[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