I used to be very organised with my filing but it’s slowly gone to pot and I’ve reached the stage where I’m often looking for a photo that I know exists but, between the laptop, the desktop and the network storage, I am unable to locate. So I think it’s time I looked for some sort of photo organiser, preferably for free, to keep track of my steadily growing collection.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to just point it at a location (when I discover one) and have it update its metadata, without wanting to suck everything into its own database. Tagging/categorising would also be almost compulsory, because my grasp of time is slowly loosening and things that I think happened “a couple of years ago” end up being over a decade in the past. I guess I’m saying that searching by date might not be the best option for me.
Mac has it all sorted in the photos app, not that I use it
I’m very old school and just use dated folders. With the advent of ‘tagging’ and more complete exif data I’ve got a bit lazy, although I still inject IPTC data (throw back to my pro tag days) using PhotoMechanic (not free).
Nothing spectacular. There’s the “Photos” app in Win10 which is having a go at sorting whatever it knows about locally on the system. it’s tried to add intelligent tags to a couple of things (it’s decided an Assetto Corsa game recording is “sport” )
And it claims to have a facial recognition function, which might be interesting.
But it looks like if I point it at other folders it wants to collect everything together locally on the PC, which I really don’t want. Having read a few reviews of various other options, it looks like this might be the hardest one to avoid.
The DJI Fly app syncs to my phone, which then syncs to Google Photos and my own cloud (Nextcloud). Depending on the need, I can quickly search Google Photos with it’s object recognition built-in, if I just want a JPG - but this is lower resolution, due to Google’s compression. If I want the full res JPG or RAW, then I will either I have to search/browse my own cloud. I obviously still have to copy off the SD card to my cloud manually.
I also have Adobe Bridge to search, manage and view all content. It can default to a specific filepath, and you create custom keywords and sub-keywords to structure and retrieve your data.
Who’da thunk it? I just scroll past Adobe stuff in review lists, assuming they’re going to have a price attached. (Yes, even in “best free…” lists, because they often sneak paid stuff in that has severely crippled free versions.)
Yes, it is good due to their object recognition. But … since June, they have changed their policy regarding free storage for reduced resolution and pricing. For JPG images, it’s OK. But what about videos? They chew through the storage. Plus it doesn’t cater for RAW files.
Below is my current keyword structure for drone content. Everytime I create new content, I just tag them with multiple keywords. Searching is dead easy then, and results are displayed instantly.
E.g. when I want to find all my edits that are panos for Hackpen Hill, I just select those keywords - and the results are displayed.
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