Drowning in sea of digital photos/videos

Strider590

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Yours is the generic solution, the photo cataloging software is the bespoke solution.

If you are talking £80,000 for software or using heavily nested folders resulting in duplicate images etc then evidently the folders is the way to go.

If you are talking a free or £50 piece of software that allows you create many views of your photos depending on your need/ desire rather than having to manually go through potentially thousands of thumbnails then my time is easily worth £50 to be able to achieve what I need to quicker/ more efficiently.

Well, no because if I move my files to another workstation, then I won't be able to access the files in the same way, because it won't have that software. To me this is a BIG deal breaker.......

Knowing I can FTP my files over to my tablet and view them in their respective folders, is just invaluable.

InsideInsurance

Strider590 wrote: »

Well, no because if I move my files to another workstation, then I won't be able to access the files in the same way, because it won't have that software. To me this is a BIG deal breaker.......

Knowing I can FTP my files over to my tablet and view them in their respective folders, is just invaluable.

I have the same/ compatible software on all of my devices so this isnt a problem. Similarly the files are all still there to move around if you want, there's just a database that sits alongside them with the details of each file enabling the GUI to quickly find the photos that meet the criteria that you want to search on.

SuperHan

It may not be a solution you are looking for per se, but I find iPhoto is a brilliant piece of software for photo management if you have a Mac. It does everything you require, and will also recognise faces in photos, so will be able to show you all pictures of Grandchild 1 in a few clicks (after a bit of initial calibration).

However, it will require investment in to a Mac, which may not be what you wanted to do, but I thought I'd throw it out as a suggestion.

whitesatin

Thanks for your many replies, most of which I am still trying to digest, lol.

Trying to visualise what I acually want is something like, a gadget, with a biggish screen and facilities to connect memory stick, dvds, cds of photos, even old floppy disks (I do have a little gadget at the moment that enables me to put those onto my laptop to view). I then want to slowly but surely, go through each lot of pictures, get rid of the poor quality ones, then make new folders to catalogue them into some sort of system, e.g. begin with those of me, when I was young, my children when they were young (I have got two scanners including one that does old negatives so I already have some of those scanned and saved on my laptop) then go through to modern day. I use a Samsung Chromebook so have to rely on the laptop to download new photos, mostly from my phone. The laptop is on its way out and very slow, probably not helped by the amount of photos stored on it.

I know I am coming across as wooly but that is because it is all a bit wooly in my head still. My children never have time to sit down with me to help and my grandchildren are all aged 5 and under - I can see them overtake me in technology soon, lol.

Anyway, it sounds like it isn't just me who is trying to tackle this issue and I will take the time to take in all your ideas, thanks.

[Deleted User]

Sounds like it's time for a new desktop PC with a nice big hard disk. That way you can buy a lovely big monitor for it

Anything like a tablet/ipad is just going to be an absolute pain to deal with lots of images with. The closest 'gadgetry' thing I can think of would be a Microsoft Surface tablet PC. But for the same price of that you could get a nice PC.

Idiophreak

whitesatin wrote: »

Trying to visualise what I acually want is something like, a gadget, with a biggish screen and facilities to connect memory stick, dvds, cds of photos, even old floppy disks (I do have a little gadget at the moment that enables me to put those onto my laptop to view). I then want to slowly but surely, go through each lot of pictures, get rid of the poor quality ones, then make new folders to catalogue them into some sort of system, e.g. begin with those of me, when I was young, my children when they were young (I have got two scanners including one that does old negatives so I already have some of those scanned and saved on my laptop) then go through to modern day. I use a Samsung Chromebook so have to rely on the laptop to download new photos, mostly from my phone. The laptop is on its way out and very slow, probably not helped by the amount of photos stored on it.

A PC's going to be the best tool for doing this. Smaller things may be suitable for a couple of dozen photos, but when you get into hundreds, you'll save yourself *hours* just being set up on a proper PC.

At the moment, I'm in Strider's camp...

I have a pair of 2TB drives (primary and backup) that contain

pictures\date\description and images within.

For most of what I want to do, this is fine...and at least it's organised, de-duped etc which is most of the battle.

Increasingly, though, I'm thinking that I want a software layer over the top of this - if I want a nice picture of my mum, it would be nice to click "photos of mum" and have them all appear.

When I've taken 2000 snaps on a holiday, I'd like to be able to say "show me the best" without having to spin these out into their own folder.

All "nice to have" stuff...but it would be "nice to have" them, so I don't see why not...

Moneymaker

SuperHan wrote: »

It may not be a solution you are looking for per se, but I find iPhoto is a brilliant piece of software for photo management if you have a Mac. It does everything you require, and will also recognise faces in photos

I second that. I store my photos in "daily" folders so I at least have the date they were taken. Then I use "Renamer", folder by folder, to rename files. I set it to replace "DSCF" (or whatever) with the date and location (as a minimum) and whack a folder at a time. I may need to do some manual renaming.

Then I drag each folder into iPhoto, which imports them (copies them to its own location on an external Hard Drive).

Inside iPhoto, I can add any additional "tags" required. With "face recognition" set up, the software does the rest.

Inside iPhoto, I keep everything ordered in folders suitably labelled for "Tenerife 1998" etc.

I keep at least TWO backup copies of everything, on TWO separate Hard drives.

A bonus is that, as with all Mac applications, iPhoto is integrated with the Operating System so it's a simple one or two click process to add a photo to an email, or to export it, enhance it, remove "red eye", change its size, etc.

I doubt this sort of simple integration is possible with Windows, although you might come close using something like Adobe "Lightroom". It's probably worth spending a few bob on something that's reliable and user-friendly. (iPhoto is supplied free with every Mac, I think.)

[Deleted User]

When I use picasa, it does a lovely trick of never 'breaking' the original photo. Any changes to photos exist separate to the original image. So I arrange stuff by year/month/day in folders.. but my 'software' layer lets me then do things like search by person, search by location.

So I arrange by putting stuff in folders, but I browser by application.

Tonight we're going to go through the last few months photos so we can print stuff out. We'll do that by creating a temporary 'album' that photos from many folders can be put in (well, a reference to the photo). We'll then export these to USB and get them printed out. I will never have altered the original folders or images, merely put them in a temporary collection.

Picasa is free, and I'm slight amazed no one else in this thread uses it; I guess it's an equivalent to iPhoto. Lightroom is kinda overkill for just photo arranging. It's awesome if you want to edit RAW files though.

(This is going to be a long day; it's taken me 2 hours and i've only managed to copy 1/2 my 2014 photos to my NAS. My 2013 photos are going to take all night to copy)

pogofish

You really don't want to get into digital video then - your photo storage situation will pale into insignificance!

But otherwise, hard discs are your answer - and don't trust your important backups to just one disc. Have another stashed somewhere secure - It pays dividends if anything goes wrong and as I found last year, if you ever have a break-in. The thief got my PC and first backup discs but he missed the second disc, so I lost very little in the end.

RumRat

I know I am coming across as wooly but that is because it is all a bit wooly in my head still. My children never have time to sit down with me to help and my grandchildren are all aged 5 and under - I can see them overtake me in technology soon, lol.

The 5 year old is the one to consult.....They are going to overtake your knowledge in the next few months.....See HERE