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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Organising images on a PC (1 Viewer)

rob stoff said:
is there any reason why not to just use the My Pictures software, it seems fine to me for cataloguing and storing which is what the original question was all about?

Rob
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Rob
Using folders in My Pictures or Windows Explorer is fine up to a point. The problem comes when I want to view pictures taken at a particular place (therefore maybe create folders of locations to make this easier) but then want to view all my Buzzard pictures taken at different places. With the standard My Pictures folder system you can't achieve both of these tasks, unless you also create a second set of folders which store images by species. This is very wasteful use of memory and is not very elegant.

I currently store images by species but have a simple database to catalogue them by location. Great idea at the time but I find I don't keep it up to date which therefore makes it useless.

Programs like Lightroom can achieve both the above search tasks (and a lot more besides) but there are evidently many different ways of skinning the cat!

For Lightroom users, how does it handle RAW images? Can these be hidden so that only converted and modified images are visible?

Similarly, when images have been through a lot of processing in a raw converter, Neat Image and then Photoshop, is the EXIF data preserved. If not, this presumably has limitations for searching on this data?

Kev
 
From replies so far, Lightroom seems to get some good press, but I believe is not freeware.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not. There is a free 30 day trial fully working download though, which I managed to extend to 377 days by accident whilst fiddling with the calendar on my laptop (rather annoyingly on the evening after I had paid for the licence!)
 
For Lightroom users, how does it handle RAW images? Can these be hidden so that only converted and modified images are visible?

Similarly, when images have been through a lot of processing in a raw converter, Neat Image and then Photoshop, is the EXIF data preserved. If not, this presumably has limitations for searching on this data?
Click to expand...

It functions as a RAW browser and convertor, so you see on-screen images of your RAW files, with any development settings applied. Where it differs from other RAW convertors such as ACR, is that it doesnt convert the file into TIFF or JPEG etc unless/until you export the file to another application. It stores all your changes as a side-car file of editing instructions, the effects of which are shown on the on-screen preview, but which arent actually applied to the data until export. You can create virtual copies of the original to apply different treatments to - I think this simply creates another side-car file for the alternative editing instructions rather than duplicating the RAW original. It seems to be a more memory efficient way of working.
I now only save a converted file if I plan to do a lot of pixel level editing eg a lot of cloning or layers work.

As far as I'm aware, EXIF is preserved - certainly it would appear to be the case with editing in PS (unless save for web is used).
 
Astrokev said:
Am I alone in having difficulty finding an effective way of storing and organising my images on my PC?

I'm aware of programs such as Picasa that offer solutions to these common problem but I haven't tried these as yet.


I downloaded PICASA some time ago but have only started to use it in the last week; it is superb!

The interface is very intuitive and the smooth scrolling of images makes it very relaxing to use. It is easy to view from 2 to about 30 small images at a time and then after selecting the one you want to examine you can zoom in to 100%. At this stage you can then do basic editing if needed.

You can set up Albums, selecting images from any of your folders (these are displayed as thumbnails by date). The same image can be put into multiple Albums so possibilities are endless. Having created an Album a single click produces a slide show - whole screen without any toolbars showing. You can also export images from an album to any other device - ie copy them onto a USB flash drive or a separate HD for simple backup.

It even looks good for printing, being able to set up groups of images on a page as well as contact prints etc.

And then there is the web gallery ....

Just download it and try it!

I don't know how many images you have on your PC, but if you do download it it could take quite a while to gather all your images into its database, be patient.

It is definitely easier to use and seems to have some useful features not in the Elements 5 organiser.

Roger Boswell
Click to expand...
 
I down load all my images as numbered by my camera, and place them in folders containing 100 images on an external hard disk, I also burn them onto disk, as a back-up. Separately I use a simple written indexing system which is saved onto the computer. One can make this as simple or as complicated as one likes. Similar to indexing a book, except that each entry instead of having a page number has the image number.
 
Astrokev said:
Roger Boswell said:
Decided to bite the bullet. Just finished downloading Picasa and looking forward to seeing how it performs.

Hi,
I am probably not far ahead of you with Picasa, but I am finding it very useful. I will not be using it for editing - much more possible in Elements, but the more I explore the better it gets. A big bonus is all the information readily visible on screen from the number of images in a folder to album sizes and individual picture info; and that is before the exif data (and it even takes croping info into account when calculating 35mm lens equivalent!).

I didn't think it allowed direct burning of CD/DVDs - but it does. Create an Album containing all your wanted images then press the 'Gift CD' button. If you only want your files burnt, just uncheck the 'Include slideshow' and 'Include Picasa' buttons. This makes it ideal for saving particular sets of images rather than complete folders.

The Elements Organiser will burn 'Collections' to CDs, but my version does not say how large a collection is, so you have to get to the burn stage before finding out you can't burn.

Now all I need is a few months to sort out my images ....
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Mark Wilson is spot on. Lightroom, once understood, is designed around image management: it is it's strongest suit. It's RAW handling capabilities are very good, as well. I strongly suggest it. The keywording function is just awsome for retrieving specifically catagorized images. Couple this with the colour coding and rating and flaging features and this program is an organizers dream. I won't use anything else. You can create new folders in the "library view" and then rate your images based on priorities and then drag and drop, one at a time or in groups. Try it.
 
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Lightroom

Everything digishooter said. I would add however that you need to RTFM and retain an open mind during the process. Once understood, this program is superb.

Chris
 
I've found Picasa superb. Easy to use and not over complicated.
You can alter pictures then "export" them to a folder in "My Pictures".
 
ghostrider said:
I've found Picasa superb. Easy to use and not over complicated.
You can alter pictures then "export" them to a folder in "My Pictures".
Click to expand...

I agree that Picasa is very good and offers most of what I need. However, it's current image rating and flagging functionality seems to be very limited, with a single "star" rating being the only option. I guess one could use keywords to add additional ratings, but this seems cumbersome.

Apart from maybe the aesthetics of a more customisable user interface, this is my only major gripe of this program. Does anyone have any idea of likely future upgrade timelines?

Cheers
Kevin
 
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