A File-Centric Photo Manager?

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."

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[pipatron]

Merely whining about an obvious tongue-in-cheek comment and taking it seriously, is just wooosh.

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[snugge]

I think it's exellent that the app does not alter the *original files* as the default setting.

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[nmb3000]

I think it's exellent that the app does not alter the *original files* as the default setting.

How many people do you really think want transformations like rotations only applied as metadata in some unknown database someplace? When my mother clicks "rotate left" she wants the photo rotated, not some bit twiddled in Picasa's database record for that image. If she uses Windows' interface to print the photo or emails it to a friend, it is the rotated image she cares about.

Not only that, but if you are backing up your photos to an external source like a good user, imagine the frustration when years of transformations, edits, tags, etc are all lost when you recover from a failed hard drive using your backup. You did everything right, but because you didn't include some hidden little .dat file buried in your profile as part of the backup you lost hundreds of hours of work.

Modifications to the files should be applied to the files. Metadata should be stored in the files. To do either otherwise is asking for problems.

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[Nerdposeur]

I *like* the fact that the changes aren't saved in the file immediately - it gives me infinite undo, even months later. And if I click the save icon on a folder, it *does* save the changes in the files, and makes backups, too. Best of both worlds, I think.

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[Cytotoxic]

I actually agree with both methods. I don't want my files destructively altered by my photo cataloging software. I also don't want to lose my hours of work.

Having used Picasa extensively since it was purchased by Google, I have suffered the lost hard drive issue - losing all of my folders that had taken years to put together - with 50k+ photos, that's no joke. It was a royal pain in the ass. The picasa backup tool brought back all of the photos, and something of a database of folders and faces, but hopelessly corrupted so that I had thousands of "faces" in the wrong file or wrong location on the file, all labeled "unknown".

I want to have my cake and eat it too... a file format that holds all of the meta data, is completely portable, even across platforms and applications, never makes destructive changes to the original data and yet displays the rotated, cropped and edited photo, complete with faces and names. Oh, and let's keep the information about people's identities secure, unless I chose to release it, but make sure that it can tie out to any other face management system. Crap, I think I just specified my way out of any real product.

Re:fototagger

[Anonymous Coward]

Picasa is spyware, and Lightroom costs money..

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[MartinSchou]

Well, thankfully some (quite a lot actually) of us live in "communist" countries, where such blatant attempts at blackmail will be laughed out of court.

Some of us even live in countries, where the lawyer representing the MPEG-LA is likely to have his or her knuckles used as target practice for the judge's gavel.

See - not only did we not sign any contract with the MPEG-LA, nor do software patents apply, but if we've bought a product in good faith, any patent breach that might apply is going to fall on the head of the manufacturer, i.e. the company that made the camera - not us. And since any camera that can record video is designed to ... what's the term ... record video, we will always be in good faith, even if we record more than 12 minutes and turn it into a movie.

But hey - if that means we can't publish or visit the US without getting sued in the US - well, that's their loss, not ours.

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[quadrox]

I never understood - why not create a container format that can store all this stuff?

Something like the XMP sidecar files, embedding the actual image/raw file, and leaving space for software specific XMP extensions.

Re:Windows Live Photo Gallery

[ultranova]

Since when does patent override Copyright on pure content?

Since when that allows a corporation to screw you over more effectively, the same as with all other Intellectual Property laws, and with all laws if we really think about it.