Recently, I have been looking for good photo organizing software. I know there are commercial options out their but as an amateur I have already spent over two thousand dollars on equipment (an amount that seems to increase every couple weeks 
) so I don’t really want to spend more money. Because of this I have been looking at the various free photo organizing tools and I haven’t been able to find one that has all the features that I really want.
The features I want seem like they should be very basic. I want to have a program that allows me to import files based on a custom naming scheme that includes fields that are stored in the EXIF data. The software should be able to keep track of things that are useful for searching like events (if there is one), tags, and people in the picture. I want there to be several methods for sharing my photos online including posting to Flickr and a custom website. Finally, the software should run as a native desktop application and NOT as a web service. Photography really needs to be complied because speed DOES matter. It’s fine if you want to share the pictures but not if you need to do any management.
I just finished looking at the open source options and for the most part I haven’t been able to find one that works correctly after the install. Actually, I keep getting stuck at the photo import step because they don’t import the pictures they just look in specific folders. They have no support for uploading photos to Flickr. And they don’t store information for anything and really only show the EXIF which keeps the amount of information down but is completely unsearchable.
The closest I have gotten has been Picasa by Google. The only problems is that it is completely tied into Google services so my Flickr account is useless. The other issue I have is I can’t figure out how it stores it’s tag information so if I do move to another product how can I get my information out of Picasa and into it? Also, it doesn’t seem to support importing photos based on date but it could because I haven’t actually been able to get it to import from an SD card.
I guess my only solution is to look into writing my own software to do this. I would like to add additional features like being able to set up which pictures to have it upload and then upload later and having smart sets (like smart playlists in iTunes). What are the features you really need?
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHere’s where I first recommend iPhoto, but then point out a few more realistic solutions for you
1) Personally, I use iPhoto to manage personal photos that I want to sync to my Apple TV, iPhone, and Flickr. But to import and process photos in bulk for clients I rely heavily on Photo Mechanic. It’s available for Windows and Mac. Photo Mechanic makes it easy to apply meta data in bulk and choose picks. From there, I usually hit the “e” key to open in Photoshop. After editing, I save a final version of the photo that I can give to a client or put in iPhoto. Sounds like a lot of work, but give that I’ve used it for two years now, it’s faster for me than even Lightroom and Aperture.
2) Despite my previous statement, I’ve started using Lightroom at MPS and like it so far. Also cross platform. I think Aperture might be more practical for me once I get a new computer…
3) I hear lots of good things about Picasa — here’s a potential way to upload to Flickr using a Python plugin http://picasa2flickr.sourceforge.net/
4) You could also use Picasa to email photos to Flickr (I think it’s pretty easy to set up)
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