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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Organizer software

Ivan Garcia

New member
I have a hard disk full of pictures; I haven’t been very disciplined in keeping them organised, and so they are all over the place, I like to know if there is any sorting software that will search and organize my CR2, TIFF, PSD and JPG files, maybe reading the exif data to create folders with the date the picture was taken, and placing the files there.
Does such software exist? And if so, Can any one point me in the right direction?
 

samdring

New member
Breezebrowser's Downloader Pro (as many others) can also 'download' from a hard disk to a hard disk (if that makes sense!). So yes is the answer to your question - DLP can sort by year, then camera, then date creating folders and sub folders for those or many other categories. I could be argued that your first problem is not the software but what structure you wish to attain.
 
Does such software exist? And if so, Can any one point me in the right direction?

Yes. You might take a look at Image Ingester which should be able to do it. Just remember, if you are bringing in a lot of files, then you want to copy from one physical drive to another separate physical drive to maximize hard drive speed. This process will not move your files, it copies them to a new locale.

enjoy your day,

Sean
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Ivan,

This question is almost a shill! An excuse for us to start on a direction we want to go anyway.

So I'll do that, assuming no knowledge if I may.

Given: Hard disks with many disorganized folders with images of various importance, purpose, friends, family, needed for an art project, potential for stock photography, a project you have yet to deliver etc.

Needed:

1 spare hard drive with capacity for your files, get to this later. This is for backup.

1 Copy of a cataloging software. We'll choose iview Media Pro. So good that Microsoft ate it!



Open iview and go to preferences and set the program to auto save every 2-10 minutes as you wish so that if your computer crashes, iview can go from where you left off.

Set the preferences so that it uses the built in jpgs in RAW fiels if present. You can change that later.


Drag in all your folders. Don't do all at once if your computer doesnt have a lot of RAM or space or tends to crash.

Now go to the symbol for the categories under Organize and open the drop down box to choose the categories under which your pics will be classified.

iview_2.jpg


Check the fields you want. A start is Date, Copyright, Use rights, People, Events, File Type and so forth.

COLORS: Decide what color code could be useful to you.

As Peter Krogh suggest, I use

Red (key is 1 on the keyboard) to mark all files to be discarded. That's my first step.

Brown is Friends and Family

Cyan is for images I may use for an Art project or graphic composition

You, should read Peter Krogh's Book The DAM Book, Digital Asset Management and the posts of John Beardsworth (Also search for Beardsy) for their approaches to classifying things.

STARS ***** :)

I use zero stars for images I'm keeping but are not great exposures/composition.

* worthy of considering for more work.

** 1 in 10 of the 1 stars images having extra potential.

*** exceptional from those that were **

**** you might find one of these every 1-3 months/years or maybe never!

***** forget it or die and be reinacarnated as Henry Bresson!

Dates Your pictures have embedded in them dates in a hiddenEXIF file which has the date, camera and details of the shot.

So when you dump in images, they are recognized and you just click on the Date category on the left of Organize list of fields and then it will open to the year and theat to the month and thence to the date with an empty circle and next to it the number of posts for that day.

Just click on the circle, it will fill in and voila, all the posts of htat day will be chosen.

Now you can select those which were one event.

Go to the + sign at the top of the list offields and click on it and from the drop down menu choose Event and then Enter for example Bloomingdales Fashion Show_New York_01_27_06" or "Aunt Annie's Wedding" using names that are obvious to youj.

Any future pictures, say that you processed and lost the EXIF data but you spot, later on, simply highlight and drag to that date and also to that event to remake that data field. That way you get the orphans!

Here's an example of a recent shoot of mine with Brian Lowe.

iview_4.jpg


Now you can save the catalog:

Save as 2006_01_25 LA Art Show and put it in a place you will find such as a folder named iView Catalogs

Are we done?

Absolutely not!

We forgot that we need to make sure that all the new classifications are embedded with the files. Why? If the files are put into another compatable filing software, the tags will be there for the new program to recognize and so sort your files for you.

iview_5.jpg


This is the Synchorinize function and now all the hard work is embedded in the original files.

