Photo sorting software - Need help badly!!

[Vea]

Hello everyone,

I have a huge collection of photographs (more or less 5,000) and I'm trying to find a software that will allow me to organize it as efficiently as possible. So far, all the softwares I have tried are very heavy to use since, for most of them, I have to drag every single picture in a category to file them for future searches. It's a long painful process as you can imagine.

Is there a specific software that you are using or that you might suggest that has all their categories already designed and all I would have to do is check the ones that apply to each picture. It would ease the process and make it faster.

The pictures are on a server and they have to be accessed by at least 2 other persons whom I shared them with.

I have tested Picasa, Smart Pix, Studio Line and File maker and they just don't cut it.

A tad desperate,

Vea

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[Mike_E]

You could do that with Adobe Bridge. Have you looked into Adobe Lightroom? I haven't bothered with it but have heard some speak highly of it.

mike

[vladiator]

I realize that I might trying to offer advice to a professional...if my advice is too simplistic please ignore it...your problem might be way over my head. On the other hand...it may help.

Are you sure you want to use categories or tags? Do you have to or you just want to do it that way? I'm only asking because for most people using an efficient folder structure might work better than a collection of tags. It is clear that there are cases when you would want to use tags (when you have to have one picture belonging to multiple categories)...but there are many drawbacks with using tags as well. Here's an article that might help you with these issues: Tags vs. Folders - the great debate

If you have to use tags then Adobe Bridge will probably do the job for you. If you can use folders Faststone's Image Viewer works great for me. I have been using folders for picture organization for years. The key to it is to find a good folder naming convention and to be consistent with it. Here's an example: Folder Naming convention example

To create a folder structure for the 5000 pictures you have you can just use the Date Picture Taken field and create a folder for each event.

I hope this helps.

[Mike_E]

Hi Val, not to be picky or anything but if you look at the top of the post it will tell you how old the post is. Also, if the post is very old and the post count- located under the posters name to the left- is 1 and they haven't posted anything else since, they are probably not coming back.

[passerby]

Hi Val, not to be picky or anything but if you look at the top of the post it will tell you how old the post is. Also, if the post is very old and the post count- located under the posters name to the left- is 1 and they haven't posted anything else since, they are probably not coming back.

I assume the OP poster must have satisfied wiith your answer but forget to say the courtesy word: Thanks!!. Or maybe your help was not good enough so he/she bolt out somewhere else to find better answer.

I have nothing to do at this moment so I just use it to make theories here and there.