How to organize photos on your computer. The best free programs for organizing photo collections


Tools for organization are available in almost every image program. You can often find programs that are simultaneously viewers, editors, and cataloguers. These are, for example, Zoner Photo Studio, ACDSee, Nero Kwik Media and many others. There is no doubt that all-in-one tools are convenient for many users. But if, among their many capabilities, the main ones for you are those related to organizing photos, you may want to take a closer look at specialized programs.

Firstly, such applications are not overloaded with unnecessary options - and therefore, in most cases, they work faster and more stable than multimedia processors. Secondly, specialized programs They usually offer more tools to search for photos based on different criteria. Read our review about five apps that make organizing your photo collection easier.

⇡ Daminion 1.0 RC

  • Developer: Daminion Software
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: free
  • Russian interface: yes

Under its current name, the Daminion cataloger has been in development for more than five years, but its creators have much more experience in writing applications for organizing photographs. Previously, Daminion developers released the PicaJet program, but later decided to write a completely new application with multi-user access to the photo database and other interesting features. At the same time, a single-user version of Daminion is also available, which is distributed free of charge. The multi-user version is called Daminion Server.

Daminion works with catalogs - databases of photographs, and adding files to the catalog is the user's responsibility. This means that you need to manually specify the path to the folders with the images. In this case, files can be physically copied or transferred to the folder that is used to store data, or they can simply be added to the directory without copying. At the same time, Daminion remembers relative paths to files, so when you transfer photos to another drive, all data in the directory will be preserved. When adding photos to the catalog, you can immediately assign tags to them, or you can do this later - everything is at the discretion of the user.

As soon as the files are added to the directory, they are displayed in the program window in the form of thumbnails with captions. In the signature you can see basic information about the file: name, resolution, size, shutter speed, ISO. In addition, each thumbnail contains tools for organization: you can quickly set a rating, tag an image, add keywords, set color tag, view detailed metadata. The user can change the way files are displayed, displaying only images without additional information or, conversely, by removing the thumbnails and calling up a list of files with information about them.

If you select an image, you can see in the Properties panel more information about him. There is also an opportunity to supplement this information: indicate the people who are depicted in it, the event during which the photograph was taken, the location where it was taken, the category. For professional photographers, fields such as “Project”, “Client”, “Copyright” are provided. You can also fill out fields in the Properties panel in batch mode- for this it is enough just to first select necessary photos. All changes to tags are synchronized with file metadata, so information about files is always presented both in the database and in the files themselves.

If the right panel is informational and at the same time serves for data entry, then the left panel - “Tags” - is intended for search. All file search criteria are at your fingertips. For example, you can display only pictures located in the same folder, expand the “Creation Date” list and quickly find a photo by the month it was taken, display only files with the maximum rating, and so on. It is very important that, in addition to custom tools for organization, the program also offers many automatic ones. For example, it is very easy to select geo-tagged images taken with a specific camera using a specific lens. There is nothing difficult in using several conditions at once.

The program also has an advanced search that allows you to use up to fifty parameters, including AND operators, OR and others.

There are no tools for editing images in Daminion, you can only rotate thumbnails for more convenient viewing. If any changes were made by mistake, you can always roll back to previous version— the program keeps track of revisions. This is especially true when working with a multi-user application.

Daminion works not only with graphic files, but also with video, PDF documents. At the same time, the program is optimized for working with very large collections of images (the test database consists of 500 thousand images), so you don’t have to worry about the stability of its work when adding new files. By the way, for convenience, you can use several independent directories that can be opened in the program simultaneously, each on a separate tab.

⇡ IMatch 3.6

  • Developer: photools.com
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: shareware
  • Russian interface: no

Although latest version IMatch dates back to the end of last year; when you look at the program's interface, you get the impression that it is many years old. Really, appearance always been weak point IMatch, and against the backdrop of modern interface solutions, small buttons with graphics Windows style 2000 looks scary. The author has long promised to redesign the appearance of the application, but has not done so yet. However, many users still prefer this program.

The main reason is the support for scripts, thanks to which you can connect to the program almost any function that is not implemented in it by default. For example, there are scripts for managing file versions, for finding files that have been tagged incorrectly, for checking the correctness of names, and others. Scripts do not have to be created manually - many useful additions have already been written by other users of the program and are available on the forum.

Another important feature of IMatch is stable work with large collections of files. The program easily copes with databases containing hundreds of thousands of photos, does not slow down and works quite stably. In addition, IMatch provides a periodic reminder to create a backup copy.

