Manage Huge Photo Collection

  • Thread starter Thread starter Keith Gardner
  • Start date Start date
This topic gets quite a bit of discussion in rec.photo.digital. I
cannot, however, vouch for what, if any, of the apps recommended may be
freeware. Google might help.
 
Phred said:
John, I don't see that as working very well if you consider that any
one photo may need to be indexed under two or more "topics" other than
date and main subject (e.g. location, content, people) as well as
technical data such as at least the basics of film type and camera.

I suspect one needs a full database solution if one is serious.

P.S. I'm interested in the same for about 40*20*36 ~ 29000 images as
a rough minimum approximation. (I wish I hadn't worked that out. 8-)


Cheers, Phred.
Click to expand...

Disk Explorer Pro

http://www.antelopestudios.com/depro/depro.php
 
AU said:
Disk Explorer Pro
Click to expand...



Which looks to me to be.... Payware
There's a demo that turns crippleware afer 30 days.
"Limitations of unregistered/demo version:

a.. max. 5 volumes per database
b.. disabled import and export
c.. all databases will become read-only after 30 days "

The only freeware is a viewer for the DBs created by the payware.
 
Ghostaccount28 said:
Which looks to me to be.... Payware
There's a demo that turns crippleware afer 30 days.
"Limitations of unregistered/demo version:

a.. max. 5 volumes per database
b.. disabled import and export
c.. all databases will become read-only after 30 days "

The only freeware is a viewer for the DBs created by the payware.
Click to expand...

Yes it costs $$$.... but does the job extremely well!
 
How odd is it that a person who pays out bucks for the gear to take tens of
thousands of photos and makes the comment that the software to manage the
collection actually has to be paid for! Maybe I am getting too old for this
group.
 
How odd is it that a person who pays out bucks for the gear to take tens of
thousands of photos and makes the comment that the software to manage the
collection actually has to be paid for! Maybe I am getting too old for this
group.
Click to expand...
<snip>

The issue of freeware vs. payware and its appropriateness for the group
arises from the fact that the original post was strictly in
alt.comp.freeware and then eventually part of the thread was posted in
aus.photo, where you may have picked up the message.

See ya.
 
Art Iculos Libres said:
<snip>

The issue of freeware vs. payware and its appropriateness for the group
arises from the fact that the original post was strictly in
alt.comp.freeware and then eventually part of the thread was posted in
aus.photo, where you may have picked up the message.
Click to expand...

Doesn't change the fact though .. that people spend thousands of dollars on
their equipment and then expect all their software for nix.....
 
That's the problem when cross posting. People in one group post an answer
without being subscribed to the other... Sort of like being at the movies
and hearing sounds of music track when watching the Matrix!
 
Keith Gardner said:
Greetings:

Someone asked me today to work on a database to search, sort and manage a
5000+ picture photo collection. They need to be able to search quickly by
description, date, etc., then display thumbnails of the matching pictures,
and allow the users to click on a thumbnail to display the high resolution
photo. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Keith
Click to expand...

Hi Keith,
I find this one pretty good.

On their site is also listed a new beta version but I haven't checked it out
yet.
Leo R.

Cheez 2.0
http://www.daremon.gr/cheez

Cheez is a powerful, yet easy to use, image cataloguing tool. It's main
purpose is to facilitate photo album creation, managing and maintenance,
although it can be used for handling any kind of image collection. It
supports more than 15 image formats, including BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF,
TGA, ICO, WMF/EMF etc.

For every folder (film) and image (photo) in your collection, Cheez can
store any accompanying information that you may enter (such as a
description, a number of keywords or a date) and then search based on this
information. It uses a single text file (XML format) for that purpose,
making backups very easy. Other features include viewing your images in a
Slideshow, creating Web albums ready for upload, viewing Exif Info and many
others. Cheez is completely free.
 
" said:
How odd is it that a person who pays out bucks for the gear to take tens of
thousands of photos and makes the comment that the software to manage the
collection actually has to be paid for! Maybe I am getting too old for this
group.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my fault for adding aus.photo to the original post's
distribution. I was looking for *answers* so thought a photo group
might have some useful guidance to offer too, given the subject. :-)

I should have warned the denizens of aus.photo that some folk in a.c.f
would take exception if a suggested solution costs money; so I
probably should have set followups to aus.photo -- but then there is
another group of USENET folk who take exception to "censoring"
distributions like that, so you can't win anyway. 8-)

Anyway, thanks to all who have responded positively. I'll check out
the suggestions you've offered, though I suspect it may well come down
to either (1) giving up on the idea altogether; or (2) developing a DB
application in Access for the purpose, which would be quite a project
in itself as I currently don't speak Access.

diskXplorer Professional looks interesting, but in some ways it
appears to go beyond what's needed; and in others it's probably not
all that useful for the purpose. But at only USD29 I guess you can't
expect everything. :)

Being very democratically inclined, I'll affront as many as possible
by (a) adding a crosspost to aus.computers; and (b) omitting a.c.f
from the followups as it seems unlikely that any freeware solution
will cut the mustard in this case. Thanks again for your various
contributions so far.

