The very best photo manager? (other than Adobe)

kide · Aug 26, 2019

I've used Picassa for years to import and file my photos. It's not been supported for at least two or three years and now doesn't file the pics from my new Sony camera correctly. I've got a pretty large collection and need to find a new manager app. I was going to just email Kraig, but then thought "why not find what other forum members are using". I'll probably spend $$ for a good one, with the exception of #1 rated Adobe, as I'm not getting into their monthly fee trap.. Anybody got a favorite?

kmcconaughey · Aug 26, 2019

I don't use any special software, I just copy them onto my various PCs, makes for multiple backup copies. For cell phone photos I upload them to my Dropbox account then download them to the various PCs. For my Sony camera and my trail cameras I copy the photos off of the memory card onto my main use laptop then copy them onto a flashdrive and distribute them onto the other PCs. Once I have the photos onto my PCs I copy them into various descriptive folders. For example, say I'm up at the cabin for Labor Day weekend and take a bunch of photos. Those would go into a folder called "Cabin Labor Day 2019" or "Cabin September 2 2019" this folder would be a sub folder, in a folder called "Cabin 2019" which is in a folder called "Cabin". For garden related photos it's "Garden" as the main folder, then folders by year: "Garden 2019" then within the garden year folders it's by month: "Garden August 2019". I've been doing this ever since I've been taking or scanning digital photos. It only takes a few minutes when you do it right away after you copy the photos onto the PC. I keep most of them in a folder called "AC Folder" which keeps it near the top of the directory. The AC Folder was originally for my Allis Chalmers tractor photos and was called "AC 620 Folder" but because it was at the top of the directory I kept the AC and dropped the 620 and used it as the catch all for my photo folders.

Here's some screen captures showing sample directories.

kmcconaughey · Aug 26, 2019

This same organization is used for all my Cub Cadet archives, which I have on a couple of my PCs and on a flashdrive.

kide · Aug 26, 2019

Thanks, Kraig..
Part of the problem is Sandy and I both took a lot of pictures going back to '01. At one time I saved all of mine, based on subject. Sandy used the Kodak app, which just created folders based on date created. I eventually had to combine her stuff and mine, and I had moved her to Picassa, so there is where I ended up. Now, Picassa is misbehaving and I've got about 600 gig, with 162,000 pictures to organize , I've loaded everything I can find to a 2 TB drive , eliminated as many dupes as I can find (about 10 percent) and I'm going to feed the result into a new App. I'm leaning towards DigiKam right now, gonna load and test it on a batch.. I've seen some other candidates that may be good, Irfanview has always been around , may look at that also.