Image & Video Organizer
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I'm looking for a program to help me organize and browse the various images and videos I've collected/made over the years. So far I'm having no luck finding something that meets all my requirements.
Basic requirements:
- Catalog-based management
- This means pretty much all metadata is stored in some sort of catalog, probably an sqlite database but other formats acceptable
- Doesn't modify files/folders unless told to do so - changes are tracked in the catalog only, unless otherwise specified.
- Files are "imported"/added to the catalog. They're not stored there, but it can't be a fancy browser that only tracks the changes it makes.
- Hierarchical tagging/keywords
- The ability to import keywords from text files is rather important.
- Collections, especially "smart" ones, would be nice but are not required.
- Wide image and video format support.
- Minimum image format requirements:
- JPG
- GIF
- PNG
- Minimum video format requirements:
- MP4
- MPG
- AVI
- Probably others, but this is vastly less important than the image formats.
- Minimum image format requirements:
- Secondary viewer window
- Lets you see the image/video you've currently got selected at higher resolution without having to leave the organizer view.
- Must let you select the monitor it appears on.
- Multilingual support
- Must be able to handle mixed-language filenames.
What I've tried:
- ACDSEE Ultimate 10
- Fails at catalog-based management: it's a glorified image browser that can track a lot of information, but in a really fragile manner.
- Fails at keyword imports. Has to be in an arbitrary XML format instead of the more standard text file one(s).
- Fails at multilingual support: "Find duplicates" tool made the following complaint for a file with some Cyrillic characters:
- IMatch
- Keyword navigator sucks big time. It's a series of panels next to each other (wrapping down) instead of a tree view.
- Various things (constantly blinking mouse cursor, among others) make me think the code may be rather iffy and unperformant.
- IDImager Photo Supreme
- Breaks on images where the extension is different from the actual format. The files should be renamed, yes, but I still expect it to handle that gracefully given I'm going to be putting a lot of stuff in it quickly.
- Doesn't appear to have a secondary view window
- Tagging is finicky, at best.
- Adobe Lightroom
- Secondary view window always goes to the left of the main one when maximized. And any time you move out of the main window it disappears until you come back in, then resets to its default position regardless of whether it was maximized.
- Poor format support: no GIF, PNG was only added very recently.
- Has had many outstanding usability issues like those for years, at least 5 years and 3 major versions since first reported (by others than me).
- Phase One Media Pro
- Failed multilingual support: won't add file with some Cyrillic characters.
I'm about to try digiKam - a KDE program. I'm getting desperate here, so if any of y'all know a good one that meets my requirements, please tell me. I don't care about editing, just management.
- Catalog-based management
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Hmm I don't do much picture cataloguing, but back in the day I used Google Picasso. Not sure if it's still available though...
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Watching with interest. Would also like to know one that can do "sorting for favorites". In other words:
- Here's a folder full of images
- Go through them
- If I like it, it's "promoted"
- If i dislike it, it's "demoted"
I then go onto the "promoted" subfolder, and repeat as many times as needed to whiddle down my 130-shot photo set to 10 good ones.
inb4: SSDS
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WTF Financial Services has a product that does all of that and more.
Of course, it's intended for use as a support tool for corporate mergers so it costs millions.
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4037 seconds goddamn it fucking it all to shit hell
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@Dreikin said in Image & Video Organizer:
I'm looking for a program to help me organize and browse the various images and videos I've collected/made over the years
You hardly come across someone who takes his porn collection to that level
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Surely this is perfect:
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@Dreikin I use kphotoalbum, which is also KDE-based. I find it has a faster workflow for tagging images than anything else.
Annoyances:
- It only imports from its own XML format.
- You can only point it to one root folder to search for images. I point it to /home/MZH/Pictures/Photos/ and then put symlinks to directories in other locations I want it to catalog.
- I don't know its multilingual support.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Image & Video Organizer:
4037 seconds goddamn it fucking it all to shit hell
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@MZH said in Image & Video Organizer:
I don't know its multilingual support.
It's a KDE app, it's supposed to be multilingual.
