I have recently come into possession of thousands of family slides and historical photographs. I hope to use a slide scanner to digitalize the slides, and a regular scanner to work with the rest so that they can be shared with other family members.

I am hoping that someone in the forum can suggest software that would allow me to tag the digital images with a variety of tags so that they become searchable. Has anyone worked with such software?

Randall S

IDImager

Randall Shinn wrote:

I have recently come into possession of thousands of family slides and historical
photographs. I hope to use a slide scanner to digitalize the slides, and a regular
scanner to work with the rest so that they can be shared with other family members.

I
am hoping that someone in the forum can suggest software that would allow me to tag the
digital images with a variety of tags so that they become searchable. Has anyone
worked with such software?

I'm the designer of SQLNotes which can be the perfect tool for organizing photos:

- The UI is an Excel-like spreadsheet.
- Drag-drop the files from Explorer creates a item with a link to the file
- You have user-defined columns to describe the photo (date, who's there, where, rating, etc)
- You can add additional information as sub-items (click on the + to see the details, as in Windows Explorer)
- You can sort, filter, group easily
- Image file is not imported, SQLNotes creates a link, so the SQLNotes remains real small
- No imaging editing tool included (would be second rate anyway). You use the editing tools that you prefer! Double-click the item in SQLNotes to open it.
- You can create many such spreadsheets (called grids) where you see some or all of your pictures. Great to view the same photo in different contexts (without making copies) i.e. The grid of photos of my wife and the grid of photos of our trip to Hawaii, some of the photos will be the same. No problem!

Plus, coming soon are 2 great additions for this specific task:
- Automatic file monitoring. Tell it which folders to monitor and new pictures will be added to your SQLNotes file automatically, in a separate window so you know that they need to be documented.
- A built-in image viewer, which rotates to show constant size (portrait vs landscape)

More info at www.sqlnotes.net

As Jan and I sometimes cross paths at IDImager, I'll second his recommendation and add a few others.

iMatch is another powerful program, but the UI needs quite a bit of work before I would call it user friendly. There is always Google's Picassa, which is free. Finally, one that I find well documented and affordable is FotoAlbum Pro from Fototime. FotoAlbum Pro also runs on U3, and it ties in nicely with Fototime's web posting/printing site.

Also for your consideration, Extensis has Portfolio. Finally, I would stongly recommend staying away from MS Expression Media (formerly iView Media Pro) until they figure out which end is up. MS bought the program last year and has done very little to date but change the name and raise the price.

If you want to manage photos, get a program dedicated to managing photos. All of the above play well with metadata, keywords, and allow you to view your images, things that are essential for easy management of photos.

Good luck!

--Ken

I can recommend ACDSee 10 Photo Manager, http://www.acdsee.com/
which I use from version 0.0 (then called AcdSee32, it was fastest image viewer, there were not many digital photos back then :) )

Randall,

I have a similar project in mind, though the number of slides is in the hundreds, not thousands. I have been looking for a low-cost slide scanning solution, but have not found one. I would be grateful if would let me know which scanner you use to scan your slides. (Or if anyone else has a low-cost slide scanner in mind...)

Thank you.

Steve Z.

I'll add another vote for ACDSee.

I have thousands of image files also, and used ULEADS Photo Explorer for years, reasonably content. Part of the PhotoImpact image suite, it comes bundled with many scanners and offers basic image organizing capability, with a thumbnail interface and some rudimentary editing tools.

ACDSee was featured on Bits du Jour a couple of weeks ago, so I grabbed the opportunity, and am very glad I did. It's far more powerful than what I'd been using, with tagging, annotating, cross-referencing capabilities, and so on. Wish I'd bought it years ago.

Incidentally, I would definitely recommend PhotoImpact as an image editor. It offers near-PhotoShop power at a fraction of the price.

I strongly recommend taking a look at Adobe Lightroom. It's a little pricey, but if you're trying to manage a big photo library with both tagging and editing, its workflow is fantastic.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll take a look at the programs suggested.

A wrinkle in my situation is that my wife is a professional artist who uses photography in the process of designing her pieces, as well as documenting them, and she is currently under contract to write a book (including photographs) about her technique. So whatever direction I go is likely to involve "professional" equipment and software.

So, to answer Steve's question, for slide scanning we will likely go with something like the Nikon Super CoolScan 5000, which runs around $1,000. Nikon makes less expensive scanners as well. If you can get one with Digital ICE4, it helps clean up old slides..

My wife uses Adobe Photoshop all the time, so we will definitely take a close look at Adobe Lightroom. Because Adobe designs their products for professional design studios, they seem overpriced for individuals (IMHO). But I have emeritus academic status, and students and faculty can order Lightroom for as little as 20% of its list price. But I will survey all the suggestions before making a final decision.

Randall Shinn

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Randall,

I have a similar project in mind, though the number of slides is in the
hundreds, not thousands. I have been looking for a low-cost slide scanning solution,
but have not found one. I would be grateful if would let me know which scanner you use to
scan your slides. (Or if anyone else has a low-cost slide scanner in mind...)

While I love Nikon slide scanners, their software leaves me with mixed feelings. A good alternative for scanning software is Ed Hamrick's VueScan. His program works with a large number (and I mean a LARGE number) of scanners and its worth considering as an alternative.

Two other free programs that work in conjunction with each other that you might consider are ImageIngester and Adobe's DNG converter. Image Ingester can easily add metadata in bulk while it is copying or backing up your images.

Spend a few minutes reading the forum at thedambook.com. Peter knows a lot, and the community there is quite nice.

Finally, I would suggest Lightroom if you can get it at a discounted price. I am not a big fan of Adobe, but LR is worth consideration.

Good luck!

--Ken

Ken wrote:

Spend a few minutes
reading the forum at thedambook.com. Peter knows a lot, and the community there is
quite nice.

Thanks Ken. I went to this site, and I can already see that I will need to spend more time there in order to get a feel for the basic issues and solutions. And I probably need to read Peter's book.

I could already see that the software for this field is in a state of flux in which nothing has clearly established itself as a standard. Microsoft has grabbed up one of the leading players, and Adobe is trying to extend its dominance in the professional graphics field. And there are some good independent programs as well.

I'll have to spend some time on this.

Randall Shinn