Finished? Nope!

Two more things.

1. Save the catalog and then save another copy as backup!

2. Get prepared to deal with other items we can discuss later, but you can search OPF for existing and ongoing discussions.

a. Keywords

b. safeguard your files from the outset by having a backup system.

c. Rename files so your naming system is logical to you.

d. Bulk move your files to another drive

e. Process Files in say CS2, Lightroom, Aperture, Lightzone or some other software.

This is a fair start. You could easily take a number of other routes but this will work and is pretty robust.

Good luck,

Asher
 

Ivan Garcia

New member
Thank you guys.
Very useful info.
Asher, very nice tutorial, I'll try to be good for now on (embarrassed) and keep my precious files organized. ;-)
Ps: If anyone knows of a good fail safe method of reincarnating in to Henry Bresson please post here. lol
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
...Ps: If anyone knows of a good fail safe method of reincarnating in to Henry Bresson please post here. lol
How about doing a reformat of the hard disk and reinstalling the OS?
BTW, in order to reincarnate into HCB, one would have to resurrect him first, LOL....

Cheers Ivan!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ivan,

Would you be so kind as to make a note of any ways in which my instructions were unclear or didn't work for you!

Asher
 

Ivan Garcia

New member
Ivan,

Would you be so kind as to make a note of any ways in which my instructions were unclear or didn't work for you!

Asher

Asher
What give you the impresion your instructions were unclear?
I found them useful in the extreme, in fact, I have downloaded the software you recommended and I am as we speak, in the process of getting my collection organized. :)
PS: I found your reincarnation comment really funny, and since I am no were near 5 stars, I will love to take the reincarnation alternative lol
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
O.K. Ivan,

Tell me when your are done. We'll follow with the next steps in a new thread. Meanwhile anyone feel free to comment!

Asher
 

KrisCarnmarker

New member
Hi Ivan,

You've already received some valuable tips. Before you commit to a specific tool, however, I would suggest that you at least try out a couple of different ones.

If your primary interest is to be able to view the images grouped by date, then sophisticated cataloging software may not be needed. If you also want to move them images to a date based folder structure, then I think samdring's suggestion to use Downloader Pro is excellent. You then continue using that tool when you download the images from your camera, and the images will be placed in the correct location on your hard drive automatically.

If you do not need to move the files into a date based folder structure, then the free tool Picassa may be all you need. It will search all your hard drives and you can then view them by date (among other views). Picassa also has some other useful features, and is actually quite good, especially for the price :)

ImpulseAdventure has some interesting articles on the subject, including a Comparison of Photo Catalog Software. I have tried almost all of them, and I try some of them several times (after new major releases). iView MediaPro is fine, but it can't handle all that many images before it slows down to a crawl and you have to create a new database (last I heard, the same thing applies to PS Elements). Now, we are still talking about several thousand images before this happens, but others can handle several hundreds of thousands before the same happens. Additionally, MediaPro is quite limited in its search functionality. It can do the basics though, and that is more than enough for a lot of people.

idImager, as Denis de Gannes mentioned, is a fine options. I do not know what its limitations are as regards to the database size, but it is one of the few tools which support versions (by stacking).

My favorite by far is IMatch. It does not have the flashiest GUI, and has somewhat of a steep learning curve, but its features and functionality are unsurpassed, IMO. The only thing missing is versioning (which should be coming soon). It supports several hundreds of thousands of images without slowdowns and several options for sophisticated keywording and categorization. Its search features are second to none and even inlcudes a scripting engine (and an IDE for developing the scripts) that provides programatic access to almost every feature in the program. I do suggest you at least try it out.


You did not mention what operating system you are on, so if you are on OS X, then disregard everything I said :)

/Kris
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Kris,

you made a good finish!

We should preface everything by saying what OS the system applies to!

I work with M acs although there are some utilities I like that are PC based.