Like Daminion, this program works with photo databases that must be manually populated with photographic content. The processes of creating a database and importing images are implemented in the form of a wizard, but despite this, it is difficult to call them intuitive. There are too many boxes to check along the way. By default, in the program window the database is sorted into folders. It is also possible to view by category, by saved search templates, by the history of selected files, and so on.

⇡ MyPhotoIndex 1.24

  • Developer: My Photo Index
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: free
  • Russian interface: no

MyPhotoIndex is inferior in functionality to its more advanced competitors, but the program has several important advantages. Firstly, the program is free and open source. Secondly, it is very simple, and the user does not need to rack his brain for a long time about where to find this or another option - they are all at hand.

The program offers organization of photos by categories, by tags and by rating. Tags can be added to the slice when importing images into the program database, and several tags that are used most often are already added by default.

All main functions are accessible via context menu. With it, you can add and remove tags, add and edit comments, change the date the photo was taken, send photos for printing, encrypt them, and set them as wallpaper on your desktop. Separately, it is worth noting the data sharing capabilities: with one click, photos can be uploaded to Facebook, Flickr and other services.

Using built-in search tools, the user can search for photos by tags, by title and other criteria. A convenient function is to search for images that were taken between two specified dates.

⇡ Photo Event Organizer 1.3

  • Developer: GearMage
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: free
  • Russian interface: no

Of course, it’s very good when you have the time and desire to keep your photo collection in perfect order: set ratings, sort pictures by category and add tags. But, unfortunately, even a simple sorting of hundreds of photographs into folders takes months for some. Thanks to large memory cards, we don't have to worry about running out of space and often copy photos to our computer once every two months. And then all the events recorded during this time end up in one pile.

Photo Event Organizer is a simple program that helps you easily sort your running photo archives by date. Specify the directory in which all photographs are stored, and also set the time period that determines the duration of one event. After this, the program will show you what period of time the photos will go into each folder, and will offer to give a name to each event during which they were taken. If you wish, you can simply sort photos by month or year.

Once the operation is complete, you will see new folders with neat names like “October” and “November”. Photo Event Organizer can both copy photos to new folders and move them, which is, of course, faster. If duplicates are found during the copying process, they will be new folder will not be transferred. Thus, the program can also help free up some space on your hard drive.

⇡ Namexif 1.6

  • Developer: Digicamsoft
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: free
  • Russian interface: no

And in the end - another simple one free utility, which helps you organize your photos by adding time information to the file names. The information is taken from the metadata written to the file at the time of its creation. Once you get files with names like 2013-04-01-17h56m56.jpg, they become a little easier to navigate.

Namexif works in the form of a wizard: the user is first asked to specify files or folders. Since the program can look into subfolders, you can immediately select the root directory, and then Namexif will find and rename all photos at once.

At the second stage, you need to select a renaming format. For example, an application can leave the original name at the end or add arbitrary characters to all names.

Unfortunately, the functions preview changes, as well as rollback, are not provided, so it is better to first practice on small folders.

⇡ Conclusion

Requirements for image organizing programs may vary, but the end goal for the user is always the same - the ability to quickly find the photo they need. Each of the programs discussed above helps with this in its own way, so all you have to do is choose the one that best suits you. Do not forget that photos that you cannot find are as useless as they were deleted long ago.

Let's continue the topic and keep pointing order in the computer. Today we will clean up our photo folders.

Let me make a reservation right away - I know that there are many special programs, which can not only sort and process your photos, but also, if desired, post them to a web gallery. And not only do I know, but I also know how to use them. But this post is not about batch processing of photos in Photoshop and not about the advantages of Lightroom over Picasa. It's about how to organize a mountain of digital photos that clutter up half of your hard drive and how to subsequently prevent such disgrace.

And those who want to automate the process can tinker with the appropriate software at their leisure.

You can come up with a huge variety of systems for organizing digital photographs, some for professionals, others for amateurs. The main thing is to organize your home photo archive in a way that is convenient for you personally.

The following principles can be used as a guide:

1. The “Photos” folder is divided into several categories, for example:

  • Travel and trips
  • Guests and holidays
  • Job
  • Various Beautiful Things
  • Disassemble

2. Now we determine the scale of the disaster and begin to sort the photographs into categories. If you can't decide which category to assign a photo to, temporarily send it to the "Sort" folder.

3. When distributing photographs, at the same time get rid of frankly unsuccessful, blurry photographs, as well as duplicates.

  • folders with names in the format “Year_Month_Event”, for example 2010_09_Mushroom hunting or 2011_01_Masha’s birthday. Folders with such names are automatically arranged in chronological order
  • folders with clarifying names - for those photographs where the shooting date is not important. For example, in my “Work” folder I have “Cooking”, “Wallpaper” or “Tile Collections” folders. Or in the folder “Various beautiful things” - “Cats”, “Nature”, “City”

We rename folders within categories according to one of these principles.

