Picture Organizing


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I do the same thing right now but just wondering if there is any better way?

 

The most efficient way is tagging.  Mac has this, Windows has yet to adopt it.

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I'd just organize my photos into folders based on date, event or whatever, and then maybe use a photo organizer on top of that to let you search by person or location or whatever. That way if you lose the program for some reason, you still have some basic organization built into your file structure.

 

Personally, I just use folders.

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THERE IS A BETTER WAY!

 

But it all depends on your usage.  Those saying "Just use a folder structure" is absolutely valid - it's a good method - for archival and 1 way querying.  Put them into folders labelled by event and date.  Fine.  It's what Explorer does well.

 

But what about "I want to see photos from 2004 with Gradpa Joe in them"?  This is when tagging becomes a necessity.

 

Apple fans will tell you how well iPhoto does it.  And it does.

 

But so does Windows Live Photo thingmybob.  I use it to tag people, places, dates...  It allows me to query my library from more than one direction.

 

So I say choose your main storage angle (date is a valid one) and folder them thusly.  Then let tagging take over.

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^ This.

 

Max22, if you need help you need to be more specific, what exactly are you looking for when you say better way to organise your photos? How does this better way look in your head? Maybe someone can help if you give us those details.

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^ This.

 

Max22, if you need help you need to be more specific, what exactly are you looking for when you say better way to organise your photos? How does this better way look in your head? Maybe someone can help if you give us those details.

 

Sure I want to be able to organize photos by catergory and have a virtual catalog of all my photos. Kinda like the way google images looks but on my pc.

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Sure I want to be able to organize photos by catergory and have a virtual catalog of all my photos. Kinda like the way google images looks but on my pc.

 

Have you already tried Windows Live Photo Gallery? You'll need to issue tags onto your content, since it can't guess that a picture of a beach is Vacation Fiji Summer 2004, but otherwise, it seems to support what you've described. It also supports face tagging, though the recognition algorithm doesn't seem to have been updated for a while and you get funny faces in trees, etc.

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THERE IS A BETTER WAY!

 

But it all depends on your usage.  Those saying "Just use a folder structure" is absolutely valid - it's a good method - for archival and 1 way querying.  Put them into folders labelled by event and date.  Fine.  It's what Explorer does well.

 

But what about "I want to see photos from 2004 with Gradpa Joe in them"?  This is when tagging becomes a necessity.

 

Apple fans will tell you how well iPhoto does it.  And it does.

 

But so does Windows Live Photo thingmybob.  I use it to tag people, places, dates...  It allows me to query my library from more than one direction.

 

So I say choose your main storage angle (date is a valid one) and folder them thusly.  Then let tagging take over.

 

Very good point. The only reason I don't do this is that I don't have the patience to go through and tag.

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To be honest I would think you would always use a folder structure since your storing the files on filesystem - dumping everything into 1 folder would be counterproductive to be sure.

Now if you use something on top of that to make it easier to view and search seems like what every software I have ever seen does, call it albums, catalogs, whatever - but most of them can read the exif info from the picture and give automatic details like date and even location if your camera has gps, etc. Or other info you might put on them from the device that takes them.

Tagging is great as well, but for example picasa will do auto face recognition and allow you to find photos with people in them very easy without any input from you. Like with anything the more upfront work you do the easier it is going forward.

In the windows world, picasa and the live gallery both work and have different feature sets that might make one better for a specific use than the other - but since they are really both free, I use both for example ;) Just point them to where you store your photos.

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BudMan, not sure if you can comment:  Picasa vs Windows Live Gallery - I know WLG stores tags in the file itself, I believe Picasa uses a local DB?

 

And to the OP: You say you want to view them in categories".  Please try not to use such a wooly term.  Category is meaningless.  Do you mean by person, by location, by event, by date, by camera, by arbitrary tag?

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You can add tags to the photos in the Windows Explorer.

 

As others suggested about folder structure. This is best option including tagging.

 

The tagging option is in the Explorer..  You can't miss it.

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The most efficient way is tagging.  Mac has this, Windows has yet to adopt it.

 

Windows has tagging. At least as far back as Vista. Not sure about XP!

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But what about "I want to see photos from 2004 with Gradpa Joe in them"?  This is when tagging becomes a necessity.

 

Here is what I do

 

People

Places

Things

Events

 

In the case of Grandpa joe from 2004 he would be found in

 

people / family / Grandpa Joe / 2004/

 

For example for this years pictures of my parents ...

 

People / family / Mom / 2014

people / family / Dad / 2014

People / family / Mom dad (Them together in a photo)/ 2014

 

All that being said, I get your point of what if granda joe was in a xmas photo in events / Christmas / Joe Family / 2004

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The most efficient way is tagging.  Mac has this, Windows has yet to adopt it.

 

Had to check if this was an old necro post from windows 98 or something. Windows has natively supported tagging in the filesystem since at least XP.

 

other than that, the best free photo organizer for windows is Windows (Live) Photo Gallery. fast and efficient. even auto tags faces for you if you want.

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Here is what I do

 

People

Places

Things

Events

 

In the case of Grandpa joe from 2004 he would be found in

 

people / family / Grandpa Joe / 2004/

 

For example for this years pictures of my parents ...

 

People / family / Mom / 2014

people / family / Dad / 2014

People / family / Mom dad (Them together in a photo)/ 2014

 

All that being said, I get your point of what if granda joe was in a xmas photo in events / Christmas / Joe Family / 2004

There only one problem with tagging files.... you actually have to do it :p

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