Ask Slashdot: Best Software For Image Organization?

Wycliffe writes Like many people, I am starting to get a huge collection of digital photos from family vacations, etc. I am looking for some software that allows me to rate/tag my own photos in a quick way. I really don't want to spend the time tagging a bunch of photos and then be locked into a single piece of software, so what is the best software to help organize and tag photos so that I can quickly find highlights without being locked into that software for life? I would prefer open source to prevent lock-in and also prefer Linux but could do Windows if necessary.

Comments

Google Picasa 3

[sundru]

Google Picasa 3 , I find this has a little bit of everything i need except duplicate file management.

Software doesn't really matter

[Zocalo]

Unless you have some really workflow/hardware your source images are going to be in either JPEG, your camera's proprietary raw format, or both. JPEG supports a standard method of tagging via EXIF directly in the image that includes a "Rating" tag that any tool is going to use. If you are tagging raw files then make sure that you write out the tagging information into .XMP "Sidecar" files. This is an Adobe defined "standard" based around XML files, but it's extremely portable and just about any image editor/tagger that supports .XMP files will follow the core Adobe standard tags, including the ones for rating images, and since it's XML you'll always have access to the tag data if the worst should happen and to roll your own tools if need be. As long as you choose software that supports one or both of those formats, then you'll be fine and about as futureproof as it's possible to be.

Cataloging write-only archives

[namgge]

Based on my experience as an executor, you should pick the best one or two photos from each significant occasion, record the date, location and the people (forename and surname) it shows in a plain text file and trash the rest. Fortunately chronological order is both the easiest and best way of organising such a collection. Don't bother keeping pictures that don't have clearly recognisable people in them because it's only these that will be of any interest in future.

Then, when you die your kids will inherit a nice collection of ca 100 family photos complete with enough information to make them interesting and give them a context.

Namgge

Re:Simplest is best

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this vote for using the file system to organise your images. This post may give me away to some of my friends, but I create folders using this template:

[YYYY-MM-DD] Descriptive Name of Trip or Event

This allows me to have multiple groups of images on a given day, say a lunchtime function and a dinner party.

For groups that span multiple days I do this:

[YYYY-MM-XX] Descriptive Name of Multi-Day Event

If I go on a big trip then what I do is create sub folders with the date (using the same format) for each event or grouping or experience that I captured.

If I have a folder of photos and want to make a small sub-selection. I make a folder called "pick" and put them in there. I may also do a low-res copy of that folder (and call it "web pick") and then I can email them easily to friends. I don't bother with links or any other garbage, 50-500MB of duplication doesn't matter a damn, and the backup software has de-duplication so doesn't care either.

Finally, I've done this for almost 15 years and it's basically worked perfectly for me and I have a fantastic collection of photos going all the way back.

Sorry, this the actual finally. Be very wary of *any* automated system based on a database or tagging system. The problem is that while initially they may seem awesome and great time savers, you will ultimately want to group [at least some of] the photos based on social, aesthetic and political assessments, and no automatic system can ever handle that.

Print them all

[julian67]

Print them all and put them in labelled shoeboxes.

digiKam

[Demonoid-Penguin]

digiKam, free, runs on the major platforms, has the feature you've asked for and all the features you haven't asked for but, based on my experience, you will need.

Quoting from:-

A digiKam Overview

digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos are organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by folder layout or by custom collections.

Tired of the folder constraints? Don’t worry, digiKam also provides tagging. You tag your images which can be spread out across multiple folders, and digiKam provides fast and intuitive ways to browse these tagged images. You can also add comments to your images. digiKam makes use of a fast and robust database to store these meta-informations which makes adding and editing of comments and tags very reliable.

digiKam makes use of KIPI plugins for lots of added functionalities. KIPI (KDE Image Plugin Interface) is an initiative to create a common plugin infrastructure for digiKam, KPhotoAlbum, and GwenView. Its aim is to allow development of image plugins which can be shared among KDE graphical applications.

An easy-to-use interface is provided that enables you to connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images. Basic auto-transformations can be deployed on the fly during image downloading.

Another tool, which most artists and photographers will be familiar with, is a Light Table. This tool assists artists and photographers with reviewing their work ensuring the highest quality only. A classical light table will show the artist the place on the images to touch up. Well in digiKam, the light table function provides the user a similar experience. You can import a photo, drag it onto the light table, and touch up only the areas that need it.

Note: it's not very stable if you insist on running it on Windoof. Very reliable on Linux, I haven't tried with OSX.

Features

Re:Keep It Simple

[ubrgeek]

But those are all from your trip to Disney in China, right?

Re:Image Organization

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP asked for a software solution, and your response is that he/she needs to become a database and Python programmer. How clueless can you be?