Software to tag and retrieve photos easily

suas

Hi all,

We have around 40 Gig of photos stored on a shared drive on the server. We need some kind of software to live on the server to tag photos with. Ideally this would be accessible through a browser, although that might not be possible.

Does anyone have any software suggestions?

Many thanks!!!

Roen

What OS is on the box?

suas

The OS is Windows Small Business Server 03...

Thanks!

Roen

Whoops, well seeing as it's on a network share it doesn't really matter what OS is on the server. I don't know what I was thinking.

Anyway, as long as you have access to the images from an xp or vista box on the network you can use a number of pieces of software to do it.

I'm sure others can chip in with their solutions but I think my initial idea of Lightroom may be a little on the overkill side. It's €300 and if you're just going to use it to tag images only it's a bit of a waste of money as it can do a whole lot more.

The one thing that Lightroom can do is export it's catalogue so it's easily backed up and replicated but in truth once the batch tagging is done then you probably won't have a lot of use for the app.

I know a few people here use various other batch editors to do their tagging, hopefully it shouldn't be too long before one of them chimes in.

suas

The thing is that I'd like the databasing/indexing etc to be done be some software that lives on the server - and then allow people to search through, edit tags and add new images through a browser interface.

Perhaps the browser interface is too much to ask for - but we can't be the first people to come across this problem and I thought that there would be a nifty solution already in place.

I came across Picajet, but I don't know if it has any network aspect to it at all, but it does look easy to use.

Surely other people have shared drives full of photo/video that they use tagging to keep track of?

The key requirement is that it's easy for someone to quickly find photos on a particular topic/event from the network share.

CraggyIslander

try thumbplus from http://www.cerious.com their pro version does all you need and can access shared network databases (for fileinfo, tags, etc, etc)

They also have a web version to go with it: http://www.cerious.com/tpwcs.shtml

suas

Maybe it's just me but thumbplus looks like an old interface and I'm wondering if it's the best out there.

This thread has been sitting here for a while, I wonder if anyone would have any other suggestions this time around, please?

Morrisseeee

Picassa is free but I don't know how it fares in a Network access/set-up scenario.

AnCatDubh

How about more of a Gallery type of system ie. application rather than something running at operating systems level.

What i'm thinking of here is something like Coppermine - http://coppermine-gallery.net/

It is free (GPL) too so excellent value - not sure of the skill base in your company that you might need to get someone to install for you so there may be a cost there.

DarrenG runs an instance on his system and opens it up to boards users for our challenges when they run each month.

The feature list is comprehensive: (copied from their home page)

* arrangement of pictures in categories and albums;
* picture information stored in database;
* users can upload pictures with web interface of ftp (and admin can batch-add to database);
* full multimedia support
* creation of thumbnails and intermediate size pics;
* search feature;
* last added;
* random picture;
* user management (private galleries, groups);
* integration of user management with various bbs (like phpBB, YaBB SE, SMF, Invisionboard, vbulletin);
* caption, title, description and user defined fields for each picture (searchable);
* easy install (installer provided);
* multi-lingual:
* user comments;
* e-card feature;
* slideshow viewer;
* all features customizable with web interface (admin section);
* template system;
* user membership in multiple groups;
* upload approval notice for admin;
* EXIF/IPTC support;
* language selection option in template;
* image rotation;
* multi-pic upload;
* separation of the breadcrumb block so that it can be placed independently of category in the template;
* option to choose max height or width for thumbnails will help in creating nicer looking thumbnail rows and cols;
* option to display a clickable flimstrip of thumbnails below the image display;
* option to show first level albums of a category instead of just statistics of the category;
* option of turning on OR off the showing of "Private" Icon to unlogged / unprivileged user;
* title option to sort in albums;
* online help feature for the admin pages;
* plugin-API;
* English as a fallback language for un-translated entries in language files;
* password-protected albums;
* more admin-settable user profile fields;
* picture-resize on upload;
* bbs integration settable with a wizard-like user interface;
* advanced search (boolean operators);

I only use it myself as a user on web sites that I frequent but it appears quite useful and from what I can see is quite configurable - in fairness I personally find the user interface takes a little getting used to but once you are there it is fine.

