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Help with Editing and Organising software for digital photos, please.


Smudge

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Hi.

 

I have recently bought a new laptop, which came with Windows 10. I am really struggling to get my pictures organised in to Albums and sub-albums for different subjects etc. I just seem to have ended up with a great jumble of disorganised pictures. Also the editing program is not great for adjusting over or under exposed photos, my biggest and constant faux pax :blush:

 

What editing/organising software are you guys using and would recommend?

 

Cheers.

 

 

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On 8/11/2021 at 3:29 PM, Smudge said:

Hi.

 

I have recently bought a new laptop, which came with Windows 10. I am really struggling to get my pictures organised in to Albums and sub-albums for different subjects etc. I just seem to have ended up with a great jumble of disorganised pictures. Also the editing program is not great for adjusting over or under exposed photos, my biggest and constant faux pax :blush:

 

What editing/organising software are you guys using and would recommend?

 

Cheers.

 

 

Hi Smudge. I create a folder in the "Pictures" folder of Windows 10 for each event that I attend. I then create a sub-folder within that folder in which I save images edited in Photoshop Elements to ensure that the original files remain unchanged.

 

I backup the images to external hard drives, one of which I keep at home and the other is my off-site backup, supervised by my Mum!

 

Just my way of doing things, because I can't get on with Adobe Lightroom, which seems to be the preferred software with enthusiasts.

 

 

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Once upon a time there were a number of computing magazines on the market and many of them used to supply free software, which was usually an older versin of the current offering. You would then be offered a cut price upgrade.

 

One such was ACDSEE and I have used this as my initial editing and management system for many years. I would certainly recommend it 

 

https://www.acdsee.com/en/store/?msclkid=ec737c3f86961aa446e01d2957e815a2&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand | English&utm_term=acdsee com&utm_content=ACDSee

 

I currently use ACDSee Photo Studio Professional 2021 having purchased most upgrades..

 

Having said that I agree with @Alpha Delta 210 that you should get yourself into a discipline of good use of sub-folders and meaningful file names. I have now written an image catalogue system in Visual Basic and Excel which provides the basis of my indexing system. I also have Photoshop Elements which provides more functionality than ACDSEE but is over twice the price and does not provide the fully integrated view / edit /manage functions that Elements does.

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HI, Smudge,

 

AD210 (and Paul) have got it right - decide how you want to organise your photos, and create sub-folder(s) with names meaningful to you in the Windows10 'Pictures' folder.

 

The next bit IS important but you need to decide whether, if you want to modify the photos with software, whether and where you want to 'save' the new version.  If you simply 'save' them the new image overwrites your original and you've lost it.   Not always a good idea so again, as AD210 sugguests, as well as creating a sub-folder - e.g. Airshow2021 - for the photos you download from your camera on return from an airshow, create a 'mirror' one - e.g. Airshow2021Mod - in which to 'SaveAs' your updated photos.

 

As regards 'software' there a lots of packages - PhotoShop, PhotoShop Elements, Lightroom, Affinity Photo, etc.  Many of them require you to pay for them.  Free Software can be found, and I'm experimenting with one such. GIMP.  Actually, don't dismiss the free 'Photos' software - it allows you to crop photos, to correct exposure, to 'sharpen' them, to remove 'redeye' from photos of people, and to improve colour, even to the point of creating a Black-and-White image from an original colour one.

 

I hope that's helpful, I've just really reworded AD210's and Pau821's good avice.

 

Good luck,

 

Jonny

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10 hours ago, Jonny said:

decide how you want to organise your photos, and create sub-folder(s) with names meaningful to you in the Windows10 'Pictures' folder.

I've got nearly 100 years of photographs on file (grandfather's onwards), literally 100s of thousands of images. Over the years I have used many paper and PC based methods of organisation, so this is the outcome of my experience.

 

Keep the file structure as something meaningful, but context neutral. I use a date structure - top level is year, sub-level month, sub-sub-level day. Files are named YYYY-MM-DD-[camera time stamp], or in the case of slides and negs, YYYY-MM-DD-sequential number

 

Names based on content of the image never really work out in the long run - there are too many possibilities ... location, event, people etc. and sooner or later you'll want to reorganise your categories.

 

Once you have a consistent and sustainable file structure, you can use this to create an index (in Excel or specialised software).  You can change the index, add or delete categories as much as you like, but the file structure stays the same.

 

I really wish I'd started off this way, because physically re-organising thousands of images in years to come is no fun and hugely time consuming.

 

Cheers

 

Colin

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12 minutes ago, ckw said:

I really wish I'd started off this way, because physically re-organising thousands of images in years to come is no fun and hugely time consuming.

 

Cheers

 

Colin

Being currently in the depths of such a slog, Colin, I can tell you it's even less fun than that.

I would add as a general advise that not only 'proper' nomenclature (whatever one chooses) for images...but actually keeping up with naming and sorting them on a timely basis...will save much aggravation and the sapping of will to live.

My current weakness is forgetting how many images I tend to build up on my phone -- having recently upgraded to one with vastly more storage space than its predecessor -- and then having to recall pertinent tags and such while flushing them to the PC.

No photo is of any use if you can't find it!

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Maybe work out a database scheme first?

Mine is 

Medium (Air, Land, Sea, Space)

Country

Manufacturer 

Main type - main type books

Sub type - sub type books - sub type drawings

For current projects, I go one deeper:

Sub type area ( cockpit, wheelbay, etc).

 

 

Pictures taken be myself, are dropped into this as well, irrespective of event.

Been trying to use MS Access to correlate this to kits etc, but as others have said, the task is huge, life's to short and I'm behind with building already....

 

Oh, and make backups!

MAKE BACKUPS!

NO REALLY, REALLY MAKE BACKUPS!

 

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I back all mine up onto a 1TB external drive, I arrange the folders by year. I then add them all to Flickr for easy reference and sharing, plus you can make the folders on Flickr private if you don't want people to see the pics.

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