Free Photo App for Windows and Mac

[Don Rowe]

Hi

I'm offering a free Windows or Mac program to people willing to help test a new digital photo app.

Selectively load pictures based on:

• Where they were taken
• When they were taken
• File name or date
• Your own text or descriptive tags

Add formatted text, images, links to other pictures, and more.

Create your own descriptive tags and view camera tags such as date and altitude.

Photo Sieve

[Asher Kelman]

Very interesting, Don

....and welcome!

Is this a catalog software like IView Media Pro in its latest incarnation as Phase One’s Media Pro?

Presumably this is stores on one’s computer not on your server?

Am so impressed with your wide variety of interests, skills and experience, from engineering and programming to music. You seem like a reincarnation of our venerable Doug Kerr, except you came too early as he’s, (fortunately for his family and all of us), still very much alive and kicking!

Asher

[Don Rowe]

Thanks for the kind words, Asher and for this forum. Cataloging is one of Photo Sieve's features. You can sieve thousands of photos by location, filename, date taken, and more. After you find a group with a common theme, add descriptive tags, formatted text, links to other photos or websites, even insert a photo in the photo. Everything is stored inside the jpg file. You can create album files for convenience, but there's no separate catalog file. Check out the screen shots. or try the free fully-functional download. It's still in the testing stage, so I recommend copying pictures to a separate experimental folder.

[Asher Kelman]

How many files will choke the app and make it sluggish?

Asher

[Don Rowe]

Still working on that. I haven't noticed any significant slowing with up to 1000 pictures loaded at once. It depends in part on how much memory a computer has and what other apps are also running. I have about 4000 pictures in my main picture folder. The "Load Directory" option makes it easy to scan through all pictures in all sub-directories and do multiple sieving operations by location, date taken, file dates, or filename. After adding custom text or tags, you can also sieve by those. The "sieving" and "Load Directory" topics in the online manual has more information. I prefer to limit an album to a few hundred related photos as my brain has trouble processing more than that.

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by Don Rowe

Still working on that. I haven't noticed any significant slowing with up to 1000 pictures loaded at once. It depends in part on how much memory a computer has and what other apps are also running. I have about 4000 pictures in my main picture folder. The "Load Directory" option makes it easy to scan through all pictures in all sub-directories and do multiple sieving operations by location, date taken, file dates, or filename. After adding custom text or tags, you can also sieve by those. The "sieving" and "Load Directory" topics in the online manual has more information. I prefer to limit an album to a few hundred related photos as my brain has trouble processing more than that.

Of course, Don, your offereing seems grerat as it is for projects like a wedding or even shoot or returning from a vacation with 5,000 pictures. So that's one set uf benefits I see.

It's still also valuable to know whether the software can potentially ingest an entire 4 TB drive! Further, can it be used to copy files to another drive? Can it take several sources of images and deliver them to a new drive with only one copy of each? comsildation of many hard drives is a major practical problem with digital photography as we end up with tens or even hundereds of thousands of files over the years and tehn a backup drive fails and one needs to consolidate and make sure one backs up only one copy of each file.

I only ask simnce you have the skill and capaibility to program!

Asher

[Don Rowe]

One of the reasons I'm asking for help testing is there are so many variables with image files and computer configurations, and so many individual needs.

One of my tests was pointing Photo Sieve at a directory with 16,000 sub-directories and 41,000 images. The way I use it is a multi-step process:

1) Photo Sieve builds a directory tree of all sub-directories containing images. This can probably process a very large drive since this step does not load images or create thumbnails.

2) Apply one or more sieving operations based on location, take taken, file name or file date.

3) View and select images from each individual sub-directory. The number of sub-directories is likely greatly reduced by previous sieving operations.

4) Load selected images. By this step, the 41,000 images should be narrowed to a few hundred related images.

5) Create custom tags or text. If all the loaded images are related in some way, this may be a single paste operation.

6) Optionally save the loaded images to an album. Multiple albums may contain the same image. Since tags and text are stored in the jpg files, edits to a picture automatically appear in all albums.

7) Repeat for a different group of related images.

8) Later sieving operations may include added custom text or tags.

There are also other ways to divide and conquer when working with many images.

With so many backup tools available, I'm not inclined to create another. Are you familiar with Beyond Compare? It displays 2 drives/directories side-by-side and has multiple select, compare, and copy options. It can also display difference between 2 pictures. It will likely work well for the backup scenario you described.

[Roshni Patel]

I will surely try it up.

[Don Rowe]

Check out the new video demo at http://download.photosieve.com/video/PhotoSieveDemo.mp4