Better shoeboxes for digital photos

Sorting and retrieving pictures in the era of the 250GB hard drive has created a set of challenges of its own.
The New York Times

The story "Better shoeboxes for digital photos" published February 3, 2007 at 5:58 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Nimimbu]

No mention of Picasa

Not sure why Picasa wasn't mentioned...

[Weezin99]

Picasa is mentioned

It was mentioned, toward the end of the article

[Weezin99]

Picasa is mentioned

It was mentioned, toward the end of the article

[Weezin99]

about picasa

Is the author sure that picasa can't grab pictures from cd/dvd?
I have picasa and I was able to grab pictures from my CD and DVD. Maybe I am not understanding the article correctly though.

[extinctone]

It can read from CD but..

It doesn't keep track of the images that have been saved to CD. That's what you missed.

[bensenc]

ACDSee has a superior product

ACDSee's Photo Manager & Pro version are excellent choices. The software can handle large collections & is straightforward to use. Many have had problems with the organizers bundled with Photoshop & Paint Shop Pro. I have snapfire & it has some serious shortcomings.

ACDSee's software is very flexible, robust & offers a great tool to everyone from the hobbyist to the professional photographer!

[markdoiron]

I'm Unconvinced

I use an older version of PaintShop Pro (V7). JASC lost me after staying true to them from V1 when they entirely changed the user interface to "improve" the product. Changing the look of icons was an improvement? Give me a break--that's just as silly as changing the letters of the alphabet!

As for photo managing software: If folks would just apply proper names to their image files, then file them by project/event/whatever in properly named folders they could find what they need using Windows Explorer.

As for preserving the original images: I always make a copy of the editing folder before making the edits. Then that folder is burned to CD/DVD along with all of the final edits. The edits are also stored in an appropriately named folder on the hard drive, and the original images are deleted from the hard drive. All edits are world-standard .jpg--not some bizarre format that someone won't support five years from now. And everything on hard drive is backed up several ways between machines, as well as one copy that ends up at my safe deposit box. I manage hundreds and hundreds of images shot each month this way. Having to search through images spanning 5-10 years is routine for me, and it's easy as pie.

I learned the lesson of "organizing applications" when trying to use filing software in the mid-90s to move my home office paperless. That company went out of business and didn't support a new OS. All my files were lost. Nope--world-wide defacto standards only for me. On top of that, those files were never searchable outside of that application (such as from another computer over a VPN connection).

--mark d.

[disco-legend-zeke]

ACDSee was once great, newest versions have less features.

I used ACDSee for many years, and continue to use a much older version.

One by one, the features i need have been removed.

As a result i have been forced to find other software to perform tasks once performed with ACDSee.

For example, Early versions provided a means to create Web Galleries complete with thumbnails and links. Today's version can create overly fancy scripted web presentations with bandwidth wasting automatic slide shows.

I replaced this functionality with a program calle Extreme Thumbnail Generator.

Another great feature of ACDSee was Batch EXIF setting, a great way to add copyright and other descriptive information to pictures. Sadly, this feature has also been crippled to the point of uselessness.

I have not found a replacement program for this functionality, and i am presently using a very old version of ACDSee to accomplish this.

I am working closely with exisoftware.com, the creator of Extreme Thumbnail Generator, to add total EXIF management to their product.

This is not to say that ACDSee is not a great program, its just that it has moved away from being a useful webmaster tool.