Raw Image Storage and access question

[nworbmit]

I need to be better organized with shoots and cataloging raw images.
I shoot several times a week and am finding it hard to find things from the past.

In your opinion,
If price is not a consideration...
Which software offers the easiest way to catalog hundreds of thousands of images?
Lightroom, Bridge, Aperture, or any others.
I'm not interested in Picasa or storing images online.

I'm talking about spanning multiple terabyte hard drives.
Which program can hold together a large collection of images in the easiest, most accessible way?

I want your opinion,
Which works best for you.

Thanks

 

[MTVision]

Lightroom is probably the best bet.

 

[480sparky38 37]

There's more than just cataloging and accessing.

Get yourself a copy of The DAM Book.

 

[Garbz]

Does Lightroom still run slower than cold molasses flowing uphill when the database gets massive?

I use Lightroom for my daily editing of RAWs, and save JPEGs.
I sort through my many many thousands of JPEGs using Google's Picasa. It seems to work quite well.

 

[KmH]

For 'hundreds of thousands' of images you may need to look at enterprise/commercial grade image database management solutions, like Phase One Media Pro (used to be Microsoft Expression Media). photo management software
Lightroom and Aperture can only open 1 catalog at a time, and can only be accessed by one user at a time.

Bridge is a browser, not a database manager.

 

[SCraig]

You might take a look at Daminion. I have been using some software named "PicaJet FX" for the past couple of years and presently have around 50,000 records in the database. It performs reasonably well at this point so I've had no real reason to look for something better. My criteria for a cataloging utility was to be able to set up categories of shots (i.e. People, Places, Animals, etc.) and assign photographs to those categories. I have no use for "Star" ratings (on star through 5 stars) or color-coded references or anything like that. I wanted textual categories that mean something to me.

Apparently PicaJet has gone the way of the Dodo and been replaced by Daminion. To be honest I've downloaded Daminion but never really worked with it that much so I don't really know how suitable it would be. At present it is freeware and still a beta version, but from what little I've used it it seems to be pretty stable. I think the web site stated that it would be freeware until the first production release was achieved. The first production release is scheduled to be 1.0.0 and they are on version 0.9.5B now.

It might be something worth looking into though.

 

[MLeeK]

Lightroom is designed for cataloging. That's where it's power is. If you have PHotoshop, Adobe Bridge does the same thing, just not as intuitively as Lightroom.