What software do you use to organize your photo library? (for Macs)

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>OK, this is a freakin' confusing mess.</p>

<p>Watched the Bridge video tutorial on how to assign keywords to my Pentax PEF's. Pretty simple. Assigned keywords to a PEF by first creating a keyword image describer and placed a check in the box with the PEF selected that had no xmp sidecar because no editing was performed. Did a Mac OS Finder search using the keywords and got nothing. Then I assigned keywords to a PEF that had an xmp sidecar. Did the same search. Nothing. Don't know what I'm doing wrong.</p>

<p>Simply put this is what I want to do. I have a bunch of PEF's with their own xmp sidecars that have the image setting's I've applied but didn't process into tiffs or jpegs. I want to back up these PEF's to CD with their xmp sidecar that will hopefully preserve the ACR exported xmp image settings for later processing. I also want to embed keywords into these sidecars that describe the image and have it searchable by the Mac OS.</p>

<p>Is this possible or do I have to fork over $300 for Lightroom to accomplish this?</p>

<p>Other than that I'll just go back to giving describer names to each file through the Mac Finder leaving the number of the file as the beginning entry.</p>

<p> </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Got the Mac OS to find a test file entering the keywords in Spotlight only after saving PEF to tiff on the desktop. Tried it on a DNG conversion saved to the desktop and couldn't search. </p>

<p>Going to try and see what DNG conversion preference I'm missing that allows embedding of keywords. Now reading Bridge Help on the subject of keywording.</p>

<p>Geez, something so simple made to be so complicated.</p>

[godfrey]

<p>tim,</p>

<p>The Finder isn't designed to read metadata out of image files or XMP files. You search on metadata with Bridge or other image-aware tools. </p>

<p>Godfrey</p>

[lennert]

<p>I would also go for Lightroom. I keep my images like most people by date<br />2009 + 200901 + 20090104-partyX<br />and I put a very short description in the en of the day folders. I am very strict in this. If an events last until the next day, they go into separate folders. (very nasty for new year parties)<br />Next to this, I have my collections. for each event I have a collection.<br />I also add keywords to all images. The structure of the keywords is worth a separate discussion. But don't worry. With lightroom, you can change the structure and content of your keywords very easy on your entire library. 4000 is not that much after all.<br />Good luck with organizing your pics!</p>

[brucecahn]

<p>Picasa</p>

[geirrosset1]

<p>I use iPhoto, for its ease of use, for personal photos. I like how everything just gets organized for me in events. The new features in 09 are also a fun addition to all my personal stuff. Whenever I come across a photo that I deem worthy of a little extra effort I export it and use either Lightroom or Photoshop, depending on wether I just want to do adjustments or adjustmenst AND manipulation. If the photos are from a job I use Lightroom only. That way I keep my personal and work photos separated.</p>

[dmz17]

<p>None. As soon as I finish post processing, I move the files to an external disk. The disks are organised according to a theme (holidays->Cambodia->2008, country->Laos, family, etc). Other folders hold copies from those main folders, e.g. Portraits, Landscapes, HDR, but only copies that are real keepers. I am now using 1TB drives.<br>

Some, special, photos go on DVD. I am not faithful to any one software program, hence I find no value in subscribing to any one method. Being an IT professional I am used to handling files, folders, mounting disks, etc.<br>

Since I use Linux, not Mac or Windows, I have loads of (command line) commands available for searching and sorting.</p>

[bjscharp]

ACDSee Pro to browse and edit.

 

And I use Digital Image Mover to move images from the CF cards, into a year\month-day folder structure. Images are renamed to YYYYMMDD-hhmmss-XX.ext, so that even if I drag them around, I know where it's from.

[christian_odell1]

<p>I do it in a hybrid fashion.<br>

<br /> I have about 20gigs of personal photos which include family, kids, friends, holidays, vacations, etc. I import my photos from the cards, export the keepers to jpg and store the raw files offline on my raid backup. I use ACDsee for viewing, etc.<br>

<br /> For work shoots, I use Lightroom to import them, save the raw keepers to another raid backup (work only) and then use lightroom to manage my files from tweaking to full edits thru CS3. Once I'm done, I export those to tiff and store them on my work raid. Each job is stored by date and title of person/family/product shot. However, I then delete the index files and directories out of LR. If I ever need to view them again, I just ACDsee to look at the tif.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>Godfrey wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>Howard, someone has written a set of tools to do just that. Can't remember offhand what they're called, but they're out there. It is, however, somewhat complex to do queries like that.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think you're probably think of <a href="http://www.imageingester.com/">Marc Rochkind's ImageReporter</a> .</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

 

<blockquote>

<p>tim,<br>

The Finder isn't designed to read metadata out of image files or XMP files. You search on metadata with Bridge or other image-aware tools.<br>

Godfrey</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Godfrey,</p>

<p>Agreed. Looks like I'ld have to upgrade to Leopard to get Spotlight to search keywords embedded in DNG which is the route I was going to take if it meant I could search this way. Here's the link to an Adobe forum discussion that confirms this, see post #11:</p>

<p>http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c06196b?14@48.YwfViaOp1eO@</p>

<p>I just don't like the idea of relying on one application to conduct a search for files years down the road when I've shoeboxed all my images to CD's. If one day several years from now someone or myself wants an image seen in an old gallery on the web or in a print and we're trying to remember from where that was taken years ago, I'm not going to remember the year, date or file number. I may not have access to Bridge or Lightroom at that time and may have to rely on someone else's computer to search for specific files by description. I'm going to need an OS based search be it Windows or Mac.</p>

<p> </p>

[godfrey]

<p>Because Adobe writes the metadata in formats that follow industry standards (per my extensive note above), you will not be locked into just Bridge or Lightroom in the future to retrieve metadata. As these things progress, more and more utilities and features like this will be incorporated into many applications and into basic OS services. We're just not there yet... Worrying about it excessively will not make it happen faster. ;-)</p>

<p>As it is right now, there are quite a number of apps that can digest and present this information, and several that can use it to allow searches and manipulation. This is the state of the industry at present. It is growing quickly. </p>

<p>Godfrey</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>I prefer to place the photos into a folder heirarchy before importing and then import in place into Lightroom as done above. </p>

[malas_fm]

<p>I've needed to organize my digital photos but could never find a software that would actually organize them on folders on my system rather than just organize virtually within a catalog.. Until recently when I came across Nerxy File Organizer <a href="http://www.nerxy.com">www.nerxy.com</a> .. An amazing physical organizer that moves my files into special folders using rules of my choice.. I like them organized by date and this SW simply scans and automatically organizes them easily! I love it and recommend it..</p><div></div>