5. We look through the “Sort” folder - after several tens or hundreds of files have been collected there, you will probably come up with some idea for sorting.

Now let's move on to the files themselves. Inside each folder, select all the files, press F2 (rename) and enter the name (for example, 2010_09_Mushroom hunting) Now each file will have a name like “2010_09_Mushroom hunting (1)” It will be indicated in brackets serial number.

In order to free up disk space, you can do the following: inside each folder, create a “Best” folder and copy the most good photos from every event. Crop, remove red eyes, adjust color and save for viewing or publishing. Archive the remaining and original photos and put them on DVD.

That’s it, we’ll put your digital photo archive in order, now the task is to maintain it. To do this, just a few simple steps are enough:

1. Regularly upload photos from the camera to the “Sort out” folder on your computer or laptop

2. Once a week (on computer tuesday) sort the contents of this folder, deleting unsuccessful photos and processing successful ones, and immediately, without leaving the checkout, scatter them into categories, not forgetting to rename.

Almost every person using a digital camera, Thousands, and maybe tens of thousands of different photographs have accumulated on the computer. Everyone stores this huge archive differently. Someone has many in one catalog different folders with names or dates corresponding to photographs, and some have them all stored on different drives, network storages, in different folders and, quite possibly, some have long been forgotten in some folder named “New Folder” :)

Of course, when several years of photographs are scattered all over your computer, the mere thought of organizing and searching for them causes negative feelings. But not everything is as bad as it seems at first glance :) Regardless of how you store your photos - The Google Picasa program will help you cope with all this archive. I will try to describe in detail the process of organizing a home photo archive when Google help Picasa.

In just one hour you can achieve impressive results:

  1. Find all the photos on your computer, even those you forgot about.
  2. Organize them and learn how to quickly find the photos you need!

Automatic search for all photos.

Let's start from the first point. As I already wrote, to manage my home photo archive I use the very convenient Google Picasa program. It is a free and very powerful photo manager. You can download it at official page: //picasa.google.ru/ . Installation of the program goes smoothly and calmly: launch installation file and agree with everything that we are offered to do.

Before you start working with Google Picasa, remember two very important and useful things:

Picasa does not store photos on your computer: When you open Picasa program, it simply searches folders on your computer and displays the photos it finds. It displays files of specified types located in the folders selected for search. Source photos always saved: When using Picasa's editing tools, the original files remain intact. Changes you make to a photo are only viewable in Picasa until you decide to save them. Even so, Picasa creates new version photos from changes made, keeping original file unchanged.

So, when Google Picasa is installed, launch it. If all the photos on your computer are located in different folders or on different drives, then I recommend waiting for it to automatically search for photos on your computer.

For example, all my photos are stored in one folder, so after launching I immediately indicated the folder with which the program should work. If you have the same situation, I recommend that you immediately go to the menu Tools -> Folder Manager and check the boxes only on those folders in which photos are stored.

If you have photos scattered all over your computer, then you can do nothing but simply watch as Picasa finds all your photos and images.

When the program performs a full scan of your computer, on the left side you will see many folders in which images and photographs were found. Initially, Picasa finds absolutely all images on your computer.

We sort and organize photos into collections.

You need to clear this list yourself. To clear the list of photo folders:

Finally, when the list of folders is cleared of all unnecessary things, you can combine the remaining directories into Collections. For example, in my archive I found several different folders from my vacation in 2012:

In this form, the names of these folders are not very informative for me personally. So I combined them into one collection. For this:


Now all you have to do is view the entire list of folders and organize them into your collections.

Since the weather is not being kind, it's time to take care of your home photo archive. Everything that was captured in the summer, fall, or on vacation in hot and not so hot countries, that has been stored on the hard drive for a long time, must be sorted, organized, backed up, and printed. As hard as it may be to believe, more than 80 percent of our photographs never make it to print. In this article I will tell you how best to organize your home photo archive so that you can easily and simply find the photo you need, or even the entire series, and how to finally decide to print your favorite pictures for a family album.

Step 1: Sort your photos. Review your photos. Delete frequently repeated photos and low-quality blurry images mercilessly. Fight the “every shot counts” misconception, because in reality, bad and redundant photos create clutter, making it very difficult to find really good shots. The exception is a photo of a unique moment that reminds you and your family of something very important, meaningful and understandable. For example, the christening of a baby often goes poorly due to poor lighting in the church. And yet these photographs are infinitely precious. But even here, you should choose the best of the best.

