Photo Management Software - Advice Requested

[Dennis Peacock]

Ladys and Gentlemen,

I have a problem with electronic photo management. I have literally hundreds and hundreds of digital pictures and would LOVE a way to manage the pictures in an organized fashion and all without this new software requiring me to get a PHD in Digital Picture Management and Accounting. ;)

Anybody here use photo management software? What do you use and why do you like it?

Here's hoping for a better way of keeping up with more digital pictures than I can shake a stick at. :D

[Jeffrey Fusaro]

dennis--

try "picasa.com".

it's a free download.

better than anything that i have paid for.

[Jim Becker]

Adobe Photoshop Elements also includes photo management software.

[Lars Thomas]

Here's another vote for Picassa.

[Earl Reid]

Hi, Jeffery
I just downloaded Picasa, It is amazing what it does.
Thanks for the infromation.
Earl:)

[Rob Bodenschatz]

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements. It's good.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Photodex has a really nice product called CompuPic that is really useful.

Adobe has some high end stuff. I have their entire suite of products and I use it very little because it's rather involved.

[Jim Becker]

Adobe has some high end stuff. I have their entire suite of products and I use it very little because it's rather involved.

One of the reasons I like Photoshop Elements...a lot of the power is derived from the high-end version but "normal humans" can use it. And for under a hundred bucks, it's top notch.

[Justin James]

+1 on Picassa; I have Photoshop on the same computer but actually use Picassa.

[Doug Shepard]

Low Tech here. Windows Explorer and lots of Folders. The thumbnail view option on the folders lets me spot what I'm looking for pretty quickly. If that fails, I tend to give my pics descriptive names when I download them off the cameras memory card and edit them, so the Explorer Search lets me use wild card searches to find stuff.

[Jon Knauft]

Dennis,

I have over 6,000 digital photos in Picasa and love it. It's easy to use and it's free!.

-Jon

[Dennis Peacock]

Thanks everyone. I have downloaded and install Picassa. From first appearances....It's going to do the "trick". Thanks everyone for a FREE piece of software that seems to fill the bill just right. :D :cool:

[Christopher Stahl]

I use Aperture for photo management of over 30,000 RAW photos. It has a fantastic management system and is quite powerful. It's also quite easy to use.

[Mark Pruitt]

Thanks everyone. I have downloaded and install Picassa. From first appearances....It's going to do the "trick". Thanks everyone for a FREE piece of software that seems to fill the bill just right. :D :cool:
Dennis, if you don't mind doing it, I'd like to hear your impressions of this software after you've used it for a few days or so. (I have no experience with it and am just in the learning phase myself.)

[Bonnie Campbell]

Another very good picture managenet program is ACDSee. You have to buy it, but there are a lot of features.

[Jeffrey Fusaro]

i've been using picasa for over three years, now.

if you run into any issues/questions that are stumpers, i can try to help.

the software is pretty intuitive and easy to use.

i have adobe photshop elements as well, but i still prefer to use picasa for 99% of what i do with my photos.

i have over 17,000 digital images in my library. i use both jpeg and raw formats, and picasa seems to work equally well with both.

if you start by keeping all of your photos in the "my photos" folder, you can tell picasa to watch that folder only. it will automatically store and retrieve from that folder everytime. if you rename a folder in either location, the other will update automatically. a really neat feature.

everytime i load photos onto my computer, i just put them into a new folder. picasa will assign the date to the folder, so i can store and search for photos chronologically. probably the biggest time saving feature when you have several thousand images stored in several hundred folders.

this stuff is incredibly comprehensive for free-ware!

enjoy!