Image Management Software

[steelyman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dixonge My system is still evolving, but it feels like it is finally taking shape. Still haven't touched my videos though. Saving the hardest for last, I guess... After I finish culling, I hope to get my photos/videos down to 200GB. Now if I could just stop *adding* to the collection!

Really nice reply, thanks for posting. You raise several issues/topics that I’ve been encountering. I’m starting from a blank slate which may be an advantage. Trial-and-error seems the rule.

I’ll follow up with specific comments on my experiences/situation and expect I’ll refer to your post while thinking it over (and while the weather goes nuts - chilly here too!).

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman I like the screen saver idea in a frequently-used home location. If I can figure out how to do it, that would be a nice use for my aging-but-functional Chromebook. I’d like it to happen over the home wi-fi network (my primary library sits on a computer on a different floor).

I use gPhotoShow which is a free Windows screen saver. I don't know what options are available for Chromebooks but a quick look shows this one on the Chrome web store that appears to work with Google Photos. If it works like it appears to you could store all of your photos for free in Google Photos (using their very efficient storage algorithm) and access them via Chromebook over wifi.

[steelyman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff I use gPhotoShow which is a free Windows screen saver. I don't know what options are available for Chromebooks but a quick look shows this one on the Chrome web store that appears to work with Google Photos. If it works like it appears to you could store all of your photos for free in Google Photos (using their very efficient storage algorithm) and access them via Chromebook over wifi.

Wow - ask and ye shall find! Thanks for the pointer. As you say, gPhotoShow doesn't appear to work on Chromebooks but Photo Screen Saver is an option that installs as an extension (I just added it). At present, it isn't working when trying to access Google Photos but several users in recent days have reported the error, so I'll just try again later. I have quite a few photos already added in my Google Photos account, almost all "auto-added" by their iOS app courtesy of the Assistant backup. So they're mainly JPG format, as I have older iOS devices.

Only this morning have I learned of a newer format (HEIC?) being used by newer Apple devices and recent iOS versions.

[imoldernu]

Still using Irfanview...

[OldShooter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff I have never warmed to image management programs. My cell phone photos are primarily for short term use - posting to FB, looking at over the short term. My camera photos are largely restricted to vacations (bike tours, etc). When I return from a vacation I process all the images I like from the camera and phones and create an album in Google Photos and Flickr to store and view them. I have also aggregated photos for albums on particular subjects, like old family photos, Scuba diving, etc. Those too go to Google and Flickr. I've never seen a use for something more complicated. Since my PC is sitting in the kitchen where DW, guest,, and I are frequently hanging out, I keep all the vacation albums on the HD and use them as a screen saver. I see my pictures more frequently just hanging around than I ever see them actively.

Yes, no point in using a backhoe to plant a tulip.

But the manager programs offer some advantages even in this simple context. Rating of photos (usually stars or color flags) lets you "cull" lower-rated photos with a filter rather than managing them by hand. Virtual albums is a fairly big deal for us. I occasionally write for a travel magazine and I can make a virtual album that includes all the photos I want to submit with the article. DW always makes Shutterfly picture books of our trips, so a second virtual album selecting different/more photos from the same trip where I am writing an article is really easy. Basically a virtual album is just a list of photos, not copies. They take nearly zero disk space. So any editing changes, for example, automatically show up in the albums. This is very useful for us because after DW has selected her photos, I go through them and tune up any that need it. Virtual albums would be a great way to make kitchen slide shows on various topics, too. Some photos could be in multiple slideshows with out the need to waste disk space on multiple copies.

Speaking of "editing" I think there some misunderstandings in the thread. When someone edits in a program like Lightroom, the original photo is never altered. The editing program makes a "recipe" list of changes and then applies those changes when the photo is exported from the library as, for example, a jpg. In sharp contrast, editors like irfanview and Photoshop can be used in a destructive way. I can pull a jpg into irfanview, crop it, then save it with its original file name and the uncropped original is gone forever. Even if I save my edited photos carefully and separately, I am still eating up disk space with the copies. In some formats, like TIFF, this can become a big deal. The "recipes" that nondestructive editors use, in contrast, take up very little storage space. I will occasionally have a photo where I have recipes for my use, a different recipe for DWs use, and maybe even a black-and-white version. These are called virtual copies and exist only as recipes, not as photo files on disk. When I want an actual photo file processed according to a particular recipe, I just use an export function. This is particularly useful for me when writing a travel article because I can knock the file size down to the much coarser resolution used for printing. Saves space and upload time.

