Organizing pictures

[AlbertP]

I'm awash in images and videos from my video camera. MP3 files, too.

Is there a program that can help me catalog all of this stuff so that I can actually find what I have?



Thanks.

[Paul Shields]

Not sure which platform you're using, but I've recently been trialling a few on the Mac.

Photo Mechanic and Portfolio seem to me to offer the most extensive feature set. PM is my current fave and I may well justify buying the full package. Portfolio is quite a bit deeper but is more of a cataloguer (where's the spell checker gone?) - if your underlying folder structure is a mess then Portfolio will nicely hide that and present a virtual view of your photos. PM is more organised in that it 'ingests' your memory cards etc into a specified folder and applies a view on top of that. Probably not explaining this very well, but they're both very easy to use... I also think iPhoto is a pretty powerful organiser and is 'free' with the latest OS - just wish it could handle RAW better...

Also, been messing around with Picasa2 the free organiser from Google - very pretty and fast. Wish there was a port for OS X.

[Alice Morrison]

I tried photomechanic on the recommendation of someone here, and I was unimpressed.

It did not seem conducive to using the keyboard for navigation, something that's a must for me.

[Paul Shields]

Originally Posted by Alice Morrison

I tried photomechanic on the recommendation of someone here, and I was unimpressed.

It did not seem conducive to using the keyboard for navigation, something that's a must for me.

funny you say that - the reason I preferred Photo Mechanic is that it skips through images using the cursor keys, and closed down zoom windows with the escape key. Portfolio expects you to click the relevant buttons with the mouse. I always prefer to use the keyboard to navigate and hate having to move to the mouse to perform a basic action.

[deluco]

You may also want to post this in File Organization under Workflow.