I've tried a couple of the programs which have been suggested and here are
some comments which I hope may be of help to others. I wouldn't use Jasc
Media Center or Armadillo Photo, but they may be useful for others. Thanks
for everyone's suggestions so far!
1. Jasc Media Center Plus 3
o Displays thumbnails much like PSP
o Doesn't provide the ability for sub-folder display like PSP browse
o Thumbnail size is easily changed
o Most image info is stored in the album - not necessary to have a CD source
in the drive
o Double clicking will open the image using the specified editor. If the
disk is not present, JMCP will prompt with the label or the disk to be
inserted.
o Keywords can be stored against files and searches performed
o F3 and Ctrl-F3 toggle forward and backward between keyword matches. This
could be painfully slow if many matches are present
o No means to organise images into sub-groups other than putting them in
separate albums or using keywords
2. Armadillo Photo
o Non-standard windows interface. Although the program has clearly been
built using a standard tool such as C++, it ignores all the standards for
Windows interfaces;
- no menus
- no resizable windows
- non-standard look and feel
o Only one database is possible. It does not seem to be possible to have
several databases split by say subject material
o Database growth is rapid. Rather than storing only the thumbnail, the
program stores both a thumbnail and and optimised and reduced larger image.
It doesn't seem to be possible to link only to the original image as for
JMCP above. The user is never prompted for a missing disk (eg. CDR) since
the database copy is used, although the information regarding the original
and the volume it came from is available. Processing only a few hundred
images resulted in over 60MB worth of data in Armadillo.
o Many Keywords can be entered against a given image, but the drop down
lists are extremely inconsistent
o The program seems unstable.