[For those who came in late, this concerns a search for an image
database application to index a collection ranging into several tens
of thousands of photos in various styles -- b&w, colour, slides, and
digital.]


Cheers, Phred.
 
Thanks very much for the pointer to Cumulus, Art. Looks very
interesting, especially the bit about managing off-line resources,
which is a bloody essential feature of any practical solution!

I'm copying this to aus.photo for information, and followups set there
to avoid further contamination of a.c.f. ;-)

Phred,

I have been tempted (rarely) in the past to recommend non-freeware here,
but never have (maybe I answered "No" once to a post asking if there was a
true freeware Photoshop replacement). However, in this case, I feel
strongly enough about:

- the distinct absence of a truly good freeware solution; and
- that sometimes this forum should be about helping others beyond sticking
to strictly freeware recommendations, especially in light of the above;

that I will defy Mr. Corliss and recommend a non-freeware alternative.

You pointed out one failing of the system JC employs. Also, most software
solutions, free or otherwise, do not allow for browsing thumbnail catalogs
that have been stored offline (i.e. stored on removeable media) without
connecting the media to the computer. The solution I suggest allows this
and many other powerful features relatively inexpensively. Consider trying
to re-invent the wheel (albeit, a multi-flat-sided-one) using other
suggestions made here (such as OOo) and all the time it would take to still
end up with a poor outcome, or using options like Irfanview which are
pre-packaged, but nevertheless fall short if you are serious about media
management (Irfanview is great as a simple viewer). My recommendation:

Canto Cumulus

http://www.canto.com/

At 69.95 US for a single-user license, you can't go wrong. I have v5, but
v6 was released in Dec. 03. The software has one competitor of note
(Extensis Portfolio), but I preferred Cumulus. Both are used by
corporations, news organizations, media management concerns and
professional photographers.

BTW, Canto released a "lite" version called myCumulus for $19.95, and based
on the website, it appears to have the restriction of 2000 images per
catalog, with a max. of 2 catalogs open at the same time. I haven't used
this, so I can't say anything more.

Cumulus is also available in enterprise / network editions if necessary.

Also, BTW, despite the low cost, Cumulus is a professional product and
requires reading the manual and some forethought in setting up your
catalogs.

Now...back to the regularly scheduled freeware.
Click to expand...


Cheers, Phred.
 
John Corliss said:
Well then, you'll just have to wait for the new file system that comes
with Longhorn (HYUCK HYUCK!)
Click to expand...

Win2k & WinXP NTFS partitions can already store metadata...
(Most linux filesystems allow this too, sometimes as an option.)
 
Doesn't change the fact though .. that people spend thousands of
dollars on their equipment and then expect all their software for
nix.....
Click to expand...

Perhaps the thousands of images that the op has are stolen^W downloaded
from teh Usenet?
 
Demetrius Zeluff said:
Perhaps the thousands of images that the op has are stolen^W downloaded
from teh Usenet?
Click to expand...

In which case we would not be interested in offering any solution at all.
 
Keith said:
Someone asked me today to work on a database to search, sort and manage a
5000+ picture photo collection. They need to be able to search quickly by
description, date, etc., then display thumbnails of the matching pictures,
and allow the users to click on a thumbnail to display the high resolution
photo. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Keith

Cerious Thumbsplus does what you need.
Shareware from Cerious.
 
[For those who came in late, this concerns a search for an image
database application to index a collection ranging into several tens
of thousands of photos in various styles -- b&w, colour, slides, and
digital.]
Click to expand...
P, I say again: Google or query rec.photo.digital, where the issue
is much-discussed; the solution may not be freeware, I don't know, but
flexible and useful indexing/referencing alternatives exist that serve
advanced amateurs AWA professional photogs. I simply never have paid
enough attention to be able to offer specific suggestions because the
subject is a non-issue for me, personally.
 
Edge said:
In which case we would not be interested in offering any solution at all.
Click to expand...

Perhaps the OP works for an educational establishment with a very limited
budget. The OP would like some nice fee software to catlogue student
pictures?

Perhaps the OP desires some new lens, and wants to spend money on good
glass not shonky tat?

etc etc.
 
JanC said:
Win2k & WinXP NTFS partitions can already store metadata...
(Most linux filesystems allow this too, sometimes as an option.)
Click to expand...

Well I'll be hornswoggled. Learn something in this group every day.
Thanks for the info.
 
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