You can read and write these tags natively in the Windows and macOS operating systems, but only for certain common file types like JPEG. It’s used by many stock photo sites and press associations and is the safest way to ensure your images are properly tagged. There is a standardized metadata system called IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) which is the most widely-supported cross-program method of tagging.
It can describe the basics of your camera settings or be as thorough as full keywords identifying subjects, the photographer, location details, and so on.
Last but not least, it’s important to point out that I received no compensation of any kind from the associated software developers for writing this article, and they had no editorial input or review of the content.Īll photo organization is accomplished through metadata (data about your data) that is included in your image files. There’s still some work to do – there always will be, unfortunately – but I’ve found a system that works well. Once I accepted that my collection needed organization (grudgingly, since I always love photographing more than organizing), I decided that I would only be using the best photo management software available. So wait, you’re asking yourself, why would that make me trust you about photo management, Thomas? Simple: my need for the best photo management software is the same as yours, and the winner for large collection management is what I’m now using for my personal photos. I would randomly tag things in Lightroom, but it could hardly be called organized.
Nature photographs are mixed in with landscapes and experiments, and occasionally a memory card dump would include some work images mixed in. I organized my images based roughly on the time they were photographed, but that was the extent of it.
I’ve worked as a professional product photographer in addition to my own personal photography practice, and I have to admit that before I finished these reviews, my personal photo collection was a mess.
Hi, my name is Thomas Boldt, and I’m an avid photographer. The interfaces take a bit of time to get used to, and are not nearly as capable as ACDSee, but they can still help you bring order to the chaos of an unsorted “Photos” folder. They provide more basic flagging and filtering of your collection, but you can’t argue with the price.
If you’re a casual photographer looking for a great photo manager on a budget, you may want to look at the free alternatives I tested. I’m going to be using it for my personal collection moving forwards, and I refuse to compromise on quality when it comes to the software I choose. It even provides statistics about the images you’ve got in your collection, and we all love Big Data. It has a solid set of filters and tags, it’s easy to use, and it’s quite responsive when handling photo collections with tens of thousands of high-resolution images. So what’s a photographer to do?Īfter some careful testing using my own roughly-organized photo collection, I’ve selected ACDSee Photo Studio as the best photo management program, no matter whether you’ve got a few images to sort through or thousands. Your computer’s operating system may include a very basic tool for organizing your images, such as the macOS Photos app, but it’s often hard for a simple program to keep up with the incredible number of images created in the modern world. If you love your smartphone or digital camera, you’re probably taking hundreds of photos all by yourself each year, and if you’re a professional photographer that photo collection will grow even faster.Īs a result, many photographers find themselves stuck with a huge number of images and no good way to sort through them. Instagram alone is responsible for roughly 95 million photos a day, and that doesn’t count all the images that are sent to different services, shot with DSLRs, or never uploaded. Every day, the world takes an incalculable number of photos.