[W2R]

For organizing my images, I don't use software. I just organize them by date in folders with names like "2017 photos", or "scans from 1948-1975". Then inside those folders I have subfolders such as "2017_01_31", and so on. You get the idea.

For processing my images to improve their quality, crop, change size, and so on, I use Paint Shop Pro, for two reasons:

(1) I have been using it since the last century so for me it is as familiar and comfortable as old socks; and

(2) it doesn't require a subscription.

I used a version that I apparently updated to, back in 2000 (v6.02) until this month when I bought the latest 2018 version on CD. The 2000 version just had an installation zip file which I could copy onto a new computer whenever I needed to do so and it still works with Windows 10. But the 2018 version seems to require interacting with their website during installation. I assume that if I uninstall from one computer then I can install on another but haven't done that yet.

If that turns out to be difficult or impossible, I still have the file needed to install the 2000 version again.

[walkinwood]

I use lightroom to organize and edit my photos. It is slow, but works & integrates well with Photoshop.


The images reside in a folder tree - year / month.


The key attribute is "tags" or labels that are attached to each picture that tell me the what where who of the image.



For me, these two aspects (folder tree & tags) is enough to find pictures when I want to. Are there other aspects that you need?



I back up all user data (including images) to the cloud & occasionally to a USB disk.


LR is overkill if you're not doing major editing. I haven't played with the open source program you mention, but my experience with opensource software has been very good (I used mythtv for years as my DVR), but occasionally opensource projects get orphaned and you're stuck with an old version that you'll have to abandon as OS's continue to evolve.

[steelyman]

W2R and walkinwood: the time-based tree structure is what I’m leaning toward. It’s simple and static, even if you’re only making a wild guess at the date of something like an old print now scanned.

I know very well the risk of open source projects being abandoned and it’s a real one, valid. I once was active but now I’m found (or is it FIRE’d?). I’m thinking that understanding features/implementations imposed by a specific piece of software (OSS or commercial) and keeping those separate within the file system may be helpful down the road.

For example, digiKam (not a plug, it’s just what I’m using) creates a few databases specific to that package. That’s where things like some tags, captions, deltas, and so on are stored. The location of the DBs on the filesystem can be independent of the actual image files. Right now in my case that’s not how it is but I’ll soon move things around to achieve that.

[steelyman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman Right now in my case that’s not how it is but I’ll soon move things around to achieve that.

In the spirit of "If not now, when?", I moved things around. It took much less time than I thought it would, less than five minutes. A couple of preferences had to be adjusted within digiKam (one to specify the database location, the other to specify the location for the images). Movement of the files and directories/folders were all drag-n-drop from within digiKam.

So now I have three folders in HOME/Pictures on my iMac: "digiKam" (DBs, currently slightly less than 55 MB, mostly taken by thumbnails), "Photos Library" (Apple's mysterious directory for "Photos") and "Images" (my image files, currently unaccompanied by any additional associated files).

It's a small change but I feel like I'm starting from a cleaner base.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman W2R and walkinwood: the time-based tree structure is what I’m leaning toward. It’s simple and static, even if you’re only making a wild guess at the date of something like an old print now scanned.

Right! If I don't know, but have a hunch, I will use that date. If I don't know and don't have a hunch, then, for example, inside the directory "scans from 1948-1975" I might have a photo that is NOT in a subdirectory, but instead is named "steelyman date unknown" or "steelyman about 1950 or so". For me this homebrew method has worked out pretty well for most photos.

I did all this a few years ago when I bought a photo scanner and scanned in thousands of family photos, for which I have been custodian over many years. It took a week to scan everything in and longer to name and arrange them in a time-based tree.

BUT - - when I was done, I could put all of it on each of three SD cards, which I sent to various relatives. Amazingly, I haven't had to mess with any of this ever since.

If I enhance or alter a photo I just name it with "enhanced" or "cropped" or whatever added to the original name and put it in the same directory as the original.

[steelyman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R Right! If I don't know, but have a hunch, I will use that date. If I don't know and don't have a hunch, then, for example, inside the directory "scans from 1948-1975" I might have a photo that is NOT in a subdirectory, but instead is named "steelyman date unknown" or "steelyman about 1950 or so". For me this homebrew method has worked out pretty well for most photos.

