Hello, I'd like to ask you for a recommendation of a photo management software. My photo collection is so far organized in directories, named by sortable date + keywords. Pretty neat and tidy but as it constantly grows since 2004, it became barely searchable and hardly possible to keep an overview.
Despite never using a photo manager, I think I have some ideas what I'd like to have. While setting up a new laptop for my grandmother, I checked what the included apps can do. Microsoft Photos from Windows 10 was an eye-opener here.
What the ideal program should be/can:
Nice to have details:
Too much? Ask Santa Claus or write yourself? It so, then I'll still happily hear about best what you can recommend.
Actually Microsoft Photos + tagging + rating + filtering would be already good enough. So it can't be that hard.
No editing options needed, have another tools for that. However, a nice simple full-screen browser would be nice. I use FastStone Viewer for that purpuse but I can imagine wanting to see all photos matching the filtering+sorting on a full screen.
I started looking for possibilities by checking which apps offer face recognition. Got a list, tried Fotobounce first. And it's such crap I can only imagine. Slow, screen-space-wasting, offers no better browsing options than just browsing my directory structure and face recognition is unusable. For face recognition they just simply compare 2D images, so only identical perspective, haircut, lighting conditions and so on lead to a match. There are much more advanced techniques already. Full 3D head projection, pose and expression neutralization... Microsoft Photos must use it.
Some background of my directory hierarchy: I split all photo sessions, holidays into separate directories named by a date (in a sortable form yyyy.mm.dd) + some tags. Inside I put a subdirectories: all RAWs, selected best shots in RAW, selected best shots postprocessed, selected best shots postprocessed for showing to others (without too private stuff or limited to let's say 100 shots of a holiday). Naming of these directories is always consistent. If needed I could move all final images to another location.
For viewing I use FastStone Image Viewer: fast, nice to browse through directory trees, awesome full-screen viewer. I believe I'll keep it anyway as standard browser for many cases. However, it has problems when switching from viewer to browser mode, while being inside a directory on a network drive. It hangs up or crashes often. It is also problematic to browse directories fast, as FastStone always load photos new to show thumbnails. This includes all subdirectories, also with RAW photos, which takes some time. Keeping the collection on a NAS makes it even worse. I like that it doesn't create any files inside directories but that's the price to pay.
Despite never using a photo manager, I think I have some ideas what I'd like to have. While setting up a new laptop for my grandmother, I checked what the included apps can do. Microsoft Photos from Windows 10 was an eye-opener here.
What the ideal program should be/can:
- fully offline solution: photos stored offline (actually on a NAS in LAN), database stored offline
- face recognition, really working one, Microsoft Photos is here just amazing
- rating system (I mean, I can assign stars to mark best or worst photos)
- tagging photos by keywords, also by browsing the underlaying directory structure and doing actions on directories, e.g. adding tags to all photos within a directory
- possibility to view images on a timeline, like here:
neat, tidy, space-saving, on the right you can slide to move between dates over whole collection - filtering and sorting options
example 1: show only photos with tags "(Norway or Sweden) and Winter", sort by rating
example 2: show only photos of my wife (by face recognition) with tag "ID card photo", sort by time - after selecting a certain photo from a collection I'd like to be able to either see it's physical location or open it in external program of my choice
- it should look neat, work fast, Microsoft Photo could be a benchmark here
- freeware/open-source of course best but a reasonable price for a private license is also ok, let's say... up to 100€ (?)
Nice to have details:
- possibility to exclude directories or files by some filters (ideally regular expressions), e.g. exclude all .psd, exclude all RAW-* subdirectories, exclude all *work*.* and *small*.* files; but if not possible I could re-think the folder hierarchy... maybe completely split RAW+working dirs from the final ones
- once the photos are scanned and tagged I'd still like to have a possibility to edit them (or rather replace, as this will be mostly newly developing from RAW to the same location as the previous file) with external program without loosing the tags
- would be good if also moving or renaming a subdirectory could be tracked without loosing the assigned tags
- the photo manager should not edit photo files, i.e. adding tags shouldn't be realized as adding data to EXIF -- this would screw up my whole backuping strategy
Too much? Ask Santa Claus or write yourself? It so, then I'll still happily hear about best what you can recommend.
Actually Microsoft Photos + tagging + rating + filtering would be already good enough. So it can't be that hard.
No editing options needed, have another tools for that. However, a nice simple full-screen browser would be nice. I use FastStone Viewer for that purpuse but I can imagine wanting to see all photos matching the filtering+sorting on a full screen.
I started looking for possibilities by checking which apps offer face recognition. Got a list, tried Fotobounce first. And it's such crap I can only imagine. Slow, screen-space-wasting, offers no better browsing options than just browsing my directory structure and face recognition is unusable. For face recognition they just simply compare 2D images, so only identical perspective, haircut, lighting conditions and so on lead to a match. There are much more advanced techniques already. Full 3D head projection, pose and expression neutralization... Microsoft Photos must use it.
Some background of my directory hierarchy: I split all photo sessions, holidays into separate directories named by a date (in a sortable form yyyy.mm.dd) + some tags. Inside I put a subdirectories: all RAWs, selected best shots in RAW, selected best shots postprocessed, selected best shots postprocessed for showing to others (without too private stuff or limited to let's say 100 shots of a holiday). Naming of these directories is always consistent. If needed I could move all final images to another location.
For viewing I use FastStone Image Viewer: fast, nice to browse through directory trees, awesome full-screen viewer. I believe I'll keep it anyway as standard browser for many cases. However, it has problems when switching from viewer to browser mode, while being inside a directory on a network drive. It hangs up or crashes often. It is also problematic to browse directories fast, as FastStone always load photos new to show thumbnails. This includes all subdirectories, also with RAW photos, which takes some time. Keeping the collection on a NAS makes it even worse. I like that it doesn't create any files inside directories but that's the price to pay.
