images so even if I change Software I'll never have to recatalogue anything.

If I'm away for the weekend I'll often come back with 1000 images to cull and catalogue, generally takes about 30 minutes, most of that time is spent looking at the images which I'd be doing anyway.

cheers

Dan

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted by RichardLDawson

Even though the question was about software this seems to be at least partly about workflow. Here's mine .... Richard

Thanks for taking the time with that post, Richard, it is useful to know others' workflow, to get ideas on how we may change our own for a more expedient process.

Right, !!!! NEWS FLASH !!!! I just read a review in my regular photo mag (Digital Camera Magazine) on Windows Vista, + it seems that this Windows upgrade is very very photographer friendly. It will allow tagging, searching etc. right there in Windows itself (including a Photo Gallery + basic image editing) without the need for third party software to organise photo's.

The review also says: "Usefully, you can add multiple tags to a single image as well as a single tag across several photos. Tags, as well as folders, are organised in hierarchical tree structures in Windows Photo Gallery, making both easy to search through. A star rating system is also available, as well as date taken information."

So there you have it, soon to be released at the end of this month @ £100 for the upgrade version of Home Edition.

Sounds exactly right for me

In the meantime, I figured out how to say in words what I had in my head that I want from a cataloguing prog, + in 3 words what I'd like is DRAG + DROP. I want to create categories (alias 'tags' or 'keywords') in the form of folders, and drop photo's in one or more folders which are labelled with categories of my choice. Surely it would be possible to write a programme that could do this?? Any programmers out there who can answer that?

To clarify: Although the folder system within Windows Vista would obviously allow drag + drop, this would probably still result in multiple copies of photo's in different folders; the obvious answer would be to copy a shortcut over, but would be a problem if you move photo's away from original location.

[Rob Barron]

I have to say I can't see any other way of working than either putting pictures into three folders or using Keywords to draw up pictures into a category (tagging).

How else could you actually do it? I am confused! No way would you want to put them in three different folders as that will eat HD space at an alarming rate as the file would be stored three times. But if you want to be able to pull out a group of pictures intoone place, applying tags or keywords seems the only way to do so.

If I am missing something here, and I very likely am, please tell me as I would be interested if there is an alternative, faster way.

I store into folders under all sorts of categories. Agreed occasionally I have to look in a couple of places to find a certain picture but mostly I find them very quickly.... and I have many thousands of pictures.

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

Hmmm, just glanced through Windows XP magazine, which seems to indicate that it's not going to be a case of simply upgrading to Windows Vista, + that most ppl will have to buy a new PC if they want Vista

I mention this here because I previous commented on an article which highlighted the photographer-friendly features of Vista, but looks like I won't be getting it in the foreseeable

Can anyone clarify the situation?

[Sonsey]

Originally Posted by Charlotte

Can anyone clarify the situation?

If your asking wheather your PC will be able to run Vista then here's the minimum and recommended specs released by Microsoft... both of which look a little basic to me, I think to get Vista running at a decent speed while still allowing other software to run along side you will need to up the recommended specs even more.


Minimum Requirements (Vista-Capable PCs):

* 800 MHz Intel-compatible processor
* 512MB of RAM
* DirectX 9.0-Capable Graphics Processor
* 20GB HD

Recommended Requirements (Premium-Ready PCs):

* 1 GHz Intel-compatible processor
* 1GB RAM
* DirectX 9.0-Capable Graphics Processor, with 128MB graphics memory. (64MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor less than 1,310,720 pixels [no more than 1440x900]; 128MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions from 1,310,720 to 2,304,000 pixels [no more than 1920x1200]; 256MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions higher than 2,304,000 pixels [more than 1920x1200]).
* 40GB HD with at least 15GB "free space"

[Charlotte]

Thanks for that Sonsey Spec's are ok for me, but I need to upgrade my ram from 512MB to 1GB anyway - very sluggish as is. Prolly best to wait a few months before rushing into Vista anyway, let others discover + report bugs etc.

[danpen]

No need to use Vista, I suspect that this:

Microsoft Photo Info

along with the RAW Viewer is most of the functionality that's going to be available in Vista, now available for XP.

cheers

Dan

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted by danpen

No need to use Vista, I suspect that this: Microsoft Photo Info along with the RAW Viewer is most of the functionality that's going to be available in Vista, now available for XP.

Perfect, thanks Dan Gonna give that a go, it sounds like it's exactly what I want And I like that it supports jpeg + NEF, so it can handle all my photo files, + it does batch processing, so you can process groups (shoots) in one easy go I really do appreciate you posting that, Dan. I'll post back a follow-up on actual use, after I've actually used it

Originally Posted by Rob Barron

I have to say I can't see any other way of working than either putting pictures into three folders or using Keywords to draw up pictures into a category (tagging). .........

Rob, I didn't answer this before, because I didn't know how to better explain myself, i.e. what I was after, as nothing like what I was after seemed to exist yet. However, I now have the words that I couldn't express before, + that is "batch processing", which MS Photo Info per Dan's link above has. I had visions of a drag + drop system, where you could drag files into categories - without actually duplicating the file - and then view the sets of file info as previously outlined by me. However, I don't think a programme exists that can do that, although I believe there will be one day. In the interim, MS Photo Info seems to be the closest thing to painless tagging that I've come across to date, so will give it a try + report back.

PS It could be that other prog's do batch processing - I didn't re-read this whole thread, so forgive me if Dan's discovery here, which I think is a revelation already exists in the prog's already mentioned earlier in the thread The main advantage I see with this one is that you can do all tagging + viewing in the familiar interface of Windows Explorer - just the job for me!

PPS Thanks Dan for taking away the one reason I had for wanting to upgrade to Vista + thus saving me lots of money

[danpen]

Originally Posted by Charlotte

However, I now have the words that I couldn't express before, + that is "batch processing", which MS Photo Info per Dan's link above has. I had visions of a drag + drop system, where you could drag files into categories - without actually duplicating the file - and then view the sets of file info as previously outlined by me. However, I don't think a programme exists that can do that, although I believe there will be one day. In the interim, MS Photo Info seems to be the closest thing to painless tagging that I've come across to date, so will give it a try + report back.

Charlotte, glad I could be of assistance and I hope this turns out to be what you want. However it's fair to say that every cataloguing system I've used allows you to drag and drop, either groups of images onto a category or a category onto groups of images or both.

I can't really try the MS product as it doesn't support DNG files which I use but I'd be interested to know whether (and how) it supports search, there's no mention of that on the web page. If you try it let me know.

Not much point tagging if you can't then search by those tags, perhaps it supplements the built in search function.

cheers

Dan