Hi Bruce. The common term for what you want to do is image management. If you google "image management software" you'll find a mind-boggling assortment of products at all price levels. There are many that will do the sorts of things you want. I think the best way to select one is to look at reviews and try demos.
You do raise a key point in your message: "So if the organization was in a proprietary file or something, external programs may not be able to deal with it. That would make the organizing less useful." Absolutely. There are two ways of dealing with this. One is to use image management software that is capable of exporting your cataloguing work in a standard database format. This is fairly common. The other method is to attach the information to the files themselves in a form that is readable both by image management software and by Photoshop. The advantage of this is that, even if your image management software blows up completely, your cataloging will continue to exist with your images and can be retrieved by other software. The IPTC standard is one approach. IPTC information is embedded in image files, notably TIFF and JPEG formats, much as EXIF information is embedded. The information is readable in Photoshop as "File Info" The other important approach is XMP, developed by Adobe. I haven't really kept up with the details of XMP. My impression is that it was developed largely to work with RAW files that may or may not be compatible with the IPTC standard. Adobe has worked with the IPTC people to ensure compatibility. The details are pretty complicated, so if you really want to know I suggest that you google IPTC and XMP. Maybe google "sidecar file" if you really want to get confused! I suggest you look for software with good IPTC/XMP editors. With a good editor you can do things like setting up a thesaurus that greatly speeds up data entry. The "file info" function in Photoshop does this but is not very powerful. Also look for software that will allow you to take a belt and suspenders approach by importing IPTC and XMP info to a database. I've been using a product called IMatch (www.photools.com) for a number of years. It has worked well for me and is very affordable. Cheers John Poirier > > > Quoting Bruce Dayton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > My wife is getting serious about trying to organize all our photos. > > I > > have most of them scanned and the past several years have all been > > digital. So on the plus side, we can work in one medium for the > > moment. > > > > She would like to organize images by child, by event, by date, > > etc. > > Then be able to access the images for some type of use - printing, > > making galleries, making scrapbooks electronically, etc. So there > > would need to be other programs to "import" an image and she would > > need to be able to find it. > > > > So if the organization was in a proprietary file or something, > > external programs may not be able to deal with it. That would > > make > > the organizing less useful. > > > > So once organized, she might say, "I want to make a gallery of the > > highlights of the past year." So whatever software we use to make > > online galleries would be loaded and she would want to find all > > the > > files for the past year and browse through and choose some for the > > gallery. Or she might say "I want prints of the last ice skating > > competition." She would need to be able to find the photos and > > put > > them on disk or some directory for uploading or some such. > > > > We are using Windows XP - so the organizing software would need to > > work with it. Any ideas would be helpful. > > > > -- > > Best regards, > > Bruce > > > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Find out how you can get spam free email. > http://www.bluebottle.com/tag/3 > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly > above and follow the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