Your discussion of Windows friendly software will be helpful for those who are PC loyal :)

I think we need to know also about the strenth of software companies as some just seem to vanish overnight, and whether or not one can migrate down the road to other software.

For those who do not know it, iviewMedia Pro is cross-platform and that's a great thing.

I can say that iVMP runs fast on a MacBook Pro. I'll have to do some speed tests down the road!

Asher
 

Ivan Garcia

New member
Hi Kris, Asher et all
Thank you for you kind input.
I am a pc guy (from day one I’m afraid) I looked in to macs but I could not get bothered with the learning curve.
I have indeed downloaded and used downloader pro, it does not search the disk but it did the trick of organizing my 10K files by date.
I will like to get a bit deeper into cataloguing my images, and so, I downloaded Asher’s iVMP suggestion, I will also take a look at the iMatch software you are recommending.
It will be helpful if someone could do an in-depth comparison of the software suggested here. For instance, as a rawshooter pro costumer, I am entitle to a free copy of Lightroom, it looks like the adobe software covers most of the functions that Iview offers, so a comparison between these two software’s will be very useful, after all, iViewMP has a price tag of $200, as opposed to the free Lightroom upgrade.
Has any of you used these two in particular?, and if so, can you draw a comparison regarding speed, ease of use, and useful features?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi,

For Macusers: AtomicView from Antzero, a swiss company.
Wolfgang,

This seems very powerful. Are you using this currently? What did you use before and why did this win you over?

I's like to know how to integrate the particular designations of keywords, preference, etc from each of the many users of my image library and get these designations back to the main data base. At present, I only give out a smaller subset of the pictures and they are associated with smaller jpgs only. I want to be able to being back these user marked files and transfer this data back to the larger files from which they came.

Asher
 

Wolfgang Plattner

Well-known member
Wolfgang,

This seems very powerful. Are you using this currently? What did you use before and why did this win you over?

I'm using it currently. iViewMedia (my first DAM app initialised by Peter Krogh and his Dambook) got a hickup on my Leopardupdate and I was not able to cure it ...

At this time I found Photo Mechanic for importing, keywording and used it as a sort of DAM-app with its searchcapabilities under MacOSX. As I prefer specialised solutions for things to be done and not an overall-monster like Lightroom or Aperture (which was in some situations was too slow on my old iMac) I had to look around for a DAM substitute for iView. Last year I found a hint to Antzero in the web, the folks there live as to say in our neighbourhood here in Austria and I bought the software in its betaphase for a fair price. At the beginning it was a bit crappy but now it is running smooth and they are working hard on it to make it better.
I's like to know how to integrate the particular designations of keywords, preference, etc from each of the many users of my image library and get these designations back to the main data base. At present, I only give out a smaller subset of the pictures and they are associated with smaller jpgs only. I want to be able to being back these user marked files and transfer this data back to the larger files from which they came.

Asher
So this means a serversolution, which is yet not done by Antzero.
 
Last edited:

Michael Fontana

pro member
Wolfgang

thanks for the hint - I'm looking for a IVMP-replacement as well, the demo of ME crashed quite a lot when I tested it - so this is a nogo - worse than IVMP of 3 years ago!

I found AtomicView pretty slow (>20 minutes for 8 GB of images) when importing RAWs on my PPC-Quad, even it sucks 8 GB of RAM. Once the previews are createt, it's pretty fast.

As I will go for a new box this years, my questiuon is if AtomicView is significantly faster on a newer model?

Apart from that AtomicView looks - still I have to get used to its possibilies.
Is there any free AtomicView-reader, like with iVMP.
 

Wolfgang Plattner

Well-known member
Hi Michael,

I'm using it on a iMac 27" i5 - it is fast enough for me. On the old CoreDuo it seemed slow to me too, when importing a lot of files.

Is there any free AtomicView-reader, like with iVMP.
Don't know exactly, what you mean by that, but as you are swiss, contact the folks of Antzero ...
 
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