Advice: If the batch of photographs is too large, it may be difficult to sort it, since after some time the eyes get tired, and the brain also ceases to distinguish a high-quality photo from a less successful one. Try to take breaks every 20-30 minutes. You have enough evenings to complete this task.

Step 2: Create folders. The organization of photographs is divided into two types: thematic and chronological. You can choose one of them, or you can use both at the same time. I like to organize my family photo archive in chronological order by year and month. For example, in the 2013 folder I have 12 folders, one for each month. Thematic folders have been created for each month. For example, the folder “01 January” contains the following folders: “New Year’s Eve”, “Walk in Jurmala”, “Winter Landscapes”, “Ice Show”, “Aunt Valya’s Birthday”, etc. It is no coincidence that I named the January folder 01. In this case, all my months are in order. If you leave only the name of the month, the folders will automatically be placed in alphabetical order, which is not very convenient.

Step 3: Copy and change the title. Sometimes from a trip we bring a very large number of photographs, where there are noticeably fewer of our personal ones than photos of landscapes, city streets, strange objects, fruits, etc. To make it easier for you to find yourself in these photos in the future, I suggest you select personal photos, copy them, and place copies in separate folder with the title "My Portrait". To this folder you can copy photos from the folder “New Year’s Eve”, “Bachelorette Party at Tanya’s”, “Graduation Reunion”, as well as from any others. But don’t forget to change the name in the “My Portrait” folder, since the photos are from different chronologies and you can accidentally duplicate the name given by the camera and replace one photo with another. You can change the name in each photo: “Me on New Year’s Eve”, “I’m in Rome”, “I’m with my mother” and so on, or you can change all the photos at once. To do this, you need to select all the photos and give one of them a name, for example, “My Portrait,” and the program will automatically rename all the pictures, giving each a serial number “My Portrait 01, 02, 03” and so on.

Step 4: Remove red eye. Portraits with red eyes are not uncommon. Today, this can be corrected even online on the website http://kras-glaz.ru/. To quickly correct a photo's color, cropping, and tone saturation, you can use your favorite editor. Very often, digital cameras come with programs for correcting digital photographs. By carefully studying the instructions, you can add significant originality to your photographs. But before experimenting with photographs, make a copy of the original, just in case. What if you don't like the result of your color manipulations?

Step 5: Create a copy. As soon as a batch of photos is sorted into folders and corrected, immediately create a backup copy of the entire archive. Professional photographers recommend using the following storage methods: external drive, online storage service, and printing. Most experts do not recommend creating backup on DVD or CD discs. When choosing an online service, consider the fact that it specializes in storing files for an unlimited amount of time. Personally, I am familiar with the following online storage facilities: Google Disk, Yandex Disk and Drop Box.

Tip for storing photos: external drive – although it sounds too high-tech, it is very easy to use. Connect the drive to your computer via a USB port, like a flash drive, and drag folders with organized photos onto it. However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to them. If it is damaged, the data can be restored, but not always. It all depends on the extent of the damage. Therefore, you still risk losing your data. So see the next step.

Step 6: Print. Now that your photos are in order, you can slowly print them out, as printed photography is still the best photo backup copy. I join the experts who don't recommend fiddling with your home printer. -Consumables quite expensive, and the quality is not always good. Use online services or specialized photo stores. You can try printing batches of pictures in different stores and services to compare and choose the best one for yourself in terms of price and quality.

An unbridled desire to photograph anything and everything is common to any owner of a digital camera. Therefore, on the computers of the vast majority of users (who among modern users does not take photographs?) quite quickly accumulates an unimaginable number of pictures, which are often located in randomly named folders and have nothing meaningful names. Finding the right photo in such gigabyte photo jungles is quite difficult, because it is unrealistic to look through the entire photo archive every time. As a result, unique photographs that captured some memorable moments of life will most likely be lost among a host of other images.
At the same time, ensure quick and easy access to specific photographs is not so difficult. To do this, you will need to think carefully about the system for storing images in your photo archive and involve specialized software tools.

Storing pictures on a computer

The first step is to clearly understand that storing all your pictures in a digital camera is not the most convenient and, of course, not the most reliable way. It is better to download photos to your computer after each photo shoot, and do this as soon as possible - while the memories of the events are still fresh in your memory. After this, it is wise to immediately get rid of bad shots - blurry photos, dimly lit photos, out of focus photos, etc. Of course, some of them can be improved by certain software tools, but if the same images are available best quality It’s clearly not worth spending time correcting shooting defects.

