Organizing photos

[stan]

Hi

I am looking for an EASY way to organize my digital and other photos. I would like to make folders by surnames, then first names. The reason is I do geneology and have many photos of family members, and would like to be able to sort them by surnames and put them in one place. Also would like to put info attached to each photo as manes dates and locations. Many ,Many thanks in advance.

Stan

[Mike Buckley]

Your situation is a good example of a reason to use software that includes a catalog database. That's because it's not always clear which folder photos of Alice Smith are stored in when she marries and changes her last name. It also becomes an issue of not knowing whether a photo that includes Alice and her brother-in-law is stored in a folder representing her side of the family or her relative's side.

If you use a catalog database, you can assign keywords that indicate the person's name. Doing so allows you to search on that name and find all photos of the person regardless of the folders they are stored in.

Advanced software will allow you to assign synonyms to each keyword. As an example, if Alice Smith marries and becomes Alice Brown, if synonyms are used you'll find all photos of Alice whether you conduct a search of Smith or Brown. Advanced software will also allow you to designate relationships between keywords, such as indicating that Alice is the middle sister of Mary, that Mary is the youngest sister of Jane and Mary and that Jane is the older sister of Mary and Alice. Even more advanced software will designate which person in the image is Alice, which person is Mary and which person is Jane.

I use IDimager Systems' Photo Supreme and it does all of that even though I don't use most of the advanced capabilities that I explained above.

By the way, once you decide to use a catalog database, you will surely rethink your system of folders to at least confirm all previous decisions if not change them.

[NorthernFocus]

Lightroom or ID Imager per Mike's recommendation. Most people talk about LR as an editor but it is, first and foremost, a catalog program. Anything that will allow you to assign keywords is the trick. As Mike points out you will run across an amazing number of photos that fit multiple catagories.

[rpcrowe]

I use Millennia Legacy 7.5 as my genealogy program. I can attach images to any person I have listed. I also store my images in a file that I named Genealogy in the My Pictures Library on my hard drive. Within the file, I have the images identified by last name, first name and middle initial, I also include the DOB in this format yyyy.mm.dd (because there are a lot of people in my ancestry with identical names. I then number each persons images with a three digit number which identifies the individual image for that person. It is quite easy to find an image that way for reproduction. Of course, I also have the images linked to the person within my Legacy files.

I like Legacy because there is no limit to the number of images or the information I can record for each person. I can then easily print out or email all the information in the Legacy file by converting the Legacy into into a PDF which the program does for me automatically...

[Richard Lundberg]

What does Photo Supreme do that Lightroom doesn't? Why would you buy Photo Supreme for 80 dollars when it doesn't do editing, I got LR for 80 bucks. Photo Supreme can call editors, suppose you bought Iridient Developer to use with it, then you'd have 155 dollars in it, when you could get LR for 100 without half trying.

[Mike Buckley]

What does Photo Supreme do that Lightroom doesn't?

I actually don't know Lightroom's complete cataloging capabilities but its reputation in that area doesn't come close to Photo Supreme's reputation. It is regularly reported in the Photo Supreme user's forum that Lightroom's search and filtering capabilities are comparatively weak. Supreme does "versioning" and is marketed as currently the only software in its product category that provides the use of multiple tabs (custom collections of photos stored in each tab for quicker browsing with complete filtering, dynamic searching and forward and backward capabilities within each tab). I don't think Lightroom has many if any of the capabilities mentioned in the third paragraph of my previous post. It's easy to customize information displayed on the thumbnail, to customize the type of information stored in metadata fields and for those who like using and writing scripts, to do so. Using scripts written by others is really simple. The program includes face detection (not face recognition) and tagging areas within the image (indicating which people are Alice, Ted and Frank or the names of various mountain peaks in a landscape). Almost all if not all of the cataloging capabilities including the use of scripts can be done as a batch process while images are imported into the catalog. All of the cataloging capabilities (and image-editing capabilities; see below) can be used on a computer that doesn't have access to the physical image files, such as when using a laptop while traveling. One of its versions allows multiple people to use the catalog simultaneously. The developer daily participates in the product's online forum and regularly adds capabilities to the product within weeks of seeing requests for them. As an example, the latest version was officially launched about a month ago and it has already been updated two or three times. That typically happens throughout most of the life of a product version.

I do know that a lot of people who use Photo Supreme for cataloging purposes also use Lightroom for image editing, so they have reasons for doing so.

Why would you buy Photo Supreme for 80 dollars when it doesn't do editing

Though it has basic image-editing capabilities, they aren't its primary strength by design and its reputation in that area doesn't stand up to Lightroom's reputation. Those capabilities aren't even mentioned on the product's home page. They're included in Photo Supreme only to meet the needs of users who want to use only one software program for editing both image data and metadata and who don't have heavy-duty requirements regarding image editing. As an example, I only use them to batch create JPEGs from RAW files, usually JPEGs that are downsized and sharpened for use on the Internet.

As for the cost, the developer regularly runs sales on the single-user version and its policy regarding the cost of upgrades is liberal. As an example, if you license a version within three months of an upgrade being released, the upgrade is free. That period prior to the release of the latest version (V3) was extended to 4 1/2 months. If I remember correctly, one sale made it possible to license V2 at a discount of about 20% and to be guaranteed a free license to V3 upon its release, which I think happened about six months later. When you license the single-user version, you can install it on as many computers as you want so long as you are the only person using those installations.

[davidedric]

As a Lightroom user, I'm pretty sure that it does not have the advanced tagging that Mike describes in Photo Supreme. Lightroom's digital asset management is so well integrated into the workflow that I can't think I would want to use another DAM product and then edit in Lightroom. Having said that, I find Lightroom entirely sufficient for my needs, but if I did need Photo Supreme I am pretty sure I would pair it with Photoshop.

Dave

[tao2]

Hi Stan,

I am looking for an EASY way to organize my digital and other photos

Picasa

Wiki link

https://startpage.com/do/search?cmd=...ountryUK&abp=1

Read the FAQ thoroughly. It's simple and intuitive tae use. Oh and it's free...

[stan]

I want to thank you all for the info. Now to decide which one is the one best for my purpose.
Thanks
Stan

[Nicks Pics]

Do you have a windows computer? You can do everything you described in windows photo viewer, the default program that opens photos when you plug your USB in, Or put in your SD card. It comes on every windows computer, I think. You can organize photos by folders, and sub-folders, and name the folders, and ad tags. Scroll through your images, CTRL+click images, Or use CTRL+shift+click to select multiple ones in a row, and then add a tag to all you selected at once. If you have a Mac computer, there is likely a similar program already installed. And you don't have to but anything.