# Cataloging



## mikejkay (Sep 10, 2013)

Can anyone point me in the direction of a simple program that can tag photgraph files with things like subject, location and EXIF data? Not hugely expensive, in fact freeware/shareware would be preferable!


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## cid (Sep 10, 2013)

what do you consider to be simple?

My vote goes to Adobe Lightroom  It's not freeware nor shareware, it's about 100 eur, but it's totaly worth it


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## Jim Saunders (Sep 10, 2013)

Photo Mechanic?

Jim


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## mikejkay (Sep 10, 2013)

Cid...........as simple as me! Basically I want to be able to annotate and sort my photos and then be able to search on subject, location etc.


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## mikejkay (Sep 10, 2013)

Photo Mechanic looks as though it might don the job. Thanks for that.


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## mikejkay (Sep 14, 2013)

Tried AD/DC - no good
Tried Photo Mechanic - no good
Tried Picasa - discarded because of the limited number of tags allowed and because of the peculiar tree structure.
Now trying My Photo Index which seems to do what I want it to. 
In an ideal world I want to be able to go into Windows Explorer, right click on a photo and have a drop down list of tags with tick boxes that I can select. I then want to be able to search on the tags.
Simples........no.


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## gferdinandsen (Sep 14, 2013)

cid said:


> what do you consider to be simple?
> 
> My vote goes to Adobe Lightroom  It's not freeware nor shareware, it's about 100 eur, but it's totaly worth it



+1


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## KKCFamilyman (Sep 14, 2013)

Try power exif editor by opanda


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## Lichtgestalt (Sep 14, 2013)

mikejkay said:


> Tried AD/DC - no good
> Tried Photo Mechanic - no good
> Tried Picasa - discarded because of the limited number of tags allowed and because of the peculiar tree structure.



ROTFL... so if you search a free tool you better reduce you expectations!

try LR it´s a good DAM solution for a single workplace.




> In an ideal world I want to be able to go into Windows Explorer, right click on a photo and have a drop down list of tags with tick boxes that I can select.



with a growing keyword database it´s not that easy anymore.. a "dropdown menu" will not cut the cake.


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## Click (Sep 14, 2013)

Another vote for Adobe Lightroom.


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## gbchriste (Sep 14, 2013)

I'm a software engineer and in working to manage customer/user expectations, we have a saying - almost an axiom, actually: "You can get it cheap, you can get it fast, you can get it right/good. Pick any two. Getting all three is not an option."

Lightroom is the way to go my friend. At $79.00 it is eminently affordable and while I'm not familiar with any of the freeware/shareware options, I'd bet my next mortgage payment that it will blow the socks off any thing you're going to find that you don't have to pay for.


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## Orangutan (Sep 14, 2013)

mikejkay said:


> In an ideal world I want to be able to go into Windows Explorer, right click on a photo and have a drop down list of tags with tick boxes that I can select. I then want to be able to search on the tags.



As far as I can tell, you can do the searching but not the tagging with Windows Explorer. See this link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965711%28v=vs.85%29.aspx Here's an example query: _tags:"january 2013*"_

Also, maybe Digikam: http://www.digikam.org/node/700


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## mikejkay (Sep 14, 2013)

In reply to Lichtgestalt AC/DC photo manager is not free neither is Photo Mechanic. I don't want some bloated, complicated software, I want a simple program to do a simple job.

My Photo Index allows for nested tags but this requires multiple clicks. Before anyone pops up to say I'm lazy, they are right I am lazy but I've also got 14 years worth of digital photos to deal with!

I envisage that on clicking on a photo in Windows Explorer the photo appears as a thumbnail which would leave the est of the screen for tags and click boxes and maybe even a free form text box.

Also, $79 is approximately £50. Unfortunately American software companies seem to use the reciprocal of the exchange rate when pricing for the UK. I haven't been able to find Lightroom (5) for less than £95 in the UK.


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## mikejkay (Sep 15, 2013)

Orangutan - thanks for pointing me to Digikam. I've had a look and unfortunately I don't think that it fits the bill. The program requires that either you put all your images into a Digikam folder(s) or that you make duplicates and I simly do not have the space even with two 1TB drives on my laptop. Also, it seems to be very flaky, crashed twice within the space of a few minutes. I don't want to go through all the angst of catalogging my collection only to find that the program loses files/folders or is unreliable or in some way limited.


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## Lichtgestalt (Sep 15, 2013)

mikejkay said:


> In reply to Lichtgestalt AC/DC photo manager is not free neither is Photo Mechanic. I don't want some bloated, complicated software, I want a simple program to do a simple job.



i am well aware they are not free.
that´s why i wrote that you have to reduce your expectations for FREE software... if you get what i mean. 

or in other words, when these apps are not good enough, you will (imo) have a hard time finding a freeware program that´s good enough.

you seem to have very specific expectations, as all mentioned programs are not your taste.

one thing to keep in mind thought, when you have a lot of images to catalog it is better to have a program that helps you keywording. a simple tool like you mentioned may look good at first glance. but when you have to do 5x more clicks it´s not economic. 
and £95 .... what is your time worth? 