Of course, when importing photos to your computer, it is better to dump them not into randomly created folders - otherwise, in the future you will spend a lot of time searching the necessary pictures. It is necessary to develop some kind of hierarchical system for storing images (taking into account the nuances of a possible search), and then save the images in accordance with own system rules

There are many options for organizing image storage in a photo archive. Most often, when distributing pictures into folders, they are guided by the calendar-geographical principle (in this case, the date and place appear in the folder name - for example, 2011_05_27_Crete) or they divide the pictures into folders, taking into account the events at which they were taken (for example, 2011_07_31_Birthday) - Fig. . 1. You can also take into account the subject of the pictures (landscapes, animals, flowers, etc.), etc. in the system. In general, each user will have his own version of the hierarchy in the photo archive, which depends on the significance of certain criteria for him.

Rice. 1. Possible option
photo archive folder structures

In addition, it may be useful for searching if you tag photographs with keywords (family, vacation, corporate event, etc.), thereby combining them into virtual thematic collections. This will allow you to quickly identify (by filtering or otherwise - depending on what software tool will be used to solve this problem) images taking into account the keywords of interest. It's quicker to assign such keywords while importing images from the camera, although you can do this later, after saving the photos to disk. Unfortunately, in any case, the initial process of assigning keywords will require some time and effort, although modern software allows you to assign keywords to groups of photos at once, which significantly speeds up the process. In addition, you need to approach the assignment of keywords thoughtfully - with an eye to the expected needs and, relying on the software tools that will be used to manage the photo archive.

As for file names, not everything is clear here. It is advisable to use descriptive file names that can easily be used to identify what kind of image it is, since it is completely unrealistic to guess from the view name DSC_0705 that this is, say, a photo from a family vacation in Thailand. Therefore, it is better to rename pictures using a template. The type of template is determined by the nuances of the search. It seems to us preferable to include the date (possibly only the year and month) and frame number in the image name - for example, 2011-09-05_0015.jpg or 2011-09_0015.jpg (15th frame, taken on September 5, 2011 or in September 2011 ) - rice. 2. It is also possible to add the name of a place or event to the name of the photo - a variant of the name of a specific photo from the group in this case may look like: Thailand_2011-09_0015.jpg. Such renaming should be carried out in batch mode (manually renaming hundreds and thousands of files is completely unrealistic) - it is better during the process of importing files or immediately after loading them into a photo archive.

Rice. 2. Batch renaming files

When developing an option for hierarchical separation of photographs, you should be guided by two important principles. Firstly, if possible, place photographs of the same type together - this will simplify orientation in the future. Secondly, each image should be added to the archive in a single copy, otherwise the volume of the archive will noticeably increase, and difficulties will also arise if it is necessary to edit images that have duplicates. It should also be noted that it is more convenient (both in terms of orientation and in terms of intended backup) to store your photo archive on separate disk or in his separate section(ideally on a separate external drive) where no other information will be saved.

Photo management

After setting up a hierarchical system for storing images on disk, you can manage your photo archive using a variety of software tools. The simplest and most accessible way is to use Windows 7 libraries. Libraries, in essence, are virtual folders, which combine files regardless of their physical location. This makes it easier to find, use, and organize files on your computer or network. By default, libraries are designed to help you manage documents, music, images, and videos more efficiently, although you can use them to organize other files if you wish. Browsing files in libraries is done in the same way as in regular folders.

In the case of working with your own photo archive, it makes sense to create a library specially designed for this, assign it an appropriate name (for example, “Photo Archive”), and then directly from Explorer indicate to Windows the range of folders that will contain new library(Fig. 3). It is worth noting that the specified folders with photos can be stored on different media (for example, on the hard drive of a desktop PC and an external hard drive), but, nevertheless, after placing them in the library, it will be possible to view the corresponding images in one window. And this is not the only convenience - it will also be possible to organize files by properties (for example, by date, type, etc.), sort and group them according to a number of parameters, including keywords (Fig. 4).

Rice. 3. Defining a range of folders for the created library in Windows 7

Rice. 4. Grouping images based on keywords through libraries
Windows 7

You can go the other way - use the graphics viewer you like, which has minimal functionality for organizing photo collections - as a rule, support for categories, tags and ratings (similar capabilities are provided in many solutions of this kind). Which solution to choose is a matter of taste and wallet, since on the market you can find both recognized commercial products, and quite worthy alternative free applications. As an example, let’s name one that is well known to most users paid program ACDSee and the increasingly popular free cross-platform viewer XnView. Both named software products designed for viewing, organizing and simple editing images.