There may be other gallery systems out there that other members will have experience of and could recommend if this was the type of thing you were trying to achieve. If not the type of thing then apologies

Hope that helps.

Covey

Irfanview.

It's free and as good if not better than lightroom.

Not a browser though.

T.

Borderfox

I use windows photo gallery in Vista to apply tags and they follow the file wherever it goes

suas

Thanks to everyone for their advice.

Just to re-iterate the need - I'm looking for software that will make it easier for people in the office to find good photos based on tags that we apply. All of our photos have been re-organised into a new folder structure and I've come up with a rating system and a list of tags.

The photos are stored on a network share, and each of the client computers will have to access the same master copies of each. Each client will have to be able to add in a batch of photos and tag them with the subject etc. Some photos will be tagged as 5-star etc, and all of this functionality has to be available to everyone that is a client. Ideally, the list of available tags would be controlled by the adminstrator.

I've looked into everything that was suggested and can rule out some options for the reasons below:

Picasa Doesn't do tagging, at least not in an easy way that I can see.

Irfanview Great software, but not appropriate for this probem.

Coppermine I'm not looking to display them on-line, and it seems more designed for that.

Cerious Thumbsplus Possibly an option, the old style of the interface does make me think that it might not be the best out there, but I'll be downloading a trial version

Windows Photo Gallery Looks very good, it would be easy to point each persons client to the network share, but we are running XP and it appears to be a part of Vista. Other than that, it looks like a great fit.
Any more softwares like this?

AnCatDubh

suas wrote: »

Coppermine I'm not looking to display them on-line, and it seems more designed for that.

It would mean running them on an Intranet (which could be running on your windows server) - it would appear like a regular web site but work internally with no publication to the outside world.

suas

I see where you're coming from now. It certainly would seem to have the features we're looking for.
*users can upload pictures with web interface of ftp (and admin can batch-add to database)
*full multimedia support
*caption, title, description and user defined fields for each picture (searchable);

The setup/maintenance of it would be beyond us though, I wouldn't know how to get started. Still, maybe I could get someone in to do that bit if it was worth it, long term. I'm generally shy to adopt a software solution that we can't maintain in-house though.

It's certainly in the running again, now that I've realised you meant an internal website. Apologies for being a bit dumb!

EDIT: It seems like if you know what you're doing when it comes to webservers, then Coppermine isn't that hard to get up and running http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/319239.html

bp_me

suas wrote: »

The setup/maintenance of it would be beyond us though, I wouldn't know how to get started. Still, maybe I could get someone in to do that bit if it was worth it, long term. I'm generally shy to adopt a software solution that we can't maintain in-house though.

The gallery stuff is pretty handy to setup.

Google for WAMP server. Its a free piece of software that creates a virtual webpage server wherever you install it.

If you do a search for gallery2 install it will take you through the WAMP setup process. There should be install docs on the coppermine website too.

Administration is very easy through a control panel.

You would then access by typing http://serveripaddress/sitename into your internet browser.

suas

That does seem promising, but even though it's probably easy when you know how, I've had a few bad experiences trying to install stuff that's out of my league, particularly when unexpected things happen.

Can anyone that's using Coppermine please tell me if the following workflow is possible with it?

***************

Someone comes in the office with a CD full of photos from a particular event. We slot the CD in, and log into coppermine. Select all the photos, and using some drop downs, add appropriate tags covering the location, the event, the activity.

Then, some photos are picked out as 5-star, based on criteria we have selected. The individual photos are tagged with this extra rating tag.

Hit 'done' and then all of the photos are searchable through the Intranet interface.

Months later, we're looking for a good photo of that same event, so I do a search for the activity and filter to include 5 star photos only.

The results are displayed and I can download the photo to my local machine or see the file path so that I can easily attach it to an email.

