Image organizer

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DigiKam, an image organizer DigiKam 7.6.0 screenshot.png
DigiKam, an image organizer

An image organizer or image management application is application software for organising digital images. [1] [2] It is a kind of desktop organizer software application.

Contents

Image organizer software focuses on handling large numbers of images. In contrast to an image viewer, an image organizer can edit image tags and can often upload files to on-line hosting pages. Enterprises may use Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions to manage larger and broader amounts of digital media.

Some programs that come with desktop environments, such as gThumb (GNOME) and digiKam (KDE) were originally simple image viewers, and have evolved into image organizers.

Common image organizers features

Not so common, or differentiating features

Two categories of image organizers

Many commercial image organizers offer both automatic and manual image organization features. A comparison of image viewers reveals that many free software packages are available that offer most of the organization features available in commercial software.

Future of image organization

There are several imminent advances anticipated in the image organization domain which may soon allow widespread automatic assignment of keywords or image clustering based on image content: [4]

In general, these methods either:

Notable image organizers

NameOSTypeLicense Metadata Geotagging Facial
recognition
Map displaySynchronizes
with online
library
Notes
ACDSee Windows Proprietary Yes IPTC Exif XMP YesYesYes ≤ 25 GB to ACDSee online, flickr, SmugMug, and Zenfolio Supports: >100 file formats, Unicode, batch processing, viewing contents of archives formats, non-destructive editing, DB export, R/W to CD, VCD, DVD. Contains: SMTP email client, FTP transport, duplicate file finder.
Adobe Lightroom CC Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Web cloud-based database Proprietary YesNoNoYesnot compatible with Lightroom Classic CC [10]
Adobe Lightroom Classic CC Windows and macOS catalogue-managed local folders Proprietary Yes IPTC Exif XMP YesYesYes Flickr, PicasaWeb, Piwigo, SmugMug with pluginsProfessional image management application database, asynchronously catalog DVD collections of 10,000's of photos. Has built-in RAW Editor that allows to edit RAW images in batch
Adobe Photoshop Album Windows and macOS Proprietary YesNoNodiscontinued in 2007,
superseded by Elements Organizer
Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer Windows and macOS Proprietary Yes Exif IPTC XMP YesYesYes Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Email Component of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Also supports management and sharing of video clips.
Aperture macOS local database Proprietary Yes Exif IPTC XMP YesYesYes iCloud, Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug discontinued in 2015,
superseded by Photos (Apple)
CodedColor PhotoStudio Pro Windows Proprietary Yes IPTC NoNo
DBGallery Windows Cloud and On-premise Proprietary Yes IPTC Exif XMP YesNoYesNoTeam features such as version control and activity logging. Support for very large collections (millions). Accessed using web browsers.
digiKam KDE (Linux, macOS, Windows) GPL Yes IPTC Exif XMP YesYesYesYes
23hq, Facebook, Flickr, Gallery2, Piwigo, SmugMug
Image management application database, deals with collections of 100,000's of photos
Digital Photo Professional Windows Proprietary
F-Spot Linux GPL Yesdiscontinued in 2017
FastStone Image Viewer Windows Freeware Yes Exif
Fotostation Windows, macOS Proprietary YesNo
Geeqie Linux GPL YesYesNoYesNo
Google Photos iOS, Android and Web Freeware Yes IPTC YesYesNoYesIntegrated with Google online tool suite.
gThumb Linux GPL YesNoYes
iPhoto macOS local database Proprietary YesYesYesYesYesdiscontinued in 2015,
superseded by Photos (Apple)
KPhotoAlbum Linux GPL YesYesNo *YesNo* Has an option to tag faces on photo manually
Phase One Media Pro Windows and macOS Proprietary Yes IPTC Exif XMP NoNoNodiscontinued in 2018,
superseded by Capture One
Photos (Apple) macOS, iOS and Web cloud-based database Proprietary YesNoYesYesYesDefault photo manager for macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS. Supports editing, iCloud, printing, sharing, searching.
Photos (Windows) Windows Freeware NoYesNoNoDefault photo manager for Windows 8 and later.
PicaJet Windows Proprietary Yes Exif IPTC XMP Yes Flickr, Fotki Multi-user database access, unlimited category-nesting levels, hiding private images, supports for more than 60 image file formats
Picasa Windows, macOS and Linux Freeware Yes IPTC YesYesYes (per folder)Yes PicasaWeb discontinued in 2016,
superseded by Google Photos
Shotwell Linux LGPL Yes Exif IPTC XMP NoNoNoYes Facebook, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Piwigo non-destructive editing, one-click autoenhance
Shutterfly Studio Windows Freeware Yes
ViewMinder Windows Proprietary discontinued in 2007
Windows Photo Gallery Windows Proprietary Yes IPTC Exif XMP YesYesYes OneDrive, Facebook, Flickr, Inkubook plus more with pluginsdiscontinued in 2017,
superseded by Photos (Windows)
XnView Windows, macOS and Linux Freeware Yes IPTC Exif
Zoner Photo Studio Windows Proprietary Yes Exif IPTC XMP YesNoUsing HTML templates

See also

References

  1. Cynthia Baron and Daniel Peck, The Little Digital Camera Book, July 1, 2002 pp:93
  2. Julie Adair King, Shoot Like a Pro! Digital Photography July 28, 2003 pp:21-23
  3. "Who’s got the tag? Database truth versus file truth" by Jon Udell 2007
  4. http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/03/lightroom_and_the_future_of_or.html Lightroom and the future of organizing photos
  5. http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/~jrsmith/html/pubs/PAMI/pami_final_1.html Archived 2008-03-13 at the Wayback Machine Automated Image Retrieval Using Color and Texture (1995)
  6. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1232330.1232374&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE Content-based object organization for efficient image retrieval in image databases (2006)
  7. http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2004-15/2004-15.pdf Archived 2017-08-10 at the Wayback Machine Semi-Automatic Image Annotation Using Event and Torso Identification
  8. http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw62/wilcox.html Managing Digital Photo Collections
  9. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=957093 Temporal event clustering for digital photo collections
  10. "Migrate photos and videos from Lightroom Classic CC to Lightroom CC". helpx.adobe.com. Retrieved 2017-11-30.

Further reading