Working with images in these solutions is easy and convenient, since the developers have provided different variants viewing images, included simple tools for performing basic editing operations, thought through functionality for convenient exchange pictures, etc. As for organizing a photo archive and getting quick access to images of interest, the possibilities here are, of course, more impressive than in the Windows 7 libraries (that’s why specialized software!). Thus, rating images allows you to assign each image a certain value in terms of its value (for example, quality), so that in the future you can quickly find the most popular original images. The use of colored labels also simplifies organization - with similar labels, for example, you can mark images on different stages workflow (in some colors - original images, in others - images after correction, in others - images selected for printing, etc.) - Fig. 5. No less convenient is the use of categories, thanks to which you can instantly find images belonging to a specific category or even several at once (Fig. 6).

Rice. 5. Use custom color markers to highlight photos
in ACDSee

Rice. 6. Quickly access images from two categories at once in XnView

As a rule, an even more convenient option for managing a photo archive is provided by photo organizers, which are designed to organize and sort digital photographs. Therefore, it is not surprising that these products have more advanced capabilities for organizing photo collections and quickly searching for images in them. There are many similar solutions on the market. Some of them (such as Apple Aperture, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ACDSee Pro Photo Manager, etc.) are quite expensive, difficult to learn and aimed at professional photographers. At the same time, home users also have nothing to complain about - they have at their disposal numerous compact and easy-to-learn applications that are affordable or even free. As examples similar programs can be called Zoner Photo Studio, PicaJet and Picasa.

Cataloging pictures using photo organizers is as easy as shelling pears - just place each photo immediately in its assigned logical catalog category (Fig. 7) or first in a general storage, and then assign categories to the pictures (often with the ability to highlight different categories with icons), ratings and tags, and also assign keywords (this will determine whether the images belong to specific logical groups). Note that you can assign keywords to all selected images at once and not just one keyword at a time (Fig. 8) - this significantly reduces the complexity of this operation.

Rice. 7. Adding files from disk to the PicaJet category

Rice. 8. Assigning keywords in Zoner Photo Studio

All this will allow you to quickly find the photos you need in the future by searching, filtering, sorting and grouping. Of particular note is the ability to take into account keywords when searching and filtering, which makes it possible to perform complex search queries(taking into account not only one, but also several keywords) - fig. 9. In particular, by manipulating keywords, you can effortlessly find in the depths of your hard drives all the pictures with a sunset on the river, a son on a bicycle, temples during restoration, blossoming apple trees, etc., even if the shooting of such objects you carried out along the way, repeatedly and at different times.

Rice. 9. Quick search based on keywords in Zoner Photo Studio

Briefly about the products

ACDSee 14.3

Developer: ACD Systems

Distribution size: 71.8 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7

Distribution method: shareware (30-day demo - http://www.acdsee.com/en/free-trials)

Price:$29.99

ACDSee is a world-famous graphics viewer (Fig. 10), aimed at both professionals and home users. Includes tools for quickly and conveniently viewing files in a wide variety of graphic formats, as well as audio and video files and archives. In addition to viewing graphics, this solution can be used for editing and cataloging images, batch processing files, searching for duplicates, online image sharing, etc.

Rice. 10. Working with images in ACDSee

Cataloging in ACDSee is based on the use of categories, ratings and multi-colored labels. Categories are created manually (there is a predefined list of base categories) and can be nested; For better orientation, categories are highlighted with different icons. The ratings in this program are basic, but the tags can be edited, which allows you to separate images into logical groups in accordance with personal tasks. There is support for keywords and geotags, it is possible to edit EXIF ​​and IPTC data. Imported into categories are images from the most different devices: hard drive, CDs, digital cameras, flash drives, scanners, etc. Batch renaming of files is supported. With one click, you can send files selected from different places according to some principle to the so-called Image Basket for further editing or sharing. When viewing, images are displayed as thumbnails, in full screen or as a slideshow; If necessary, individual fragments of the image can be easily viewed in enlarged form using a magnifying glass. Get more fast access It's easy to get to the photos you need using sorting, grouping and filtering based on image size, date, rating, tags, EXIF ​​data, categories and keywords.

The editing panel built into the program, in addition to supporting basic operations (rotation, cropping, etc.), will help correct the exposure of the image, adjust levels and curves, perform color correction, get rid of red-eye and noise, and also apply standard filters to the image. These operations can be performed not only on single images, but also on several images at once in batch mode. Tools are provided for comparing images and converting them to others raster formats. In addition, ACDSee allows you to burn pictures to CD/DVDs, combine them into slideshows, PDF files and web albums, and easily share images by uploading them to social media, to FTP servers, etc.

