Software for sorting photo's (1 Viewer)

Can anyone recommend a PC software package that is good for sorting bird photo's. I'm looking for something that enables you to sort/search by various factors eg location, date, species etc.

Not bothered about doing advanced photoshop type stuff, but re-sizing, trimming , auto-sharpening would be useful.

Any bright ideas ?

As is often the case, depends on how much you want to spend and how much time you want to invest. It could be that you decide downstream to get more into processing techniques that Photoshop supports.

On the other hand, a disciplined approach to file naming and file management can work well whereby you can find images if you folder structure is based on species date of maybe location. Filtered searching is less ideal.

Personally I use Adobe Lightroom which is a superb system for cataloging using keyword searches giving you all the flexibility you require without moving or renaming the source files. For instance, given accurate use of keywords, I can search over 25000 images to give show all images of any species I choose, or indeed those taken in a particular country or location. LR is not cheap but it also allows much more including enhancing/adjusting, cropping and output to Photoshop or direct to print/web depending on what you want to do.

Hope this helps.

BBand,
Somewhere along the line you have to invest time. You may have relatively few photos, and therefore it might be easier. However, if you are really developing a photodatabase then the options dwindle. I have a photodatabase that has limited my possibilities. What I have done is mostly done when I download the photos [I vet the ID, put in location if offered, put in the scientific binomen (I have converted the database according to the IOC indications, including their taxonomy), age and sex if determinable, elevation if given, etc.]. I download everything into a common mixing file initially, including screen-caps. If I need to do any processing of the photos, I do them there. I have found that adobe applications are slower and more difficult to use. I still use PaintShop Pro to do any processing, batch conversions, resizing, relabeling, and sorting. Once processed, still using PaintShop Pro, I just select the photos and file them away in their respective files (the database is set up dividing into Passeriformes, and Non-Passeriformes, each of them having Family files and within each family file every genera used currently by the IOC). In my case, I have had to do something more structured because I have between 500-600 thousand bird images.

If I need to do key-word searches, I still use the Windows search function.

I'm with Robin on this, Lightroom is an excellent tool and ideal for sorting and organising photographs. As Adobe add and release functionality it is becoming (if not already) an excellent editing tool. This depends on how much manipulation you want to do with a photograph. Personally everything I want for bird photography is available in the program as if its not in the photograph without basic changes I bin it, unless very rare when I'll keep lower standard images.

Phil

Another vote for Lightroom, but if you have a existing collection of pictures then you will need to put in the mouse work to add all relevant keywords to your existing images.

I prefer ACDSee for organizing my photos. Among advantages is a hierarchical category system that I love. ACDSee Pro also will do 99% of the editing you will ever need (and in that sense is similar to Lightroom) while the regular version of ACDSee will do a little less (not work on RAW images for example).

Niels

Thanks to everyone for the advice and taking the time to reply - looks like Lightroom gets the vote.

ACDSee

Lightroom 4 has just come out, and it's got considerably cheaper, I think it's around half the price of Lightroom 3 when that first came out. For people who've thought about getting into it this might not be a bad time.

Andrea

I have used various software for my editing but usally found adobe photoshop the best for editing. It has a free trial you can download from the main website But if people need a start up course or just to freshen up on skills on the software and camera equipment I have tried this offer and there is a huge discount on in Ireland at the moment.

seeofbirds said:

I have used various software for my editing but usally found adobe photoshop the best for editing. It has a free trial you can download from the main website But if people need a start up course or just to freshen up on skills on the software and camera equipment I have tried this offer and there is a huge discount on in Ireland at the moment.

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I have treid to download Adobe trial before but it says you need a key number for access it? Where can I find this code please?