Referece photos

[Veleno]

Recently I've been using my digital camera quite a bit to build up a supply of reference photos and organization is quickly becomming a problem. Thus, I would like to know if anyone has any thoughts on programs that can be used to set them up in a searchable database (since it is obviously simpler to search for keywords than to look for each photo manually).

Ideally this software would be free, and able to run without being installed (that is, so I could just stick the program with files and the file info onto a cd and be able to run it from anywhere).

[Tim Mallos]

PC or MAC?

Just curious. I don't have a good free option for either.

I got Photoshop Album at Christmas. It's kind of cool, but any data you tag images with is stuck in the program, no export.

I think it goes for $30.00, PC only, and does require an install. So, all in all, not at all what you were asking for.

I've had pretty good success naming directories by data and image content : 2004-02-13(Old buildings downtown)

And then using the file browser in the new version of Photoshop to visually scan before opening.

But, again, not what you asked for.

Tim

[Guest]

But, again, not what you asked for.

Ah, well. Thanks for the input anyways.

At the moment I'm running a PC with Windows XP Pro

[Veleno]

Above post is me. Silly board refuses to keep me permantly logged in no matter how many times i check that box.

[kaos_de_moria]

iphoto is quite nice, and then get an ipod, set your whole system up on the ipod harddrive instead of the computer and you have your whole system, including all your photos whereever you go with your music. (you can boot every mac from an ipod if you install macosx on the ipod harddrive.)

[losttoy]

I got a scanner with a CD with a bunch of software, including a program called ArcSoft PhotoBase. I am not sure if this program is also available for PC (since I am running on a Mac), but I really like it.

[Kris Lachowski]

I got a scanner with a CD with a bunch of software, including a program called ArcSoft PhotoBase. I am not sure if this program is also available for PC (since I am running on a Mac), but I really like it.

yeah I'm pretty sure that it's available for PC because I think I used it once on a library computer.

[William G]

Ideally this software would be free, and able to run without being installed (that is, so I could just stick the program with files and the file info onto a cd and be able to run it from anywhere).

Here's a something that has been available since Windows first appeared-

1)Open file manager.

2)Right lick on the background of your file manager.

3)Choose "New Folder".

4)Type a name for this new folder like "Cars".

5)Put your pictures of cars into that folder.

6)Look at pictures in "cars" folder as often as needed.

7)Repeat with different subjects.

This is shucky-darn easy to do, and you don't need to install anything else.

[Veleno]

Ideally this software would be free, and able to run without being installed (that is, so I could just stick the program with files and the file info onto a cd and be able to run it from anywhere).

Here's a something that has been available since Windows first appeared-

1)Open file manager.

2)Right lick on the background of your file manager.

3)Choose "New Folder".

4)Type a name for this new folder like "Cars".

5)Put your pictures of cars into that folder.

6)Look at pictures in "cars" folder as often as needed.

7)Repeat with different subjects.

This is shucky-darn easy to do, and you don't need to install anything else.

And thus we are getting back to what the original problem was.

Sure, that works for when you have a small amount of pics, but what if, say, you had hundreds of pics of cars, and you were looking for a pic of a specific model of car? Then you have to start seperating the pics into subcatagories.

So what happens if you start getting things that belong in multiple catagories? Then systems start to become even more complicated, and you start forgetting in what exact subset of folders you put a particuar picture.

However, if one was able to set up a database that put keywords on files (and lest you suggest it, I'd rather not rename each file to include all their keywords because this brings up a couple other problems), then instead of manually looking for a file whenever you need it, you do a search.

[Eric F Myers]

If all you need is a database for browsing you could always build an HTML page, or set of pages, on your hard drive. You could make thumbnails so you can preview your pictures. You can also and link to same picture through different categories. That's what I did with my wife's concert photos and later we built a website out of the those same pages. Best of all, it's free!

[Tim Mallos]

I get the feeling we are talking thousands of images here.

Besides, linking doesn't really answer the "search" requirement. It would soon be a pain to maintain and fall apart.

And you don't need actual thumbnail files, you could simply use the thumbnail view mode in Windows to display the directory with the images.

Anyhoo, all this is a mess to manage.

Database of some kind is the way to go.

Tim

[Veleno]

I get the feeling we are talking thousands of images here.

Correct. Currently my digital camera has a 16MB card, which it's current resolution fits 56 pictures (and eventually I plan to use a larger one). I can easily fill up that 56 each day, especially since no film is needed and I use rechargeable batteries. If I fill up the card once every day for a month, that comes out to about 1380 images in a 30 day month.

[Greg Stephens]

Well, the more searching and sorting capability you want, the less the chance that you'll have something that you can just put on a disk and use anywhere.

For that, what you need is some sort of tool that will take already categorized images, create HTML files for the archive and then burn the HTML and images to CD. I'd imagine something like Yahoo's directory where you drill down to find what you want and, yes, it would link to certain images from multiple categories. Does this exist? Probably not exaclty as I'm thinking, but somebody should make it. There are many alternatives for creating HTML galleries.
Here's one.

For an installable program that managed images, the best I've run across is ACDSee. First shareware program I paid money to register, back in the day, several years ago. My registration term lapsed as they released new versions and I then registered it AGAIN when I next upgraded. It's that good a program. Possibly not exactly what you were looking for, but you can try the free trial version.

Searching with Google for a minute turns up Smart Pix Manager which might be another option.

About.com has a list that may also be relevant.

[William G]

Sure, that works for when you have a small amount of pics, but what if, say, you had hundreds of pics of cars, and you were looking for a pic of a specific model of car?