*************

Obviously, a lot depends on the rating criteria, but just ignoring that for the time being, can Coppermine do the above?

Would anyone that's running it at the moment be generous enough to let me look at how they have it set up?

CraggyIslander, would Thumbsplus be better suited and why/why not?

thanks all

JDxtra

Yes, Picasa is network aware and will happily work with shared storage. It stores a small ini file in each folder with the tag info which all the client PCs can read.

suas

Thanks to you both. I was very interested to see how Picasa has brought tags into V3, but it isn't quite what we have in mind.

If anyone is new to the thread, at the moment I'm trying to compare Coppermine and Thumbsplus (plus any others I haven't heard of) for carrying out the workflow in post 16.

duffarama

I didn't know picasa 3 could tag, must check this out when I get home

CraggyIslander

I havent used the thumbsplus network client yet, but tit would certainly handle the workflow you describe.

I do agree the interface is bit old skool, but it's the best I've found so far for managing large amounts of images... A comparable product would be ACDSee, however ACDSee has crap database management.

For instance once thumbnails have been created and you adjust the size of the thumbs ACDSee will regenerate all thumbnails (as you browse folders) at the new size, leaving the old ones in place.... so your database explodes in size and performance goes down the pan. Thumbsplus just scales the existing thumbnail, so no regeneration hit and no database bloat.

APACHE will run on a low spec debian box and requires little maintenance. It will create a complete webserver that can be restricted to a single IP. For example: 192.168.0.166/photos/

Pop on SAMBA of sshfs and the linux box can then talk to anyother box on the network.

There is more to it then this but I have pretty much zero technical skills and am running a very similar set up.

From there you can run Coppermine etc.

Note: all of the above is free! (apart from the box to run APACHE on)

ablelocks

photology

also check out pictomio

I haven't used either, or any tagging software for that matter. One of these days I'll get organised.

suas

Thanks for the suggestions. Photology sure looks sharp. We'll check it out later. Same for pictomio.

We've downloaded Thumbsplus and are testing it out. It is quick. It calls tags 'keywords' and we can assign them to a batch of photos in one particular folder.

Do you know, is there a way to assign a tag to all photos in a folder and in all sub folders of that folder? i.e. a hierarchy of tags?

8kvscdpglqnyr4

This gets my vote as the best photo organisation software. AFAIK it's available on XP also even though I use it on windows.
The tags get stored in the EXIF data of the image on the server so each user will see the same tags.

Can also upload and resize directly to flicky from within the application (only the LIVE version). Brilliant!

CraggyIslander

suas wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions. Photology sure looks sharp. We'll check it out later. Same for pictomio.

We've downloaded Thumbsplus and are testing it out. It is quick. It calls tags 'keywords' and we can assign them to a batch of photos in one particular folder.

Do you know, is there a way to assign a tag to all photos in a folder and in all sub folders of that folder? i.e. a hierarchy of tags?

If you rightclick on the folder, theres an option to 'view childfolders' (or similar) that will give all photos including those in subfolders

suas

Just an update on this. We tried Thumbsplus DB, but that didn't work for us.

In testing, it was installed on the server. Then the client was installed on one computer, and some keywords set up.

But then, the client was installed on another computer, and IT DIDN'T SEE ANY KEYWORDS - which means that they keywords live in a db on the client computer and not the server or the exif and as such it isn't suitable for us.

We still haven't found anyone with the skills to install Coppermine.

However, a new office volunteer heard about this problem and suggested fotostation.

Crispin

Try digikam, it's open access software that functions pretty much like lightroom. I can't afford the 300 euro layout for the adobe software so I am using it. It's linux based but you can now use it on windows (I am)

suas

I had a brief look at it - but I don't think it's going to allow a group of us to share a resource of photos, and tag them in the way that we want.

We don't need to do any photo editing, we just need to be able to easily retrieve photos with keyword/rating searches from our massive library.

Cameraman

Most of the keywording software out thre is designed for single-user access.

Have a look at this - might be useful :

http://www.extensis.com/en/digital-asset-management/index.jsp