Ok, maybe not all languages
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digiKam results:
- Doesn't appear to have secondary display
- No way to import standard keyword files.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Image & Video Organizer:
Hmm I don't do much picture cataloguing, but back in the day I used Google Picasso. Not sure if it's still available though...
Picasa is still available, but I suggest using the tiny Google Photos Auto Backup thing instead if you're planning on putting the images and videos in the cloud at all. Images up to 16MP don't use up any storage space in your account, and you can set it to resize images that are larger than that or to always upload full size.
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@ben_lubar said in Image & Video Organizer:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Image & Video Organizer:
Hmm I don't do much picture cataloguing, but back in the day I used Google Picasso. Not sure if it's still available though...
Picasa is still available, but I suggest using the tiny Google Photos Auto Backup thing instead if you're planning on putting the images and videos in the cloud at all. Images up to 16MP don't use up any storage space in your account, and you can set it to resize images that are larger than that or to always upload full size.
..... I don't remember talking about cloud anything whatsoever.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Image & Video Organizer:
..... I don't remember talking about cloud anything whatsoever.
On this forum, it doesn't matter what you type. Posters just make shit up in their heads, then reply to you as if you'd said it.
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@ben_lubar said in Image & Video Organizer:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Image & Video Organizer:
Hmm I don't do much picture cataloguing, but back in the day I used Google Picasso. Not sure if it's still available though...
Picasa is still available, but I suggest using the tiny Google Photos Auto Backup thing instead if you're planning on putting the images and videos in the cloud at all. Images up to 16MP don't use up any storage space in your account, and you can set it to resize images that are larger than that or to always upload full size.
Based on past experiences with Picasa, I think I'd rather avoid that. Also, cloud upload restrictions aren't a concern for me in this thread, except that I expect to be using it to manage local copies, so anything requiring cloud access to get to my stuff is out.
Edit:
Also, Picasa's done for: https://picasa.google.com/
I'd like something that can be expected to be updated.
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@Dreikin I've only tried Picasa once but it seemed to work pretty well. Or at least, it had a nice interface. It probably does not have all the features listed though.
A shame it was abandoned (guess it was not cloud enough). But I suppose it can still continue be used fine.
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@blakeyrat said in Image & Video Organizer:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Image & Video Organizer:
..... I don't remember talking about cloud anything whatsoever.
On this forum, it doesn't matter what you type. Posters just make shit up in their heads, then reply to you as if you'd said it.
No, YOU make a joke where you "hilariously" make a response that has nothing to do with someone's post about nonesense responses.
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@anonymous234 said in Image & Video Organizer:
I've only tried Picasa once but it seemed to work pretty well
It's dead Jim.
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@Luhmann said in Image & Video Organizer:
It's dead Jim.
Oh shit, the tool I was using to make the Picasa profile transferrable between PCs needs .Net 2.0, and the auto-installer isn't working at the moment on Windows 10!!!
Apparently this thing doesn't work if you have pending updates to be installed? :/ WTF...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Image & Video Organizer:
auto-installer isn't working at the moment on Windows 10!!!
Didn't that change on 10 (maybe earlier)? I think it's something you now enable in the OS as opposed to running an installer...
which, of course, is not available in the UWP Programs area - you have to go to the Control Panel!
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@dcon said in Image & Video Organizer:
which, of course, is not available in the UWP Programs area
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@blakeyrat said in Image & Video Organizer:
On this forum, it doesn't matter what you type. Posters just make shit up in their heads, then reply to you as if you'd said it.
does this have to do with windows update?
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@LB_ Well, yeah, search. I didn't do that... I just looked in the 'Apps & features' section under the 'Manage optional features'. Cause you'd think it would be there... You just shortcutted the 'open Control Panel' step.
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I don't think it fits the bill exactly, but it's worth a look: Corel AfterShot is currently on sale for $8.40 and can allegedly "manage even very large photo collections".
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@anonymous234 said in Image & Video Organizer:
I don't think it fits the bill exactly, but it's worth a look: Corel AfterShot is currently on sale for $8.40 and can allegedly "manage even very large photo collections".
Unfortunately, the tech specs page indicates no support for PNG nor GIF.