photo management (Full Version)

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draexo -> photo management (10/5/2009 10:11:50 PM)

So our digital photo album is a huge mess. Many gigs of pictures... 7 to 12 gigs, depending. See the problem? Duplicates!
Wife accidentally created duplicates about a year ago with a drag and drop and now there are many duplicates.

In theory Picasa would organize my photos, but it does not work very well at all. I have tried it on various computers and OS's. IF Picasa did what is was supposed to, it would be great. ACDSee works, but is more of a viewer/editor.

Adobe Photoshop, well, it works, tried 6 and 7 on two different machine, it just crashes as it is importing the photos. My guess is because there are so many.

Help!

I am looking for something to organize my photos, preferably into one directory or master directory and let me tag them as well.

Any suggestions?
Thanks



neuronstatic -> RE: photo management (10/6/2009 9:27:01 AM)

Just something to consider. If you have 7-12 gigs of photos, there are probably too many files to put into a single directory. You will run in to file system limitations. Kind of like the problems you most likely encountered with trying to load them all into a single photo library/album.

I did something like this when I digitized thousands of my own home photos. I am sure there are automated tools that can do a lot of things for you - like finding duplicates based on size/name. But in the end, I ended up scanning photos with bio-mechanical optic systems and used an organic heuristic-based pattern matching engine to sort them - I scanned them with my own eyes and looked for patterns that looked alike.

Yeah, it took a while. But it was faster than searching for the ultimate tool that did not exist to meet my own needs.

So if you find the tool you are looking for, please, please share the info here. There are others like you and me with tons of photos to sort through.

But in the meantime, think about the file system hierarchy you want to create. You really don't want to try to drop 12 GB of photos in a single directory (assuming that means thousands and thousands of photos) as every time that folder is accessed it will cause huge delays when Windows does pre-load and thumbnail creation/loading. Such a large folder could also cause problems with some backup solutions.

So you really ought to consider either organizing the photos into a hierarchy of photos. This will help with performance of any tool you eventually use.



mygurlrose -> RE: photo management (10/6/2009 4:03:06 PM)

Unfortunately you may have to sort through those manually. If picaso didn't work, the only other thing I can think of is to use a Mac. They have a photo management software that is supposed to be very good.



jhuperetes -> RE: photo management (10/11/2009 5:20:18 PM)

I do digital photography as a hobby and I organize my photos by year, month, and if necessary subject.

I usually take about a thousand shots a month.

In general, most digital cameras nowadays insert something called EXIF information into the image. Besides a slew of photographic information, it also contains creation date.

You can rename the images to match the creation date contained within the EXIF information, then move it through batch command (like FOR %A IN...) into appropriate directories, or use a tool to move them directly, based on the EXIF data. (The free software IrfanView comes to mind for both cases.)

My directory structure looks something like this:

\2006\01\
\2006\02\
\2006\03\special event\
...
\2006\12\
\2007\01\
\2007\02\
\2007\03\
...
\2007\12\
\2008\01\
... and so on.

I often duplicate my images too.
Using IrfanView's rename feature, I also include a sequence number. If a picture has identical EXIF creation date, then they are duplicates. In the process of renaming, IrfanView would label them sequentially, following the creation date and time.

Example:
20091001145212001.jpg
20091001145212002.jpg
20091001145212003.jpg

yyyymmddhhmmss then 3 digit sequence.



jaimicook -> RE: photo management (10/18/2009 10:34:30 PM)

An excellent photo management program is Corel, formerly Jasc Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. Same price as Photo Shop Elements and much better. I have Photo shop CS4, by the way. By the time I waded through the user manual I was exhausted, Kodak Easy Share also gets the job done.
Jim



draexo -> RE: photo management (10/23/2009 11:43:58 AM)

I will the naming system you are using with year/month. I could then use a photo manager to
tag people and places in the photos, and still have them sorted by date physically on the hard drive.

For the price, ACDsee works well, but Kodak Easy Share is free.

