Software for organising pictures

floyd333

I’m starting a project to organise out all my pictures. I have GB’s worth of pics on various hard drives.

I’m looking for some software to manage my pictures. Basically I want something to categorise, tag and organise files.

I did look at Picasa years ago. I wasn’t overly impressed with it.I ‘m looking for something simple and quick. I saw one product called ACD on the web. It seems to be more geared to photo editing?

Any Suggestions?

Paulw

Adobe Lightroom is probably the best. 30 day free trial to see if it does what you need.

5uspect

I'm not a fan of Lightroom - its like a creaky bloated version of Camera RAW with creaky and bloated Bridge bolted on.

I just use Finder on my Mac. I've got everything (mostly RAWs) organised on a NAS with annual directories with each 'event' in it's own directory. Every so often I rsync the NAS Photos folder to a backup drive. Finder lets you tag files if that's your thing and has native support for RAW formats. I keep jpeg copies locally for quick access.

floyd333

Thanks Folks. I want a windows desktop tool. I'm not keen on putting my files in the cloud. Lightroom seems to be cloud based...

Paulw

No, Lightroom is a local application, to sort local files. The subscription is in the cloud, so you pay a monthly fee for the license. Nothing else is cloud based.

Balfey1972

I use Lightroom as well. Great piece of software for editing and cataloging files.

Paulw wrote: »

No, Lightroom is a local application, to sort local files. The subscription is in the cloud, so you pay a monthly fee for the license. Nothing else is cloud based.

BailMeOut

Op - note Picasa is no longer available anyway.

The default photo app in Windows 10 is pretty decent.

JDxtra

Lightroom - by far your best choice here.

gloobag

Photo Mechanic - I don't use it myself, but I know plenty of pros who swear by it.
Personally, Capture One's sessions functionality does pretty much everything I need.

Paulw

gloobag wrote: »

Photo Mechanic - I don't use it myself, but I know plenty of pros who swear by it.

I use PhotoMechanic a lot. Absolutely brilliant for import, caption, crop, ftp/email/export.

It does have a catalogue function, but it's not great, that I have found. But, I haven't used that function a whole lot.

On my laptop, I use PhotoMechanic. On my desktop, I would use Lightroom for catalogue and indexing.

maximus02

Can you buy Lightroom without having to buy Photoshop?

Paulw

maximus02 wrote: »

Can you buy Lightroom without having to buy Photoshop?

Not any more. But, the annual fee now for Lightroom AND Photoshop is about the same cost as just Lightroom before.

You could probably buy the previous version as standalone, but it won't support newer cameras.

JDxtra

You can buy it as standalone - it's €134.07. They don't make it easy to find on their web site as they want to push everybody to the subscription model.

floyd333

JDxtra wrote: »

You can buy it as standalone - it's €134.07. They don't make it easy to find on their web site as they want to push everybody to the subscription model.

Ok so it looks like LightRoom Standalone is the way to go.

I found it on the adobe website here

evolutionqy7

I take it when you buy LR Standalone, you do not get PS?

FishOnABike

It might be woirth looking at something like http://www.myphotoindex.com

Paulw

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

I take it when you buy LR Standalone, you do not get PS?

Correct.