You don't have an image viewer? If you did, you could go to the folder for that type of car it took you two seconds to make, and then look for the specific image that way.

So what happens if you start getting things that belong in multiple catagories? Then systems start to become even more complicated, and you start forgetting in what exact subset of folders you put a particuar picture.

They're objects, not concepts. They dont get vague and thus dont need mulitiple classifications.

Regardless of whatever program you find, you'll still be putting in the same amount of work categorizing and naming all of the images. Perhaps even more. And the difference in the amount of work you do looking for the images later will be miniscule.

[Greg Stephens]

They're objects, not concepts. They dont get vague and thus dont need mulitiple classifications.

Sure they do. What if the photo is of Bob with a vintage car? Does it go in the "cars" category or the "Bob" category? Two old men playing checkers in the park- Is it filed under "people," "games" or "park photos?" What if the categories were more subjective than that, like, "my favorites from 2004" or "photos I printed out and gave to Sue?" It is true that most people don't feel the need to file their photos so extensively, but if somebody really want to go to town indexing photos, it's entirely possible for a single photo to fall into vastly different- yet still general- categories.

[Rip Tanion]

I have to concur with Greg, in that ACDSee is probably the best image viewer/browser/organizer out there. I've used it pretty much for as long as I've had my PC, and I've never felt the need to use anything else. I, too, highly recommend it.

[William G]

They're objects, not concepts. They dont get vague and thus dont need mulitiple classifications.

Sure they do. What if the photo is of Bob with a vintage car? Does it go in the "cars" category or the "Bob" category? Two old men playing checkers in the park- Is it filed under "people," "games" or "park photos?" What if the categories were more subjective than that, like, "my favorites from 2004" or "photos I printed out and gave to Sue?" It is true that most people don't feel the need to file their photos so extensively, but if somebody really want to go to town indexing photos, it's entirely possible for a single photo to fall into vastly different- yet still general- categories.

Unless I missed something, these are image reference photos we're discussing. If you want a reference of Bob, then you take pictures of Bob, If you want a reference of Bob's car, you take a photo of his car.

[Veleno]

They're objects, not concepts. They dont get vague and thus dont need mulitiple classifications.

Sure they do. What if the photo is of Bob with a vintage car? Does it go in the "cars" category or the "Bob" category? Two old men playing checkers in the park- Is it filed under "people," "games" or "park photos?" What if the categories were more subjective than that, like, "my favorites from 2004" or "photos I printed out and gave to Sue?" It is true that most people don't feel the need to file their photos so extensively, but if somebody really want to go to town indexing photos, it's entirely possible for a single photo to fall into vastly different- yet still general- categories.

Unless I missed something, these are image reference photos we're discussing. If you want a reference of Bob, then you take pictures of Bob, If you want a reference of Bob's car, you take a photo of his car.

Perhaps Bob, or whomever I would be taking a picture of, happens to be standing next to some other object, or happens to be in some type of scenery that you could use for reference of something else. Most of the time the people I take pictures of aren't in a white room with blank walls making them effectively the only object in the picture. Thus there are other subjects to go along with the main subject allowing the picture to work in more than one catagory.

[Tim Mallos]

Google image search is pretty portable

Tim

[Veleno]

Google image search is pretty portable

Tim

Yup. I often make use of it when in need, but can't always find quite what I'm looking for.

[Bjorn]

Maybe it's time to learn SQL?

Actually it's a bit of a hassle, but I wanted to learn SQL once, so I set up a MySQL server and made a very simple database, coincidencially enough, for categorizing images. Since I didn't know anything about SQL programming then this took alot of time, but there are some good turorials online and at the end I had aquired a new skill

Particularly effective on linux where you can do database queries on the command line and pipe them directly into a image viewing program like qiv.

So for my database for instance, I could do something like "show pictures where there are two or more people visible but not a yellow or blue car and the weather is nice".

Well not really, but it would be possible :p This takes alot of planning however to be done effectively, that' s one thing I found out. The upside is that you can have thousands of images and get everything you want in an instant.

[Tim Tylor]

I got a scanner with a CD with a bunch of software, including a program called ArcSoft PhotoBase. I am not sure if this program is also available for PC (since I am running on a Mac), but I really like it.

yeah I'm pretty sure that it's available for PC because I think I used it once on a library computer.

It's available; it came among the pre-installed software on my PC.

[Eric F Myers]

ArcSoft also make a nice image editing program called PhotoStudio. It has came with every scanner I've bought and works just as well as Adobe PhotoShop (for what I need it to do).

[CleverUserName01]

Perhaps Bob, or whomever I would be taking a picture of, happens to be standing next to some other object, or happens to be in some type of scenery that you could use for reference of something else. Most of the time the people I take pictures of aren't in a white room with blank walls making them effectively the only object in the picture. Thus there are other subjects to go along with the main subject allowing the picture to work in more than one catagory.

Methinks you're thinking about this way too much. I think William's suggestion is, ultimately, the simplest - classify the photos as necessary in well-labelled folders. Go thru them and decide how they should be classified. If the photo of Bob's bitchin' Camaro also has Bob in it, there's a couple of routes you can go. If you have loads of hard-drive space, you can put a copy of the same photo in both the "Bob" folder and the "Cars" folder. Or in each folder, include a .txt file listing cross-references, i.e. a list in the Bob folder that says, "For more of Bob, see also...Cars>Bitchin' Camaros>1976-1980>Photo #57."

Not quite so elegant as searching a database, but definitely a method that doesn't require any additional software or special knowledge.