Organising Software

[georgie]

I have been a long time Picassa user for organising my photos - it is simple and I display it in Chronological order which is great for my wife to use.

Recently I had some photos that I wanted to know more information about the photo such as ISO, flash, settings, metering, lens used and could only bring up that data in Capture.

Is that data available in Picassa or another simple viewer?

[aim54x]

Lightroom?

[gstark]

Opanda

[georgie]

Thanks, will give them a try

[aim54x]

for exif data, opanda will give you EVERYTHING, which I like, but for organising then Lightroom 2 (you have to pay though) is good.

[Marvin]

x3 for Lightroom. Takes a bit to set up, but once it has some great features.

[ATJ]

+4 Lightroom. You can also add keywords to photos to make finding them even easier. It is also possible to search on just about any of the metadata. e.g. find all photos taken using a certain lens. Lightroom lets you automate your processes, too, especially export. I have multiple galleries with different requirements (dimensions, sharpening, etc.) and once I have adjusted the image, I only need a couple of clicks for each gallery.

[mikephotog]

A cost effective alternative to Lightroom:
www.acdsystems.com

[devilla101]

A cost effective alternative to Lightroom:
http://www.acdsystems.com

Yeah ACDSee Photo Manager isn't a bad deal if Lighroom doesnt fit your budget.

Also once in while they actually offer massive discounts. Try emailing them, they might give you a discount instead of waiting for it to happen.

[Matt. K]

Georgie
Nikon ViewNX is available free from the Nikon site. It's quite sophisticated/elegant and will do everything you want to do.

[georgie]

Georgie
Nikon ViewNX is available free from the Nikon site. It's quite sophisticated/elegant and will do everything you want to do.

Just gave it a go - looks great - Lightroom (trial) is also nice but View NX is free

[big pix]

I use View NX on my laptop to check images when on location from the D700...... as I only have CS2 on the lappy...... find the program very good for my use

[ATJ]

I used ViewNX for quite a long time - and still do for a quick review of images before I load them into Lightroom. I never found it any good at all for organising my photos. I'd be interested to know how it can be used for such a purpose.

[Matt. K]

Andrew
While it's not a dedicated image database it does allow batch IPTC data to be added and batch rename. It also allows one to see the EXIF data. If one named their folders logically then it could be used for de facto browsing. And it's freeeee

[ATJ]

Thanks, Matt,

I find it is a great browser, but not so great for finding photos other than what's possible by folder structure.

I store my images by month. e.g. all the photos I take this month go into 200812. Last month was 200811, and so on. ViewNX forces me to know in what month I took the photo. With Lightroom using the same files in the same folders, I can lump all the photos together. I can then use any of the metadata to filter the images. I can use caption or title, where I store the scientific name of the organism shot, which make it easy to find all photos of a species of octopus, for example. I can filter by location. I can filter by lens. This gives me a wide range of ways to slice and dice my images. I have not found any way in ViewNX to do that.

While ViewNX may be free, there are so many things it doesn't do, like allowing allowing anything other than the most basic adjustments to images so people need to get something else for image manipulation. I find with Lightroom, I can use it from start to finish and everything inbetween. While it is not cheap, it is the only thing I need to purchase - or at least keep upgrading.

[CraigVTR]

Georgie
Nikon ViewNX is available free from the Nikon site. It's quite sophisticated/elegant and will do everything you want to do.

I recommend this as a solution, even though I am yet to work out why mine keeps crashing.