Zoner Photo Studio 14

Developer: Zoner Software

Sizedistribution: Zoner Photo Studio Free- 26.7 MB; Zoner Photo Studio Pro - 87.7 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7

Distribution method: Zoner Photo Studio Free - freeware; two other editions - shareware, 30-day demo version (http://www.zoner.com/ww-en/download-free-photo-program)

Price: Zoner Photo Studio Home - $34.99, Zoner Photo Studio Pro - $69.99, Zoner Photo Studio Free - Free

Zoner Photo Studio is a recent product on the market, but already a well-proven program for managing and editing photographs and organizing shared access to them (Fig. 11). Possibilities this decision impressive, many functions were implemented by developers with an eye on professional products, in particular Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The program is presented in three editions: free Zoner Photo Studio Free and two commercial ones - Zoner Photo Studio Home and Zoner Photo Studio Pro. The capabilities of the free edition are limited to basic functionality. In addition, this edition does not have a 64-bit version and does not support GPU acceleration or dual-monitor operation.

Rice. 11. Organizing a photo collection in Zoner Photo Studio

Zoner Photo Studio allows you to create a photo archive in the form of a set of albums based on an existing folder structure or manually. Albums have an unlimited nesting level, and the easiest way to create them is by dragging the corresponding folders with pictures from the Explorer window onto the “Albums” folder of the program navigator. You can replenish your photo archive directly from devices (from camera memory cards, scanners, etc.), as well as by obtaining images from websites, PDF files, etc. When viewing images, they are displayed in the form of icons or thumbnails; to speed up access to the images of interest, it is easy to use sorting, built-in search and filtering. When filtering and searching, EXIF ​​data, keywords, service text information (title, description, etc.), as well as ratings, tags and GPS coordinates (the latter are entered manually or read from Google maps) can be taken into account. Possibility provided batch renaming files according to the template.

The editing capabilities are also impressive and will interest both beginners and advanced users. The former may limit themselves basic functions(rotation, cropping, alignment, automatic image enhancement), and the latter will be interested in using such advanced editing functions as adjusting levels, color editing, improving exposure, reducing noise, etc. Any changes can be applied not only to one, but also to several images at once in batch mode. There is also functionality for converting images from RAW formats to raster formats and editing EXIF ​​data. It's easy to combine your favorite photos into a PDF slideshow or convert them into a postcard, and even create 3D and HDR images. As for publishing, it is worth noting the creation of web galleries, recording DVD presentations, printing (using templates and photo calendars), sending e-mail, as well as uploading to Facebook, Flickr and Picasa web albums.

PicaJet 2.6

Developer: Picajet.com

Distribution size: PicaJet FX - 5.91 MB; PicaJet Free - 4.81 MB

Work under control: Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/7

Distribution method: PicaJet Free - freeware; PicaJet FX - shareware, 15-day demo version (http://www.picajet.com/ru/index.php?page=download)

Price: PicaJet FX - 490 rub.

PicaJet is a convenient and very easy-to-use program for cataloging image collections (Fig. 12). It is presented in two editions: free PicaJet Free and commercial PicaJet FX. The free edition includes only a basic set of functions - in particular, the creation of categories is not provided, the sorting and search capabilities are more than limited, etc., so we do not recommend choosing PicaJet Free to manage large and complex archives. The commercial edition has all the necessary set of functions for effectively organizing photo archives, and it may well suit most home users.

Rice. 12. Managing your photo collection in PicaJet

To organize a photo archive, PicaJet uses categories that are created automatically when adding images based on the existing folder structure and/or based on IPTC data, or manually. The nesting level of categories is not limited. You can add pictures to the collection from a digital camera, scanner, webcam, CD/DVD disks, etc. hard folders disk. To speed up the process of including images in the photo archive, you can use hot keys; You can also quickly import images from Explorer by dragging and dropping. In order to better identify categories, they can be assigned a variety of icons. Categories are assigned during import or manually by simply dragging a group of images onto a category. There is functionality for batch renaming of selected files based on templates. If necessary, it is easy to add a description and/or rating to the selected images. Photos can be viewed with grouping and/or sorting by date, rating, import time, etc.; It is possible to display pictures when viewing them as a slideshow.

The editing plan includes operations such as cropping and rotation, red-eye removal, sharpness adjustment, auto-correction, etc. Supports quick correction of several images with one click, as well as resizing them and converting them to another graphic format"on the fly". You can print photos in popular formats(including 9x13, 13x18, 10x15), as well as metadata editing (EXIF and IPTC). As for sharing, it is worth noting the presence of functionality for creating photo galleries for publication on a website, burning photo collections to CDs, sending photos to mobile phone, as well as optimizing photos for sending them by e-mail.

