Which is the best tagging software?

I have about 2000 scanned family photos to tag into a
database. Eventually I want to select photos on, place,
names, and dates.

Please help,
PJ

On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:00:38 +1000, Peter Jason wrote:

I have about 2000 scanned family photos to tag into a
database. Eventually I want to select photos on, place,
names, and dates.

I use ACDSee and it does a satisfactory job, though it has been a long time
since I did my comparisons. My main requirements were tagging, and the
ability to keep track of images archived onto DVD. It helped that, at that
time, ACDSee was much faster than the alternatives.

Other good alternatives include ThumbsPlus, and Adobe Bridge, which is
included with Photoshop. Elements also includes a keyword image organizer,
and it may be very satisfactory for your needs. There are other excellent
programs as well.


Most of these programs have demo versions you can download and try out,
which is the best way to make your determination. Once you have your
keywords entered, you are basically married to whatever indexing program
you are using.

Open source photo organizers did not exist when I made my decision some
years ago. They do now. The potential advantages of an open source
program would be the ability to freely export keywords, and, of course, a
price tag of zero. Perhaps someone here can share their experiences
---
Mike Russell - http://www.curvemeister.com

I have about 2000 scanned family photos to tag into a
database. Eventually I want to select photos on, place,
names, and dates.

I just sort mine into a hierarchy of aptly named folders.

I'm glad someone has said this, because that's exactly what I do, by year
then title and date. Have never seen the need for anything else - although
I suspect I'm about to be told!

Peter Jason wrote:
I have about 2000 scanned family photos to tag into a
database. Eventually I want to select photos on, place,
names, and dates.

Picasa, free from Google, will do that (plus edit your photos if you
want).

--
Chris Malcolm
Warning: none of the above is indisputable fact.

Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
On 2010-06-30, DaveS wrote:

Can't really tell yet if you're purposely avoiding my point, so I'll add
another photo to the collection. This one has Larry, who turns out to be
your grand-daughter's godfather, playing tea-party with the
grand-daughter. I suppose this folder is called "2010-06-11 Tea party
Jessica Larry".

And the file would be called Larry-tea-party.jpg.

What tool do you use to search for all pictures of
Larry, when you need a good one for his obituary?

find . -type f -name '*Larry*'

That brings up 359 pictures of the wrong Larry, or that Larry surrounded
by others. You have but six suitable photos of Larry for his obit, but
they happen to be in the wrong folder.

There's nothing like well tagged photos for ease of locating without
extraneous material, by date and location and name, etc. I am familiar
with Lightroom and Adobe Bridge, which do the job well.

--
john mcwilliams

Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
On 2010-06-30, John McWilliams wrote:
Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
On 2010-06-30, DaveS wrote:
Can't really tell yet if you're purposely avoiding my point, so I'll add
another photo to the collection. This one has Larry, who turns out to be
your grand-daughter's godfather, playing tea-party with the
grand-daughter. I suppose this folder is called "2010-06-11 Tea party
Jessica Larry".
And the file would be called Larry-tea-party.jpg.

What tool do you use to search for all pictures of
Larry, when you need a good one for his obituary?
find . -type f -name '*Larry*'
That brings up 359 pictures of the wrong Larry, or that Larry surrounded
by others. You have but six suitable photos of Larry for his obit, but
they happen to be in the wrong folder.

Not if you do it in the appropriate directory, or use a more
specific directory or file pattern, or filter the results, etc.,
etc...

Nah. They need to be tagged for sophisticated searching.

--
lsmft

In article , John Navas
wrote:

Nah. They need to be tagged for sophisticated searching.

That presumes you (a) know in advance just what tags you'll need down
the road and (b) have way more free time than I do to create all those
individual tags.

no need for free time. add the keywords on import and let the computer
figure out the faces and geotagging.

But fair enough -- you use what works for you, and
I'll use what works for me.

that's fine, just don't pretend that your way is the only way.

And trust me, I don't have any trouble
finding images I want from my huge library in seconds.

you can't do complex queries, which means it *will* take more time.

John Navas wrote: On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:48:27 -0700, in
, John McWilliams wrote:

Nah. They need to be tagged for sophisticated searching.

That presumes you (a) know in advance just what tags you'll need down
the road and (b) have way more free time than I do to create all those
individual tags. But fair enough -- you use what works for you, and
I'll use what works for me. And trust me, I don't have any trouble
finding images I want from my huge library in seconds.

I trust you. And you have a way better memory than have I- or fewer images.

In my experience, to have a viable search, one doesn't need to be
clairvoyant in order to assign meaningful tags. And the time it takes to
assign them is less than a search I'd have to do.

--
john mcwilliams

In article , Chris F.A. Johnson
wrote:

All the tags can be in the directory and file names.

you're going to rename every single image??

In article , Chris F.A. Johnson
wrote:

All the tags can be in the directory and file names.

you're going to rename every single image??

That's no harder than adding tags to them all.

of course it's harder. tags can be added *automatically* based on
facial recognition and geotagging, or in batches on import.