A File-Centric Photo Manager? 326
JeremyDuffy writes "I have a photo project of over 7,000 photos. I want to tag them based on location, time of day, who's in them, etc. Doing this by hand one at a time through the Windows 7 interface in Explorer is practically madness. There has to be a better way. Is there a photo manager that can easily group and manage file tags? And most importantly, something that stores the tag and other data (description etc.) in the file, not just a database? I don't care if the thing has a database, but the data must be in the file so when I upload the files to the Internet, the tags are in place."
Windows Live Photo Gallery (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Adobe bridge? (Score:2, Informative)
Adobe Bridge (Score:1, Informative)
Adobe Bridge sounds perfect.
Besides being one of the best photo managers I have worked with, you can directly edit the metadata for each file. The only downside is that it usually comes bundled with other Adobe software, which can be costly.
Lightroom (Score:5, Informative)
Adobe Lightroom is pretty awesome. Has a free trial. Check it out.
Picasa by Google is pretty good, too. Free.
Google Picassa (Score:5, Informative)
Google Picassa is actually quite good at everything you asked for, and, it has face recognition, so once you tag one face, it generally recognises most of the images of the same person for you.
fototagger (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Adobe bridge? (Score:5, Informative)
Lightroom is likely more than you need, but Lightroom does this.
I convert my various (nef, cr2) raw files to DNG upon importation to my library, and save metadata to the files themselves, not XML sidecar files.
While Adobe Lightroom will want work with its own database, by always syncing metadata to file you will have a 100% portable set of images.
Try Mapivi (Score:4, Informative)
I've been searching for the same feature set, a file centric image manager whose metadata is stored exclusively in the file.
One of the best ones I have found is Mapivi:
http://mapivi.sourceforge.net/mapivi.shtml [sourceforge.net]
I still often use Digikam, but its metadata support is inconsistent at best. On the other hand the front end is more useable than Mapivi.
You should also look at ExifTool, because you can manipulate and query metadata with it on the command line.
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ [queensu.ca]
If you find a solution, please share!
Copy them to a Mac, use Automator (Score:4, Informative)
OS X comes with a graphical scripting tool called Automator. You can set up a batch file rename script with it that will rename every photo in a folder of your choice with the date and time added to the file name, plus a sequence number, and any other text if you desire. I used it to rename over 8000 photos originally named img_xxxx in 2 or 3 minutes.
So just copy them onto a Mac, run the Automator script on them, and copy them back.
Re:There is only one choice ... (Score:3, Informative)
Picasa is best, however, AFAIK it doesn't store the info in the files...stores the face stuff in its own database. I learned this the hard way...
Re:Google Picassa (Score:2, Informative)
1. Any tagging you've done cannot be synced the to other computers. Picasa doesn't store its tagging info locally in each directory; this information is put in the "Program Files". You can, presumably, backup your collection through Picasa (if this function works in wine, which I believe it does not) and restore on another computer, but this doesn't replace a sync.
2. Videos do not work. You can get the video portion of
I hope these things shortcomings improve in Picasa, which is officially only version 3.0 on Linux. Picasa really is wonderful.
Photogallery - This is what is was made for... (Score:3, Informative)
http://download.live.com/ [live.com]
Install Windows Live PhotoGallery from the Windows Live Essentials. This is exactly what it is designed for and can do smart tagging.
Even though Win7 doesn't install the 'Essentials' applications, they really are 'Essential' to get the most out of Windows7. There is also a download link for them in the Start Menu, and you can pick and choose what you want easily.
Doing all your tagging via Explorer is functional, but not the optimal way of dealing with Photos in Windows 7. In Photogallery you just drag and drop to tag photos or use the face identification system.
(The June beta of the next generation of Live Essentials and PhotoGallery should be along soon as well with several new tricks that pulls in several of the MS Photo R&D work.)
*Don't waste your time with 'Album' or other tagging software that shoves your photos into their file structure, which is a LOT of them.
Irfanview (Score:1, Informative)
It has mass-batch processing capability including mass visible-watermark-addition capabilities, mass-thumbnailing, mass-resizing/reformatting/file-type-change. Earlier versions - 3.8 is one if I recall - had mass JPEG-comment-editing features. I can't seem to get that to work in 4.23. The current version is 4.27.
It or another program that does the same things is a must have if you are going to be making wholesale changes to a lot of pictures.
