[Pooky125]

So, I've recently run into a problem.

Usually, I keep all of my pictures, in albums, sorted by dates, with the most commonly used ones on my computer hard drive, and then a back up of all of them on an external hard drive. However, recently I ran into a problem looking for a few pictures. I know they're there. I'm just not sure where THERE is.

How do you manage your photos? Do you use software? Pure dumb luck?\

I've tried Photoshop, Lightroom, and Lightzone, and they're all nice programs, don't get me wrong, but there a little more then I need. I have my photo editing programs, I just need something for photo management. Preferably something, that can read jpegs, raw, tiff, and pef files.

Any ideas?

[chrisman]

IMatch is a great piece of software for organising your photos -very flexible and fast. Price is very reasonable too.

photools.com IMatch

[gpaual]

....pooky, organizing photos is like making stew, everyone has a favorite recipe. I would encourage you to sit down and figure out your methodology, then choose your software. ( the reason for that being, thats its easier to Know where you are going, than to guess where you've been ). I currently empty images into a folder designated by month and year where i sort through and edit out what i want to reject via bridge, i then apply some adjustments to what i am going to keep in ACR, following that, i do a save on images that i want to further process in cs3ext'd as jpegs, ( i shoot only in RAW mode ) saving those in the same folder and then import that folder into lightroom.
in my image folder i have a folder called Photo Gallery, where i group images under specific heading e.g. animals/wildlife, architecture/still life etc......these then are also broken down into sub-categories..e.g. animals>birds>squirrels>frogs> etc......i also have folders set up for exporting to pbase, or the forums here, these exports are done out of lightroom which resizes and zips for you. I currently have about 12,000 images on my machine, and regardless of organization, i still get lost in the files, i think it's just innate when you shoot alot.......the reason i do editing before importing to lightroom, is that once in lightroom its kind of a pain to move images around, so i try to do as much as i can prior to the import.....anyway, don't know if this helped any, but good luck, i am sure you find a method as you go.

[Pooky125]

Chris - I'll have to look into IMatch. That isn't one I'm familiar with. Thanks!

gpaual - Yes, yes I think you might be right. I've had a system for a couple of years now, that for the most part worked pretty well, as long as I wasn't looking for something. Once I was though, it all went down the drain. I think I need to reevaluate how I store them, I'm just not sure what the best way to do that would be. For some reason, tagging them all sounds a bit over whelming!

[Pooky125]

Wow, that's quite the book! Bookmarked it for reading on another day. Thanks!

[wheelgate]

I use Picasa, which is free from Google, to manage our photos. It has a simple easy-to-use interface, is upgraded frequently, handles Pentax raw formats as well as the others, and allows several ways of managing, sorting, and even backing-up photos.

[Tom M]

I'm using Aperture. I've imported 25,000 images so far - all categorized, cross-referenced, etc, etc.. It's very, very good!

[bymy141]

I manage my photos in/with Lightroom 1.3, my wife uses Picasa.
The integrated webalbum function of Picasa is very fast and easy to use.

- Bert

[Lowell Goudge]

As you have done, I have all my photo's sorted by date on my disk. This is where all origonals go. Directory structure is by year then month.

Additionally, each event is a separate ubdirectory off the month, and sometimes events are sub-devided. For example, on a recent trip to france, I have 15 subdirectories with the places all separated.

I bought corel photo organizer 6 years ago to look into adding other information as a data base but never got around to it.

I am now considering this again, but adding it specifically into the EXIF data

[Kaimarx]

I've always heard good things about Picasa though i've never used it. Im using Lightroom 1.3 and its pretty good but slow. Capture 4 is probably one of the better ones ive used recently as its much faster and has all the same management tools as Lightroom etc..you can try it for free and decide.

[wheelgate]

I've always heard good things about Picasa though i've never used it. Im using Lightroom 1.3 and its pretty good but slow. Capture 4 is probably one of the better ones ive used recently as its much faster and has all the same management tools as Lightroom etc..you can try it for free and decide.

Who makes Capture 4? If it's NIK software, isn't that for Nikon's only?

[Kaimarx]

Who makes Capture 4? If it's NIK software, isn't that for Nikon's only?

Phase One make Capture software. Their more known for making digital medium format backs. The software was orginally available to Canon high end cameras like the Mk's (as well as for their digi medium format stuff). Its now widely supportive of most makes although for Pentax it will only support the native PEF raw format. It doesnt support jpegs.

[Pooky125]

I tried Picasa, and found it wasn't quite what I was looking for. It was a nice piece of software though. Then again, maybe I just looked in all the wrong places.

I tried lightroom and loved it, to an extent, but there were to many things that frustrated me, compaired to everything I gained from it, so, it got vetoed.

Aperature, I've never heard of, but it sounds awesome. I'll have to look into that one.

Capture 4 sounds interesting, but alot of my files from old p&s are in jpeg, so I'm not sure how useful it would be...

You guys are coming up with some great ideas though, by all means, keep them coming!