Photo archiving software

D

d7e7r7

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I have a folder of just over 200 000 photos at the moment and it's only going to get bigger as time goes on. What do you guys use to manage your photo collections?

Done some reading and seen some names thrown around: FotoStation, Lightroom, ACDsee, etc...
 
I used a variety of software titles in the past. The problem is that you reach a point where the software is no longer supported on an operating system that you upgrade to, or they start asking stupid amounts of money for it. Since your photo management data is locked into the software, this means that all the time you put into managing the collection ends up wasted.

I have changed over to managing the photos myself by sorting them into folders. This makes the system independent of software lock-in. If you want to go this route the first thing is to delete duplicates that may have arisen. DoubleKiller is really good at this. You can then sort them into folders by year or year/month. If you want to rename them to include the date then you can use bulk renaming software.

If you want to label photos (maybe not with so many of them), then it would be best to enter the labels via IPTC/XMP. This is an open metadata standard for archiving that stores the label directly in jpeg and tiff files and is not software dependent. Lightroom or BreezeBrowser can be used for this.

And set up a good backup system.
 
d7e7r7 said:
I have a folder of just over 200 000 photos at the moment and it's only going to get bigger as time goes on. What do you guys use to manage your photo collections?

Done some reading and seen some names thrown around: FotoStation, Lightroom, ACDsee, etc...
Click to expand...

Do you want just a DAM system or the ability to edit as well?

Personally I can't imagine doing it manually :eek:
 
d7e7r7 said:
No need to edit. Use Photoshop for that.
Click to expand...

FWIW avoiding photoshop is the first step in reducing file sizes, especially if you shoot in raw… You take a 24mb raw file, open it up in PS, do a little light work on it and save it as a PSD/TIFF and you're looking at a 100%+ increase in size, and that's only 8bit. 16bit and you're probably looking at closer to 500%. If you were able to do the same editing in LR you'd still only have the 24mb file you started off with plus maybe a couple hundred kb in extra data.
 
Interested in this as well. Recently acquired PS, but LR is just too expensive.

bwana said:
FWIW avoiding photoshop is the first step in reducing file sizes, especially if you shoot in raw… You take a 24mb raw file, open it up in PS, do a little light work on it and save it as a PSD/TIFF and you're looking at a 100%+ increase in size, and that's only 8bit. 16bit and you're probably looking at closer to 500%. If you were able to do the same editing in LR you'd still only have the 24mb file you started off with plus maybe a couple hundred kb in extra data.
Click to expand...
Isn't there a way to prevent PS from boosting the size?
 
HavocXphere said:
Interested in this as well. Recently acquired PS, but LR is just too expensive.


Isn't there a way to prevent PS from boosting the size?
Click to expand...

Tbh I'm not sure, I only have an older version of PS so my comments are based on that.
 
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