LR for example has a few features that helped me a lot to keyword my dia scans (18000+ dias scanned and keyworded over the periode of 3 years).

my keyword list is sure not the biggest but it has grown to 12000+ keywords.
it´s nice to organize keywords in sets. LR offers suggestions based on other keyworded images etc.

trust those who have done keywording for a while. 

anyway... good luck in your journey.


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## mikejkay (Sep 15, 2013)

Lichtgestalt - My Photo Index seems to fit the bill, I've been playing with it this weekend. I don't anticipate having several thousand keywords/tags and, like LR, MPI allows tags to be nested. MPI also allows you to select multiple photos using the usual MS ctrl/shift click and then drag a tag to the nearest selected photo and all the selected photos are tagged. One click per tag. Just repeat for each tag. I don't know yet how many tags are allowed per photo but I'm sure that I'll find out. I'm up to five at the moment and this is enough. So far I am very pleased with MPI.

MPI doesn't identify RAW photos but will open CRW and CR2 files. As the JPEG and RAW are set out in order it's easy to see which is which. I have my RAW photos in a sub-directory of a specific group. More importantly the database is an mdb file and is not huge, nor is a separate copy of the imported photos kept. My main concern now is that I spend a lot of time tagging years of saved photos only to find a nasty bug lurking in the background.

For a freeware program MPI is absolutely brilliant. I don't agree at all that you have to pay for a program for it to be good. For example Firefox and Thunderbird are, and always have been superior to IE. With a commercial product there is pressure to develop to the point of the program becoming unweildy and bloatware. There's plenty of rubbish out there. The current trend for annual charges for software isn't going to help.

Many thanks for your help and to everyone else.

P.S. I tried to download a trial copy of LR but wasn't able to.


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 15, 2013)

mikejkay said:


> I've also got 14 years worth of digital photos to deal with!
> 
> Also, $79 is approximately £50. Unfortunately American software companies seem to use the reciprocal of the exchange rate when pricing for the UK. I haven't been able to find Lightroom (5) for less than £95 in the UK.


Are you aware that you can download Lightroom from an American online store and pay American price?
Where I live Lightroom costs $250 ... so I bought it online from B&H and paid only $79 ... just look for special deals that come by and you can buy it at $79 ... I think it is well worth the money for your 14 years of invaluable efforts.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 15, 2013)

Rienzphotoz said:


> mikejkay said:
> 
> 
> > I've also got 14 years worth of digital photos to deal with!
> ...


 
I agree, Lightroom is excellent at managing photos, but it is a even better editor. Download it, take the online lessons, and try it. It is not something that you can learn by trial and error, its very powerful, and you need to learn what it can do to make your life simpler. It was developed using input from professional photographers who may have millions of photos to track, it can handle any job.

Many people download it and giver up because they don't learn to use it efficiently or even understand what it can do. Don't fall into that trap.


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## mikejkay (Sep 16, 2013)

Buy from the US? Not currently. Then there are delivery charges, UK VAT and import duty although I presume that these won't apply if I download the software. Brings up another problem. Would I be able or even allowed to burn a copy of the software to CD?


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## aj1575 (Sep 16, 2013)

I'm using apple aperture. It does also a very nice job at cataloging photos.


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## Lichtgestalt (Sep 16, 2013)

aj1575 said:


> I'm using apple aperture. It does also a very nice job at cataloging photos.



but difficult for him to use with a windows pc....


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 16, 2013)

mikejkay said:


> Buy from the US? Not currently. Then there are delivery charges, UK VAT and import duty although I presume that these won't apply if I download the software. Brings up another problem. Would I be able or even allowed to burn a copy of the software to CD?


Yes! ... you can download the software and are "allowed to burn a copy of the software to CD" or copy it on to a USB stick for your future personal use ... it doesn't matter if you want to burn a million copies of that software, what matters is the activation code, which is meant to be used only by you to activate Lightroom.


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## mikejkay (Sep 16, 2013)

Rienzphotoz - thanks for that. I will see if I can get an evaluation copy of LR and have a go.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 16, 2013)

mikejkay said:


> Rienzphotoz - thanks for that. I will see if I can get an evaluation copy of LR and have a go.


I'd verify that you can buy it from Adobe online from outside the USA using US dollars. The credit card you use and your IP will tell them where you are, and if they restrict purchases, you will have to try a different route.


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 17, 2013)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> mikejkay said:
> 
> 
> > Rienzphotoz - thanks for that. I will see if I can get an evaluation copy of LR and have a go.
> ...


First I downloaded the evaluation copy of Lighroom from Adobe USA without any problem (the site asked me to choose the country in the drop down menu and I choose USA) ... before the free trail period got over I purchased lightroom from B&H online store, using a credit card issued in Qatar ... after that I got an email within minutes with the activation code and I activated, my copy of lightroom free trial version, with that code without any problem whatsoever (in the past I had also purchased lightroom 3 & 4 online from USA ... lightroom 3 was purchased using a credit card issued in India) ... see the attached screen shot from B&H online store (right now the price is $149 ... but there have been deals for $99).


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