Picasa 3.9

Developer: Google

Distribution size: 14.5 MB

Work under control: Windows XP/Vista/7

Distribution method: freeware (http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa39-setup.exe)

Price: for free

Picasa is a popular tool for organizing, viewing and simply editing photos (Fig. 13), which has gained fame in no small part due to its close integration with Picasa web albums. Such integration expands the possibilities of sharing pictures with other users, and this is a definite plus. And the functionality of this program as a whole is at the level. However, the way the developers implemented images is not very successful, in our opinion. In addition, the application is quite resource-intensive and comes with a very mediocre help system.

Rice. 13. Organizing a photo archive in Picasa

Picasa uses albums to catalog images; nested albums cannot be created. Albums are filled manually, by sorting out images found after scanning or importing, which takes a lot of time from the user. Scanning hard drives starts when you first start the program, and by default all drives are scanned. hard disks computer, which is quite long - better this process interrupt, manually adjust the list of scanned directories through the folder manager and start scanning again. Photos from hard drives are added to photo collections automatically as scanning progresses, in addition, you can add pictures manually by importing images from cameras, CDs, memory cards, scanners, webcams, etc. In addition to albums, Picasa has another cataloging tool - the People collection. With its help, photographs are cataloged according to the people depicted on them with the connection of facial recognition technology. This collection is created in a semi-automatic mode - faces in all photographs are automatically recognized, and the user then needs to indicate the persons of interest to him in the photographs to create albums corresponding to them. When viewing, images are displayed in normal mode or in the form of a slideshow, taking into account the specified sorting option (by title, date, etc.). To speed up access to the photos you need, you can mark your favorite photos using tags, and also use tags - they resemble keywords and allow you to later easily find photos through the built-in search. You can also specify geographic data to link images to Google map Earth.

Built-in editing tools allow you to resize photos, rotate them, crop them, and also perform a number of image correction operations (red-eye removal, straightening, adjusting contrast and color balance, etc.). In addition, it is possible to rename multiple photos and batch editing, as well as online image editing using the Picnik.com service. There is functionality for printing photos in basic formats, as well as editing EXIF ​​data. If you wish, it is easy to create a photo collage from selected photographs, burn the photographs to a CD, create a video by combining photos into a slideshow, or publish them on Blogger. You can also share your albums with others after you add them to Picasa Web Albums.

XnView 1.99.1

Developer: Pierre E Gougelet

Distribution size: 4.36 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista/7; There are versions for Mac OS X and Linux

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.xnview.com/en/download.html)

Price: free (for private non-commercial or educational use)

XnView is a free cross-platform viewer for images and other multimedia files (Fig. 14) with very large quantity formats (on this moment- more than 500). The program allows you to easily view, process and convert image files, and is also equipped with a number of additional functions, including the availability of simple tools for organizing photo collections.

Rice. 14. Working with a collection of images in XnView

Photo archive management in XnView is based on the use of categories, the nesting of which is unlimited. Assigning categories to images is done manually and is possible for all selected or tagged files at once. You can add pictures to the photo archive from disk, as well as from scanners and digital cameras. In addition to supporting categories, you can assign ratings, color tags, and labels to make it easier to navigate among multiple images. When viewing photos, you are allowed to enable sorting by date, rating, format, width/height, orientation, description, comment, etc.; You can view selected pictures in slideshow mode. The program also includes a built-in search taking into account basic image parameters, including EXIF ​​and IPTC data. It is possible to batch convert and batch rename files.

The utility is equipped basic set functions for image editing (including reducing size, rotating, cropping), allows you to adjust brightness, contrast, gamma and color balance, has tools for automatically adjusting levels, eliminating red-eye, applying simple filters and effects, etc. Many operations can be applied immediately to a group of images in batch mode. IPTC data can be edited. If necessary, the XnView utility can also be used to compare images, print files, create panoramic images, take screenshots, generate multi-page files and web pages, and a number of other actions.

Conclusion

Everyone’s photo archives are different, as are the requirements for working with them, but for all users, searching for the necessary images in the archive takes a lot of time. The only way to speed it up can be proper organization photo collections, which implies a well-thought-out catalog system in the archive and the use of specialized software tools.

Each user chooses the hierarchical system himself, based on the subject of the images and his own priorities - the main thing here is that you are comfortable. As for the software tools, it all depends on the user’s requirements in terms of cataloging and the complexity of the intended search. There will be enough opportunities for some Windows libraries 7 or a simple free viewer, others will prefer more functional paid solutions: the popular ACDSee viewer program or one of the reviewed photo organizers, among which the Zoner Photo Studio program seemed to us the most convenient for cataloging.


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