Manage Huge Photo Collection

  • Thread starter Thread starter Keith Gardner
  • Start date Start date
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?
Click to expand...

Adding to the suppositions:

Perhaps one day "Edge" may actually say something useful.
(Probably when Paul's pigs fly.)


Cheers, Phred.
 
[email protected] (Phred) said:
[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.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the repeat of your suggestion, Derald. I must admit I tend
to avoid the traditional "Big 8" groups as much as possible and stick
to our local Oz groups which don't seem to generate as much noise and
spam as Big 8. (Have to make an exception for a.c.f because
people here are so nice, and there's no aus.c.f anyway. :-)

There is some discussion on the topic happening in aus.photo, but as
the only likely solutions are not freeware, a.c.f has been dropped
from the distribution. I'll drop in on r.p.d for a quick squiz.



Cheers, Phred.
 
[email protected] (Phred) said:
[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.
Click to expand...

First, I mention that the OP wanted to index 5000 images. This is not
a "huge" collection, nor even a large one. Any image cataloging
program should be able to handle this.

As Derald wrote, rec.photo.digital is a good place to look. No need to
read the group, though, this subject comes up frequently. Just use
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search to search r.p.d.

In my opinion the freeware image-database programs do not live up to
the best shareware tools for this, which are IMatch and ThumbsPlus.
However, the freeware tools may be fine for what you want to do.
You'll need to try some, and figure out exactly what you are trying to
accomplish.

Here are some freeware tools to consider:

MyAlbum
www.myalbumpro.com

WinPhoto
http://cat-photo.sourceforge.net/

Pixvue
http://www.pixvue.com/

ImageN
http://www.pixoid.com/

FotoAlbum
www.fototime.com
See the recent thread "FotoAlbum revisited" in ACF for a discussion of
whether this is freeware or not.

File tracking system
http://www.netspace.net.au/~pjv101/fts.htm

I have tried MyAlbum, and it seemed to work well, so I would suggest
you start there in your looking. (Disclaimer -- I don't currently use
it.)

This link:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Graphics/Image_Cataloguing/ lists a
variety of image database programs. It is not limited to freeware.

Someone else in this thread mentioned using open-office to "roll your
own" database. Do not waste your time with this. A decent image
catalog program will import EXIF information, provide thumbnails,
manage offline storage, and do other things that will be difficult to
do in your own database or spreadsheet.

Things to consider:

- How easy is the program to use, and how much effort are you willing
to put into maintaining your database? Think about what operations you
will be doing all the time, and see how easy they are to do. For
example, is it easy to assign the same keyword(s) to a set of images,
or do you have to repeat the same steps for each image?

- In what format do you want the results of your searches? For
example, can you easily see the results of a search as a collection of
thumbnails? Can you then perform further options on this set?

- How flexible is the program? For example, can you control the size
of thumbnails?

- Is the information stored in a "standard" format that is accessible
by other programs? Or can it be exported into some standard format?
That will allow you to move your data to some other program in the
future if you need to.

- Can you catalog image that are "offline" on CD or DVD or other
offline media? Can it handle images on multiple hard drives, or across
a network? Do you need this capability?

- Can the program read EXIF information, and enter that information
into the database? At the very least, you will want to read the EXIF
date/time.

- How are "keywords" handled? Can you perform complex searches (eg,
boolean combination of keywords)? Is there any structure or hierarchy
imposed on keywords? (This can be good or bad, depending on how it is
done.)

- Can you enter a description or comment or caption for an image? Can
you search the database for words in this description (partial text
search)?

- Does the program integrate with other programs, such as your
favorite image editor? You will probably want to be able to easily
start your image editor on an image selected through the database
program (with a double-click or right-click menu item).

HTH,

Terry
 
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