Showing posts with label Smartpix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Smartpix. Show all posts

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Smartpix revisited

I downloaded the latest version of Smartpix and added some photos to it. It crashed when I closed the file properties window.
The biggest drawback that I can see is that there is no facility to import keywords from photos. That would mean me re-entering all the keywords, or finding another piece of software to extract a list of keywords from the jpegs.
Exiftool

Tuesday, 4 March 2008

More on Photo Organisation

As I mentioned before, I have tried several different programs. ACDSee ran out of steam at around 4000 images, but Smartpix was much better. I had some issues with running it, but their technical support is excellent. I think that your emails are answered by one of the developers, so if there is a problem they really know what they're talking about and can actually fix it.
I'd rate it at about 4 out of 5, but that's based on an early version. I will download and try the current version and let you know how I fare.
Why use any of these products?
Photo managers allow you to attach tags (sometimes called keywords) to your images. You can then easily find all of the photos that have the tags you specify. In the wedding example I used last time, each photo could have the names of the bride and groom, venue, type of car, location and many more tags attached to it.
I just file my photos by year and month taken, selecting the appropriate tags allows me to find exactly the photos I need. It is also extremely useful if you want to sell your photographs as your customers can search on the tags.
Note that both of these programs keep the tags separate from the photos. They maintain databases, which link each photo to its tags. If you can try to ensure that the tags are also written to the jpeg, as this makes searching and posting photos on websites easier.