Windows. Free as in beer for non-commercial users including home and charities.
http://www.irfanview.com/ [irfanview.com]
Re:Google Picassa (Score:4, Informative)
Re:fototagger (Score:4, Informative)
Last updated 319 days ago and the homepage no longer exists.
Re:Google Picassa (Score:2, Informative)
i forgot to mention... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:fototagger (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Adobe bridge? (Score:5, Informative)
I second that reocmmendation -- I have not found a better tool than lightroom. You'll have to remember to either select the auto-write option or remember to manually sync, and quite oddly it won't let you add geotags -- it'll read them and even gives you nifty Google maps links, but it won't let you edit them; everything else you can, and the sorting and tagging features are superb. Of course it's also a brilliant editor, and not too cheap, but it's one software package I, as an avid amateur photographer, felt was worth every penny.
Re:Adobe bridge? (Score:3, Informative)
IIUC the geotagging has been added in LR 3.
But for those of us still on LR 2 there is the [b]excellent[/b] plugin:
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/gps [regex.info]
Re:Anything that uses XMP should work well. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm using Digikam with more than 15k files. Good program though it lacks some polish here and there.
Re:Google Picassa (Score:2, Informative)
Picasa doesn't store its tagging info locally in each directory; this information is put in the "Program Files"
Um, no. Regular Picasa tags are stored in the file directly using the EXIF information. The exception is the facial tagging; that indeed is stored in the proprietary database.
Re:IPTC, Picasa & Lightroom (Score:5, Informative)
Picasa doesn't store its tagging info locally in each directory; this information is put in the "Program Files"
I'm often surprised by how few people understand how Picasa really works, as this is not the case.
Any potentially 'destructive' changes to a photo are stored in a picasa.ini file in each folder. These changes include rotations, cropping, sharpen, etc. When you view a photo in picasa, it displays with all these changes applied. You can undo a change at any time. Changes are NOT applied to the file on disk until you press 'save'.
To be clear, there is no magic, hidden, or proprietary database; it's just a simple per-directory picasa.ini file. As for backups, if you've backed up the directory including the picasa.ini file, then any non-saved changes will be backed up.
Non-destructive changes, such as captions or tags, are applied immediately to the photo. Again, to be clear, these are applied directly to the photo and can be read by any other photo tool that can read exif data.
The one exception to this is the recently introduced face tagging feature. Unfortunately, Google really messed up with their implementation of this feature. Facial tags are stored in a combination of the picasa.ini file & a central database. I've found the implementation to be quite poor, and I would not recommend using this feature.
Re:Lightroom (Score:3, Informative)
Lightroom, Picasa, Bibble Pro, practically anything on any OS works.
There's an "export version" or similarly named option on almost all modern photo managers that will create a new copy of the selected photo(s) with all of the changes embedded in the new file. It sounds like Mr. Duffy is just making changes in his photo manager, and then trying to upload the original file rather than using the "export version" option. The database system used by most photo managers is to help you preserve Masters of your photos so that you don't accidentally make an irreversible edit. Until we have valuable features like uncropping [youtube.com], the database model that most photo managers use is a much more sane system than simply modifying the original file each and every time an edit is made.
Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery (Score:5, Informative)
SUMMARY OF AVC/H.264 LICENSE TERMS [mpegla.com]
Retail sale - disk or download:
where an end user pays directly for video services on a title-by-title basis...royalties for video greater than 12 minutes (there is no royalty for a title 12 minutes or less) are..the lower of 2% of the price paid to the
Licensee (on first arms length sale of the video) or $0.02 per title
Subscription services:
Where an end user pays directly for video services on a subscription-basis (not ordered or limited title-by-title), the applicable royalties...payable by the service or content provider are...100,000 or fewer subscribers during the year = no royalty; greater than 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers during the year = $25,000; greater than 250,000 to 500,000 subscribers during the year = $50,000; greater than 500,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers during the year = $75,000; greater than 1,000,000 subscribers during the year =$100,000.
Sponsorship
Where remuneration is from other sources, in the case of free television [over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission]...which is not paid for by an End User), the licensee [the broadcaster] may pay...according to one of two royalty options: (i) a one-time payment of $2,500 per AVC transmission encoder...or (ii) annual fee per Broadcast Market starting at $2,500 per calendar year per Broadcast Markets of at least 100,000 but no more than 499,999 television households
In the case of Internet broadcast (AVC video that is delivered via the Worldwide Internet to an end user for which the end user does not pay..for the right to receive or view, i.e., neither title-by-title nor subscription), there will be no royalty during the first term of the License (ending December 31, 2010) and following term (ending December 31, 2015), after which the royalty shall be no more than the economic equivalent of royalties payable during the same time for free television.
