How to index photo ?

<p>After years of amateur event photo shooting, I have tons of digital photo shooting from various social events, business cocktail receptions, school sport days, trade shows, concerts...etc. I store all of them in external hard drive but I am thinking to set up a searching system like photo libray. Is there any freeware that can help ? I know to rename each one of them is a painful job but I need a smart way to get it start. For example, if I need to search all photo about Mr. John Smith in annual Cancer Society fundraising banquet. I punch in key words like "John", "Smith" or "Cancer Society" will bring them up. <br>

Any advice from experts ?</p>

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<p>Hi Hoi ...<br>

I have over 9,000 photos and they are all indexed using Photoshop Elements 7.0. It is excellent since you can name your photos based on a trip you took, a particular event, as well as add the names of the people in the photo.<br>

You can then create photo albums photos that have already been named as described above.<br>

If you have any kind of an IT background, the indexing feature has many characteristics of a relational database.<br>

I sometimes use Photoshop Elements to process photos but my favorite is Adobe Lightroom 2 for processing RAW files. Lightroom also has an indexing function but I find it somewhat awkward to use compared to Elements ... but then, someone else might find Lightroom great for indexing ... might be a matter of personal taste.<br>

Hope this helps !<br>

Ray<br>

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<p>Here is how I do it. I have about 70,000 shots, all of them works of art of course. :)</p>

<p>I give all the files from a day's shoot a simple name. Wedding 001 etc.<br>

Then I put them into a folder using the day's date eg 2009-05-15, That folder is in a folder 2009-05 and that one is in the 2009 folder.<br>

I save the days work in the folder (2009-05-25 in this case) on a cd or dvd and number the disk. I usually can get a few days on a disk.<br>

Now I use Filemaker Pro but you could use almost any simple database using the disk number as the record name. In a text field is the folder name and the names of the event, people things etc. I can search on that field. <br>

Works for me so far.</p>

<p>Thank you Raymond. I only have PS Element 6, does it work for me ?<br>

And Errol, I'm using the similiar filing system as yours. But if I want to pick picture of John Smith or Mary Rose among a few shots of them in different occasions, it is impossible to go through hundreds of folders. <br>

Just wonder if there is a simple way to sort, to file and to store. </p>

<p>Hi Hoi ...<br>

Don't know about Elements 6 ... I went from Elements 3 to version 7. I purchased the Photoshop and Premiere Elements version 7 package. The Premiere Elements as you most likely know is for video. In my digital weddings, I always deliver a DVD with a selection of photographs, composites, arrangements etc ... all set to music and so the reason for Elements 7.</p>

<p>As mentioned previously, I use Lightroom 2 for RAW processing but before Lightroom I was using Photoshop CS2.</p>

<p>As for the indexing and your question to Errol: in the Elements indexing, assuming that you had each photograph where Mary Rose appeared labeled with Mary Rose, similarily for photographs with John Smith.</p>

<p>If you click on Mary Rose, all the photographs with Mary Rose will be displayed and this almost instantly/sub-second. Now, if you clicked on Mary Rose AND John Smith, ONLY those photographs where Mary Rose AND John Smith appear together will be displayed. </p>

<p>Click on Mary Rose AND John Smith AND another name - let's say Hoi Kwong - only those photographs where Mary Rose, John Smith and Hoi Kwong appeared would be displayed ... and if there were no such photographs, then none would appear.</p>

<p>For me, that's a WOW.<br>

Ray</p>

 

<p>You can write IPTC info in the keyword area of the meta data with Irfan View for free and then use Picasa 3 for free as your database organizer and to search the IPTC data with keywords like"cancer society..John Smith..name the image with key word as to what it is ..I have thousands and thousands of images I search daily with Picasa, and with the IPTC and use of keyword I can pull them up easily..if you want a better grade of software that write the meta data and do searches use Photo Mechanic..you will have to down load the plugins for Irfan View to use IPTC and EXIF and caption meta data , this works great and I can find specific files if I have put in the IPTC data .</p>