Now this is pretty funny to me and true. Just this morning I scanned three photos (about all I seem to do at one time, it’s so boring). They were delivered in a box a sibling found in a Chicago-area storage shed.

One was a picture of me as a baby. I distinctly remember seeing it at my grandparents home (also Chicago) when we visited them. It was displayed in their home on a cabinet paired with another of them, location unknown although the back of the photo had 1964 on it. The background trees don’t remind me of anything Chicago but who knows?

Maybe I’ll tag it “steelybaby”!

[dixonge]

My Mom, bless her crazy heart, labeled the majority of their photos on the back. Names, places, dates. All go into the file names and/or the metadata. For most of them, I just scanned the front and back using a duplex scanner. That way I can always edit the metadata later and then toss the extra scan. Theoretically.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman Now this is pretty funny to me and true. Just this morning I scanned three photos (about all I seem to do at one time, it’s so boring). They were delivered in a box a sibling found in a Chicago-area storage shed. One was a picture of me as a baby. I distinctly remember seeing it at my grandparents home (also Chicago) when we visited them. It was displayed in their home on a cabinet paired with another of them, location unknown although the back of the photo had 1964 on it. The background trees don’t remind me of anything Chicago but who knows? Maybe I’ll tag it “steelybaby”!

Perfect!!! Or "1964 steelybaby". I'd trust a handwritten date on the back of the photo as long as you look about the right age for that date. Well, unless you are pretty sure it is wrong. It's such a judgment call. I did correct some dates that my relatives put on the backs of photos but only when I was sure they were just guesses and incorrect.

As for location, maybe your family including grandparents went someplace together that year, and the photo was taken there. Like, maybe they drove to a dense forest in Michigan for the weekend, or a park, or something.

[steelyman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman Wow - ask and ye shall find! Thanks for the pointer. As you say, gPhotoShow doesn't appear to work on Chromebooks but Photo Screen Saver is an option that installs as an extension (I just added it). At present, it isn't working when trying to access Google Photos but several users in recent days have reported the error, so I'll just try again later. I have quite a few photos already added in my Google Photos account, almost all "auto-added" by their iOS app courtesy of the Assistant backup. So they're mainly JPG format, as I have older iOS devices.

Happy news this morning: Photo Screen Saver is working on my Chromebook and working well. I think that the fix was done by the developer but I also made a change on my Google Photos page, specifically I created an album and placed about ten photos in it. The Chrome extension asks you to select an album, previously I had none. However, the error that I and others received was code 400 which I think indicates a malformed request.

But whatever the cause and fix were, it's a pleasant thing to have set up and working on a Chromebook! Thanks, donheff!

[target2019]

I use Picasa. The last version is available here and other locations:
https://sites.google.com/site/picasa...latest-version

I recall buying it from a private company, before it became free from Google. Google incorporated it, eventually, into Google Photos. I only use the 3.9 software version, on my old XP system. It works fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa

The software does create a database (db3) which is stored in your %user% account. This is important, as you want to backup, along with your photos. Just yesterday, I read that some have problems with databases which grow large, on SSD drives. Picasa dB holds the thumbnails and face recognition information. Yes, it performs facial recognition, which I find to be an essential feature. With recognition, and a library built on dated, named folders, you do not necessarily need tags. But they can be added if you choose.

I do not use the default location, but have photos on a shared partition, P:/Photo/Photos. Inside this folder are sub-folders, 2010_1002, 2012_0208, etc. When the sub-folder contains notable event, I add a vary short description: 2010_0607 Mike Wedding. One problem which grows over time to bite you is the "incredibly long path name" which I see some users have grown accustomed to. Some users disregard brevity, and over time it will hinder you. (At work, along with very long share path names, some users are naming files with sentences. One cannot see the entire filename, and the files are being truncated when emailed. Stupid user trick!)

Inside the dated folder are re-named jpg's (I don't do RAW). They may be renamed from the camera sequence to something like 2010_0607_001.jpg, and so on.

Yearly, I copy camera photos to a folder, named 2018_iphone, etc. Of course that is a large mess, but you can delete at least half when there is time.

Picasa performs edits in non-destructive fashion. In each subfolder there is a picasa.ini file with the edits. If you want to commit the edits, just save a copy.

