Need software to organize pictures

[Grandpaw]

I am looking for some software, preferably free, that will organize my photos. A friend of mine has iPhoto that looks great but I have a PC not a Mac. I would like to keep my photos on my external hard drive and not on the internet. Any suggestion you may offer would be very much appreciated, Jeff

[GB1]

Jeff - I will be checking this post for new s/w myself. The best I know of right now is Adobe Bridge. It allows you to add search works and phrases to the image's EXIF, which you can later search for. It does not move the image (I have my own methodology for where to store my images on my hard drive).

One thing I don't like about writing words to EXIF, however, is that it changes the date. This is bad for me because I often sort my Date Modified to see which images I were the best and I therefore edited (and saved as a copy).

G

[Medley]

Jeff, my 2¢: try either Windows Live photo gallery :http://explore.live.com/windows-live...gallery?os=mac

or Picasa (I can't give you the link to that, as it takes me straight to the Mac download)

G, a while back there was an app called Exif Tool that was platform independant. It was however, a Perl library, and required Perl to run. Essentially a command-line application, it was none-the-less the best exif data application I had ever seen. And about the time I stopped paying attention, there was a secondary app called Exif Auto that removed all the hassles of using the command line.

The only reason I don't still use it is that I got much the same funtionality out of the Monitor application on the Mac (basically- Mac's version of the command line). Don't know where these apps are today, but they might be worth looking into.

Joe

[EOSThree]

When I had a PC my favorite was Breeze Browser. A simple interface that organized my photos in a way that I liked. ACDSee is another good one. I don't know of any free organizers that reside on your computer, I think Picasa is web based.

[Ray Dockrey]

Picasa is actually PC based and works very good for cataloging pictures. It's editing capabilities are pretty good although basic.

[Grandpaw]

I'm checking all of your suggestions out. Thanks very much for all of you taking the time to respond and help me out. I really feel like a dummy after Greg mentioning Adobe Bridge because I already have that and forgot about it. My Windows Photo Gallery quit working and I have been opening up each photo in CS5, one at a time. A friend of mine has a Mac and the iPhoto looked like a nice and easy program to use and locate photos, Jeff

[mjs1973]

I use Bridge for keeping track of my files, but I now there are a lot better programs out there. Lightroom works great, but on my machine, it is very slow and I have never put the time into learning how to use it properly and I don't have all of my photos cataloged into it. When it comes time to find an old photo, I almost always go to Lightroom to track it down. The ability to search and find photos in LR is much easier and faster than using Bridge.

[Canuck935]

I second Lightroom.

I'll third it, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh... infinity it as well.


But that's just me. It's not free though, but honestly it is worth every last cent that I paid for it.. and then some..

[drg]

Don't skimp or expect to get great free software forever. The need to invest in a a good piece of workflow software may not be apparent for the first year or two of use. Then some time in the future you will realize that you can now sort through those thousands of photographs you have made much more efficiently.

Bridge is an O.K. browser, but it is slow and hopefully will disappear one of these days. Bridge just lacks many pieces and is not efficient in how it 'aids' workflow. Adobe long ago started discussing how products like Lightroom will supersede it.

By the time you add a third or fourth camera of work, Lightroom just starts being the only real alternative in the PC/Windows world.

If you should go for ACDSee be sure to back up everything as it doesn't have as robust an underlying database and backups seem poor to non-existent. It does work well within limits. ACDSee is really more of the 'all-in-one' program category that happens to implement a file organization/workflow functionality.

[Grandpaw]

Thanks for all the advice from everyone so far but I need just a little more input before making a decision. Looks like Lightroom 3 might be the way to go. I have CS5 now and want to be able to organize my pictures. Is Lightroom 3 what I want to purchase to go along with CS5? Both of my son's are college students and can get the discount on the purchase. Is this going to be my best choice? Any advice on this would be appreciated, Jeff

[Canuck935]

I say LR3 is definitely the way to go. It's a great organizer for one. It's so easy to tag and search photos. For me though, it really shines when it comes to workflow. Especially if you shoot RAW. The nice thing is that it works wonderfully in tandem with PS CS5. You can be working on an image in LR, tell it send it to PS to continue working on it with all the tools PS offers. Once you are done, just hit save in PS and bam it is back in LR with all the editing you've done in PS.

We're not even at the best part. The best part about LR is that it never, ever, ever, alters your original files. All the changes you make in LR is just saved as a data file. When you export images from Lightroom, it will save a new copy of the image with the changes applied.

I can go on and on and on. I honestly haven't met anyone that didn't like LR.

[Grandpaw]

Ordered Lightroom this morning so I will soon find out just what it will do. Thanks to everyone for your input, Jeff