Photo Library : It's all a bit of a mess!

HEADRAT · 3 Dec 2014 at 18:05

Hi,

I've got 1000s of photos in 100s of folders with loads of duplicates, what's the best bit of software to make sense of the horrible muddle.

Thanks

HEADRAT

mr tommo · 4 Dec 2014 at 16:53

Not sure about the best software but I'd probably use lightroom to sort that.

It will be able to import every photo from all selected files, but exclude any duplicates.
Then its just a case of selecting and refoldering the images.

Genoma · 4 Dec 2014 at 18:37

Lightroom, not only for organising things, it will add metatdata to your photos, keywords, tags, allow you to search by category, lens type, camera, file type, date, the list goes on.

And it's also a great thing to invest in for the future for editing/processing your pictures full stop.

welshdragon · 9 Dec 2014 at 14:10

I'm interested in this too, any lightroom alternatives just for cataloguing?

greedy123 · 9 Dec 2014 at 14:58

Picasa is free... was a bit poor on the UI last time I tried to use it though it may have improved by now.

I'd always recommend Lightroom.

the_director · 9 Dec 2014 at 22:42

Lightroom isn't too expensive and it is an easy to use program to get the most.out of.images as well. Although my photos are a bit of a mess right now!

Sh4rkie · 10 Dec 2014 at 08:43

FastStone image viewer to sort out the mess first before then importing it into Lightroom.

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

FS is free (home use), quick and easy to use. Once you have the structure and core organisation sorted then import into Lightroom so you can keyword, rate the content etc. Lightroom = processing and library handling but FS is better for getting content tidy before the import if you have a lot of it.