Many of the common things you want to do are simple. Select a photo, export, etc. The interface is very simple to learn.

There is a feature to upload to cloud. However, I don't use that much, and the feature may be gone. Like other Google products, this can be tied to your gmail account, so uploaded photos are in your pictures folder. But, I keep masters of everything on my computer.

[steelyman]

Very interesting, both your writeup and workflow. i've quoted but edited your post for brevity.

I'd heard of Picasa and its acquisition by Google but hadn't really paid much attention although apparently as a Google Photos user I'm a Picasa user in a sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 I use Picasa. The last version is available here and other locations: [link removed] I recall buying it from a private company, before it became free from Google. Google incorporated it, eventually, into Google Photos. I only use the 3.9 software version, on my old XP system. It works fine. [text removed] There is a feature to upload to cloud. However, I don't use that much, and the feature may be gone. Like other Google products, this can be tied to your gmail account, so uploaded photos are in your pictures folder. But, I keep masters of everything on my computer.

I've been trying to evaluate options for photo backup to (someone's) cloud and find that there are upcoming changes to Google+ that might shake things up a bit. I'm no expert but it seems that there are API changes that developers will have to adapt/pay attention to, some regarding authentication.

My current situation regarding off-site backup gets the big grade of "F" (have none).

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman I've been trying to evaluate options for photo backup to (someone's) cloud and find that there are upcoming changes to Google+ that might shake things up a bit. I'm no expert but it seems that there are API changes that developers will have to adapt/pay attention to, some regarding authentication. My current situation regarding off-site backup gets the big grade of "F" (have none).

I have recovered data from client computers over the years. I think that my setup for Photos has evolved from that experience.
1) If the photos are scattered through your computer user account, backup and recovery needs more attention. For example, a user account with media folders (mp3, jpg, etc.) is very large. My photos stand alone on a separate internal drive, in a separate partition.
2) I don't have a backup schedule or routine. I do backup, but I am definitely lax compared with others around here, mostly because my backups are not automated. My backups are on a conventional drive inserted to external carrier whenever (like today sounds great!). USB memory has grown so cheap that I can buy another stick and backup to something that can be placed in a safer location.

[steelyman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 I have recovered data from client computers over the years. I think that my setup for Photos has evolved from that experience.

It sounds as if you're active in consulting/supporting (hope that's at least a close guess). Experience is a great teacher, experience with others even better!

Quote:

1) If the photos are scattered through your computer user account, backup and recovery needs more attention. For example, a user account with media folders (mp3, jpg, etc.) is very large. My photos stand alone on a separate internal drive, in a separate partition.

Yes, for sure. My things were/are scattered around, a lot due to scatterbrained placement on my part over time but also a consequence of changing computers and moving/migrating old data. Consolidation is a good thing but takes time and thought.

Quote:

2) I don't have a backup schedule or routine. I do backup, but I am definitely lax compared with others around here, mostly because my backups are not automated. My backups are on a conventional drive inserted to external carrier whenever (like today sounds great!). USB memory has grown so cheap that I can buy another stick and backup to something that can be placed in a safer location.

Right now for me, local backup seems satisfactory using Time Machine to two separate external drives. I'm currently trying to come up with a cloud-based solution for photos. It seems to me that a lot of photos I have or will eventually have scanned in really may not fall into a "must have/keep at all cost!" category, so trimming down what really gets saved off-site could help. Ideally, I want it done automatically on a regular basis (a "cron" job, in Unix-speak).

[SmallCityDave]

Great information.

[CaptTom]

On the question of old data "tagged" to images being ported to new software, to my knowledge there are two non-proprietary ways. I know the file formats (like JPEG) can store data like lat/long coordinates, camera used, date/time taken, and a whole bunch of other parameters.

Less used, but available, are file "forks" (Mac) or "alternate data streams" (Windows.) Basically, the directory structure can hold other data for each file, without changing the original file. I've actually used apps which use this capability, but I get the sense it's not common.

The point is, knowing how the app stores all the "extra" stuff like tags, comments, categories, etc. should go a long way toward knowing if it's portable to another app someday.

That seems like it would be an important consideration. The investment in all that organizing and tagging is pretty large, and I'd hate to be locked into one proprietary system, and at the mercy of one vendor.