[HenrikDK]

THis must have been asked many times before, but going back through these posts I couldn't find anything... so forgive me for asking again...

I am getting back into photo beyond casual P&S. I now have a backlog of photos going way back that I would like to get organized, and of course I would like to keep things organized going forward.

I am on windows and was trying out the Windows Photo Gallery last night, and am realizing this will be a TON of work. I certainly don't want to do this and then move on to something better and then loose the work I did.

What do you use to organize your pictures? Any recommendations? I purchased Photoshop Elements 8.0 a while back, but read the organizer was bad, so I never installed it... I seem to recall that it could even recogize faces automatically which seems pretty nifty.

If you can direct me to some links with more information I would appreciate it as well.

[SunRunner]

I would go ahead and install Photoshop Elements and check it out before just deciding to not use it. You may find it to be a workable situation for you. If you don't like it you can always uninstall.

[eddie1960]

I use Lightroom, it's a very effective tool. you can download a trail if you want to try it out (it's also very good for 90% of my post processing), the nice thing about the post is it's no destructive and it's easy to have the raw revert to as shot down the road if you want

[Joyen]

I use FastStone image viewer, it's free of charge and really good i think.

[HenrikDK]

I would go ahead and install Photoshop Elements and check it out before just deciding to not use it. You may find it to be a workable situation for you. If you don't like it you can always uninstall.

Maybe I am wrong, but with soilutions like this it seems to take a while to determine if it works well, and it is hard to evaluate without having loaded a bunch of data (i.e. organized photos)?

Can the metadata (ratings, groups, tags, categories) be transferred between the the various software? If it can, I am much less reluctant to just try something out

[eddie1960]

Meta data files should be with the image. not sure how Elements files them though.

[InlawBiker]

I've heard that Windows 7 does a pretty good job but I never tried it. I really like Picasa for the money (free) although it's somewhat simple, it does the basics very well. Although it can view raw files it doesn't process them, so I'm in the process of evaluating Lightroom 3 now. Luckily I have a friend at Adobe, otherwise it may or may not be worth the price depending on how seriously you're into photography.

[SpecialK]

One thing to get if you don't have it...

Flexible Renamer

I replace "IMGP" with the date in YYMMDD format for a start.
I have a folder for every shoot date with short description, and group them that way. I don't use tags...

[Marc Sabatella]

Step one: develop a good strategy for organizing images.

Armed with that, you can make almost any program work for you. Absent the strategy, no organizing program will do a thing for you.

My advice for developing a good strategy always starts with recommending Peter Krogh's "The DAM Book". It's the definitive reference on the topic. You don't have to do all the stuff he recommends, but you'll get a good idea of what makes sense for you. And then you'll be able to evaluate which programs would fit your needs best.

For me, it's ACDSee Pro 4 that has the best balance of features and usability for the price. Also, in a world in which Lightroom and Aperture are basically the Canon and Nikon of the industry, ACDSee is kind of like the Pentax. But of course, that means Lightroom and Aperture are also worth a serious look. But Aperture is Mac only. ACDSee is essentially PC only; there is a much stripped-down Mac version but I don't think it would make my list to consider.

Other programs I'd consider would include Bibble, and if budget were more important than features, usability, or quality, then you'd to consider Picasa too. I might also give a shot to idimager if I were willing to resign myself to using a different program for processing the photos, but the advantages of having an integrated management/processing solution are pretty enticing, and I can't see myself giving that up at this point.

If I already had Elements, I guess I'd give it a shot, but everything I've read, heard, or seen about it suggests that it would be considerably clumsier than any of the other options I've mentioned.

Metadata, BTW, can indeed be transferred between programs as long as you organize it with that goal in mind. In particular, relying on standard IPTC fields for everything you care about. All the programs I mentioned should be capable of that - either using IPTC directly, or of easily transferring their internal database to and from IPTC. This is the kind of stuff I mean when I speak of having a strategy (file naming is another part of it), and this is the kind of stuff Peter Krogh explains very well.

[HenrikDK]

Marc - thank you so much - very helpful advice.

I am a little reluctant to spend $250 on the Pro 4,so I'll probably get the Peter's book (he most be a fellow Danish American!) and start with what I have.

ACDSee has a photo manager only - any thoughts on that?

I can see the benefits of an inegrated solution, but I am not sure I will be doing a whole lot more than the most basic photoediting for now. so I am thinking I will stick with Elements for that.

[Marc Sabatella]

The Photo Manager product currently lacks some important features with respect to IPTC; between that and the lack of the non-destructive images processing facility, I can't really recommend it.

BTW, it's precisely for "basic photoediting" that non-destructive editing is so powerful - the whole point is to allow you to get more done with less effort. That is, sticking to Elements dooms you to working harder to get less done.

[Just1MoreDave]

This is such an American metaphor, but anyway:

Have you ever had a favorite store, where you could go in and get exactly what you needed? Then the favorite store moves to the mall. Elements is kind of like that. You can still go there and shop, but you have to get past the parts that sell you photo mugs or add music to your slideshow or automatically tag Aunt Mary. It can still work for you but not as smooth as the stand-alone store did.

I like Bridge but the obvious drawback is purchasing CS5 to get it. Bridge makes it very easy to select and sort the images into other groups. I do not like the programs that use catalogs, because I always manage to break the catalog by moving the images in Windows.

I have two complaints: Bridge can work with dual monitors but forgets this setup every time when it's closed. So every session starts with moving windows to the right places. And you can change everything about your image, but you can't modify the lens field of the EXIF. I guess Adobe has never heard of a lens that doesn't report to EXIF.

[SpecialK]

BTW, it's precisely for "basic photoediting" that non-destructive editing is so powerful - the whole point is to allow you to get more done with less effort. That is, sticking to Elements dooms you to working harder to get less done.

Elements is non-destructive. It has an Organizer some people (not me) use.

[Marc Sabatella]

True, it has these features, but I like Dave's description above. Mind you, I haven't actually used it in years, but my impression is virtually everything it can do that Lightroom can also do, it does in a much clunkier way than LR.

[HenrikDK]

You are over my head. All these abbreviations don't help. Non-Destructive? I assume any changes you make to an image will be saved to a new image, not the existing???? Or will some overwrite your existing.

Of course, if you are adding data (IPTC tables) I assume it will HAVE to modify the image file.

Seems like I have some investigation/studing to do...

H