I still have no decided what to do.



draexo -> RE: photo management (10/28/2009 12:24:20 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: jhuperetes


My directory structure looks something like this:

\2006\01\
\2006\02\
\2006\03\special event\
...
\2006\12\
\2007\01\
\2007\02\
\2007\03\
...
\2007\12\
\2008\01\
... and so on.

I often duplicate my images too.
Using IrfanView's rename feature, I also include a sequence number. If a picture has identical EXIF creation date, then they are duplicates. In the process of renaming, IrfanView would label them sequentially, following the creation date and time.

Example:
20091001145212001.jpg
20091001145212002.jpg
20091001145212003.jpg

yyyymmddhhmmss then 3 digit sequence.

Will IrfanView sort them into different directories based on dates as in your example, or must I do that manually? Its a lot of work.



TMeeks -> RE: photo management (10/28/2009 5:53:51 PM)

I completely understand tghe problem you face. I've just had my latest camera since may of this year and already I have taken over 4000 photos with it!

Irfanview is one of the most versatile programs in my arsenal of photo tools.

I do not believe that it will automatically create subdirectories by date for you. However, not only is the program great... the programmer is even greater! Go to his web site and contact him. What you want might become a future feature.

I have a LOT of respect for his work.

In fact, I used Irfanview to resize the more than 1500+ images that make up the Liberty Dial video animation. It does a very clean job at resizing and does so with a wonderful batch mode.

No matter what you look at otherwise, it pays to have Irfanview. It is SO good that I sent him a sizable donation. It saves me that much in time.

I've also found that organizing my photos on Flickr, suing a Pro account, that doesn't cost all that much, is a great way to protect images from loss. Here is a link to my Photostream. Feel free to go up there and explore how the photos can be organized in Sets, Collections of Sets, Galleries, groups and maps. You can try it fo free; but, the real benefits come with their paid subscriptions.

I also use Photobucket (Thumbs down) and Shutterfly (OK). But, Flickr is clearly my favorite.



jhuperetes -> RE: photo management (10/29/2009 7:12:24 PM)

Save this out as a text file (highlight all blue text, copy, open notepad, paste into notepad, save as... C:\organize.bat).

Move the organize.bat to wherever you want the "root" of your photo folders. For example My Documents\My Pictures.

Adjust the "OldImages" (bolded area) to wherever the images currently are located.

launch the organize.bat from a command line prompt.

This will create the directory structure as described, and copy the images from the old single location to the new organized location.


@ECHO OFF
SET OldImages=
REM it is presumed the images are already renamed to the YYYYMMDD format.
REM You will need to set the appropriate path to where all the images are located BELOW (No back slash at end, no spaces around = sign):
REM

SET OldImages=C:\Documents and Settings\<user account>\My Documents\My Pictures
REM
REM - - - - Change nothing below - - - -
REM
IF DEFINED OldImages GOTO :CONT
GOTO :ERRORSETUP
:CONT
ECHO .
ECHO Creating directory structure, and moving files...
ECHO .
SET /A YCounter=2006
:LOOPSTART
MD %YCounter%
CD %YCounter%
FOR %%A IN (01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12) DO MD %%A
FOR %%A IN (01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12) DO COPY %OldImages%\%YCounter%%%A*.* %%A
IF %YCounter% == 2009 (GOTO :FINISH)
CD ..
SET /A YCounter = %YCounter%+1
GOTO :LOOPSTART
:ERRORSETUP
ECHO .
ECHO Please set the right path for the image location!
ECHO .
GOTO :EOF
:FINISH
REM SET OldImages =
SET YCounter =
CD ..
ECHO .
ECHO Directory structure created, and images copied.
ECHO .




draexo -> RE: photo management (10/30/2009 10:05:21 PM)

I found several batch rename programs. I tried a few of them. The one I stuck with is free. Its called Namexif. Worked great for me.



3awad -> RE: photo management (11/4/2009 8:13:28 PM)

Since I got Adobe Bridge, I really haven't used a standalone photo manager but, before that, I had one that I really liked. It was called FotoAlbum (by FotoTime). It was very simple and intuitive. It was free when I used it, but now it isn't.



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