digital photo database/management

[backpack]

Ok, so I'm creeping up on 75,000 photos since I got my first digital camera 3 years ago.

I have them organized in reasonably descriptive folders (ex. Ecuador - Baños -- 11-26-2004), which is helpful, but still doesn't really make searching for shots of, say, Meats hucking at basin very efficient.

I'd like something that doesn't just let me add keywords, but my own special fields (like people, location, description, title, etc), and can export to excel or CSV in a controlled way (ie with values in the order I ask it for), so I can throw it into a mysql database online.

Is this too much to ask? I've looked at imatch, Photoshop Elements and ACDSee and Imatch looks most like what I'm looking for, but it's not exactly the most well-known product and I'd rather not use something and then have hours and hours of captioning and sorting lost if they go under. (Though I suppose my current method is completely useless from a portability standpoint.)

SI uses SCC MediaServer, but that's a little much for non-pro photography...

So am I screwed? Will I have to continue using excel and a bunch of cobbled together programs to create the tables for my online photo stuff?

Maybe I'm the only person in the world with this specific set of needs, I dunno... anyone have experience with this sort of progam at all?

Thanks in advance. And yes, I know it should probably be in one of the 50000 other forums...

[midget]

ACDSee lets you do what you are asking for. I use it, love it.

[train07]

I can't help you at all BP.....but I'm threatening to bring my digital problem over here pretty soon....

[backpack]

Yea, midget, ACDSee seems like the best balance of features and ubiquity. I'll have to try it out and see if it can export in the specific way I want...

Also, replied to your other post, train... maybe not the answer you were looking for, but... yea.

[fez]

everything you need is right here:
http://www.perl.com/

[backpack]

everything you need is right here:
http://www.perl.com/

Yea, perl is part of my cludgy process right now... I wrote a script to do thumbnail pages... simple yet efficient.

It does not, however, address the need for an application to organize and catalog 75,000 photos.

[fez]

Yea, perl is part of my cludgy process right now... I wrote a script to do thumbnail pages... simple yet efficient.

It does not, however, address the need for an application to organize and catalog 75,000 photos.

honestly, i cant imagine anything else that could do it better.

you just need more computer hacking skills. girls only like guys with skills.

[backpack]

honestly, i cant imagine anything else that could do it better.

you just need more computer hacking skills. girls only like guys with skills.

Well, ACDSee isn't going to cut it... doesn't want to let me add my own custom fields in the database.

PERL is great, but I don't see how it's going to be advantageous as the backend for an offline system. Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Lurch]

I use Gallery http://gallery.menalto.com/modules.p...ews&file=index it's PHP code to organize photos on your website but it also allows you to create custom fields that are searchable and when you create new folders you can create new custom fields.

[fez]

PERL is so much more than a CGI web scripting language.

PERL can access any database you want, either local or remote, with a standalone application or a web app. with Win32::GUI or GTK2 you can build standalone windows gui programs. with Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel you can write and read excel spreadsheets. PERL is not the fastest computer language in the world, but it is probably the most flexible.

[ak_powder_monkey]

i really like iPhoto but I'm a mac guy so I don't really know, for organizing iPhoto is awesome

[Lurch]

Why reinvent the wheel? There are a lot of people out there in the same boat someone has to have something that will work for him. There is no need to repeat the work that others have already done. I'm sure there is something out there that fits his exact needs it's just a question of finding it.

PERL is so much more than a CGI web scripting language.

PERL can access any database you want, either local or remote, with a standalone application or a web app. with Win32::GUI or GTK2 you can build standalone windows gui programs. with Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel you can write and read excel spreadsheets. PERL is not the fastest computer language in the world, but it is probably the most flexible.

[backpack]

thanks for the link, lurch, but I'm not looking for something to organize my photos online... I want something to make creating a database with all my photos easier... maybe such a thing doesn't exist.

I wrote my own PHP crap to do that stuff... it's easier than trying to make a CMS act the way I want it to. (Yea, I do use moveable type for journal entries, but it can export standard info that I can import into any other weblog software. Also, it's not ideal for photo albums.)

I guess the point is that I don't really feel any urge to write my own program to do all this stuff... though I suppose that's the only way to get exactly what I want... ugh.

In other news, copying 100GB of photos to a second backup drive is pretty time consuming.

[akahn]

Not sure if this'll do the nice cataloging features you want, but it's free, so it's worth checking out. Google just released version 2 of Picasa.

[hev]

Where I work we index and manage thousands of financial news stories daily. We use this document management system I believe.

http://www.onbase.com/products/whati...tisonbase.html

It basically does exactly what you describe and allows you to define and index a meta component (we use XML) with each file. This meta component is associted with a RAW component wich is the file itself. We mostly have pdf's and XML, but it could work affectively for images. Once you have all the documents loaded and meta components defined you can use the verity query language to search for items defined in your meta components. Then you can take it one step further and right php scripts to call verity querries and be able to search your images through a web interface. This particular version may be more than what you need but I'd guess there are other similar utlities out there that do this same thing as well.