The enterprise cap
In the case of the...sublicenses for video content or service providers, the maximum annual royalty ("cap") for an enterprise (commonly controlled legal entities) is...$5 million per year in 2010.
Renewable five-year license
License will be renewable for five-year periods...on reasonable terms and conditions which may take into account prevailing market conditions, changes in technological environment and available commercial products at the time, but for the protection of licensees, royalty rates applicable to specific license grants or specific
licensed products will not increase by more than ten percent (10%) at each renewal
To sum up:
If you are worth less than $2500 to MPEG LA they don't want to hear from you.
[Retail sale of 125,000 Trek Wars disks @ 2 cents a disk]
Under the existing formula, the licensing cost to Apple, Disney, Microsoft or Google for hosting freely distributed H.264 video on the Internet would be capped at $5 million a year.
Chicken feed.
Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery (Score:3, Informative)
How does that refute anything I've said?
A self-hosted file, if it becomes popular, even if it's free, will cost you .02 per download.
There are many people on YouTube with more than 1,000,000 viewers per title, so this is not some figure I pulled out of my ass. Since YouTube absorbs these costs because they host, it doesn't matter to the people who upload videos like KeyboardCat. However, you are completely unprotected if you self-host. Should you be creative enough that something go viral, you are on the hook for $20,000 if you are "lucky enough" to have 1,000,000 downloads.
I don't know about you, but $20,000 to me is not chump change.
--
BMO
Agreed, DNG is key (Score:3, Informative)
I can vouch for the robustness of DNG files. I lost a HDD, recovered most of the files, dumped them back into Lightroom and everything was retained, even my ratings and edit history. DNG is an awesome format.
Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery (Score:2, Informative)
The patent owner has the licensing rights not only to the manufacture of the licensed technology, but also to its sale and mere use. Normally the end user gets a patent license to the use of the technoogy from the manufacturer along with the actual product. In this case the patent license that the end user gets is limited and if you want to legally distribute your videos to large audiences you need to negotiate a more expensive license. Of course the whole system is insane, and it's a shame that it is not enforced very well - if it was, so many people would object that the law would get changed pretty fast.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google Picassa (Score:3, Informative)
It is linked to a Wine library. That makes it installable from Googles repos (Google have repos supporting APT, yum, urpmi, and YAST), a bit better in UI terms, and may be a bit lighter.
Re:Google Picassa (Score:3, Informative)
Its not free, its proprietary.
Yes, I know what you mean, but the point needs to be made in case anyone thinks its open source.
Re:Google Picassa (Score:3, Informative)
Read The DAM Book! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery (Score:2, Informative)
For what it's worth a number of programs support non-destructive rotates. Windows Live Photogallery is one of them.
iTag (Score:1, Informative)
I like iTag (not associated with Apple). It tags images using the IPTC (JPEG) and XMP (JPEG, RAW, TIFF, PNG, AVI, MP4, MP3, and WAV) headers to store tags. I like it because it lets you mass tag as well as Geotag.
The down sides are that it uses .NET, doesn't have a Linux version, and the free version limits you to 3 tags per file.
http://www.itagsoftware.com
Workaround for saveall (Score:2, Informative)
I found this workaround in the support forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=0fc1904e15cc777c&hl=en [google.com]
1. in the upper right search box, search for jpg. (Presumably this will find all your photos)
2. In the upper left, under Albums, you should see a an album called 'Search results for "jpg"
3. Click the album name to enter the album. You should then be able to press the 'save' button to save all changes to disk.
Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery (Score:3, Informative)
If it's a photo of the kids playing tennis, does that go in the "family" folder or the "sport" folder?
Please don't suggest symlinks. Grandma doesn't grok 'em.
GeoSetter (Score:1, Informative)
I tried posting this the other night but it does not look like it went through. I know it is a little diff then what your looking for but it may be worth your while to take a quick look at Geosetter. It was developed for geotagging is great for writing/updating metadata (IPTC/XMP/Exif) and it has a nice interface. You can create templates and run batch files. It also uses Phil Harveys ExifTool as well, as one other person above had mentioned.
It is worth giving it a look.
http://www.geosetter.de/en