Looking for photo management tool/tips: how to compare/backup/manage images/-folders on your PC?

Grover

Well-known member
Hi,

I never worked much with photo's on my own PC, but I want to help my parents with managing their photo's on their PC in a couple of weeks. They use Photoshop Elements (but to be honest, for my parents this package is even too complicated... they almost prefer the Vista build-in Image functionality), but the point is this:

They have a lot (a lot) of pictures on their D-:drive, all inside subfolders who exists in the 'My Pictures' folder. They have made a backup on their external harddisk E: of the whole 'My Pictures' folder.

- Compare tool: They changed a lot of subfoldernames now and rearranged (also deleted some) pictures/folders on D:- and now they are not sure if the backup on E: has any photos left there who are not present anymore on D:. They need to compare folders/photo's on both drives: what is the best way/tool to do this?

- Backup tool: My parents are non-savvy computer users and managing folders/files by hand is sometimes even too difficult. Is there a backup tool on the market that makes it easy for them to just click on a button to backup their photo folders?

- Organization: What is the best way to manage your photo-folders? As I said even PS Elements is too complicated for them, so they don't want to use labels/tags and organize it from that platform. They get completely confused if the folders on the harddisk itself do not have any indication what kind of photo's are inside. They don't want to go to 'My Pictures' and see only folders that have the date as the foldername. They want to have an indication which of those folders are about them visiting the zoo in 1833 or the loo recently...

So I was wondering... how do people over here organize their photos? What is the best way to manually manage them on your hard drive? What are the best tools /ways to compare and backup your photo's?

Thanks for any help to us newbies :)!
 
Try Picasa. First off, it will find every photo they have. Then you can compare them. Best of all it's free. Roxio might work but it's been YEARS since I've looked at it. 

Most photoediting/graphics tools are going to be  way more than you need. 
 
I've always wondered about lightroom, but haven't ever purchased it.

Mostly, I just stick stuff in folders, use Picasa for quick/mass edits and resizing, PS for heavy lifting, and a Synology NAS is responsible for storage and backups.

Not much help, I know.
 
Abode Bridge (comes with any Adobe product) might be worth looking into, it's Abode's organizing program.

I've always wondered about lightroom, but haven't ever purchased it.

Mostly, I just stick stuff in folders, use Picasa for quick/mass edits and resizing, PS for heavy lifting, and a Synology NAS is responsible for storage and backups.
Lightroom 4 is worth a lot more than what they're selling it for. It's basically a cross between Bridge and Photoshop and I seldom need another program unless it's a complex edit that requires multiple layers (Photoshop CS6).

I do action sports photography (mostly motocross) and come back with 300-800 RAW files per event, here's my work flow:
  • Shoot event
  • Open up LR (Lightroom) and click the import tab
    • Select the destination folder which is on a pair of 2TB drives in a RAID 1 config. The parent folder is named by date and event or location (20130306_Redbud) and the RAW files are placed inside it in a folder called raw.
    • Add the event name or location to the keyword list so that it's added to all images.
    • Click import
  • Go grab a snack as it takes a bit to import and create the renders.
  • Go through the images one by one.
    • Add the rider numbers or athlete names to the keywords for easier searching in the future.
    • Any shots that are completely out of focus or of the ground (some times you accidentally hit the shutter while running) are 'Rejected' to be removed at a later time.
    • If the image deserves to be looked at again it gets a 3 star rating.
  • Filter the images to show only the 3 stars and any images that are to be edited for uploading to be sold get a 4 star rating.
  • Edit 4 star images
  • While editing the 4 stars any image that's worth uploading to our Facebook page/website gallery gets a 5 star rating.
  • Spend a little extra time editing the 5 star images
  • Any special image (desktop wallpaper, homepage slider, facebook cover image, prints etc) gets 'flagged' for later.
  • Export the images into a folder called /edits that's inside the same folder as the /raw folder.
I should also note that the image render previews and the LR data files are stored on a SSD drive for speed.
The reason keywords are so important is for when you need to search for specific images in the future, going through 10-15,000 images (per year) isn't fun. :eek: For example you need an image of a certain rider for an editorial piece, a sponsor is looking for some of their rider, or the rider is looking for some of themselves.
So basically what I'm saying is that LR 4 does it all. lol
 
For backup tool try something like http://www.acronis.com/ it makes an image of the harddrive that can be put back if something happens to Windows. You install the PC install all drivers and so on after that you run the image maker and you save that file to external drive or blu-ray or dvd. For documents and such i would go for a good nas server Synology is good you get software with it that backups to the nas server. Get at least one with raid 1 better is raid 5 or higher, its not cheap solution but it can save your documents and images if something goes wrong.
 
Lightroom 4 is worth a lot more than what they're selling it for. It's basically a cross between Bridge and Photoshop and I seldom need another program unless it's a complex edit that requires multiple layers (Photoshop CS6).

I do action sports photography (mostly motocross) and come back with 300-800 RAW files per event, here's my work flow:

Good to know. Where do you post your stuff?
 
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