photools.com Community

Been looking for years for an app to organize our personal pics. 

I may be wrong on what I want to be able to do, but it's this:

Say I want to find a picture of my son at Walt Disney World in 2010.

I envision going into the app, bring up search and it'd be a hierarchical table of check boxes. I'd check my son (which would be under 'family' check box, under people check box), wdw (which would be under 'florida' which would be under 'US', under 'location', and a date filter.

And for marking each pic, I envision being able to see that same table and check the appropriate boxes.  Checking our son's name, would check family, people, etc...  so if I wanted a wider search later, checking family would bring up this pic also.

And I see check boxes rather than free form.  Because I might type WDW or wat disny world (typos), etc.  And then free form wouldn;t find things in florida, etc.

Someone mentioned Adobe Lightroom. I tried that, but rather than a list of check boxes, I have to drag each picture to each collection folder - so a picture with my son and daughter would get dragged 2 times - 1 for each of them, then the topic, the location (some are scanned pics of paper pictures, so no metatagging / GPS info)...  seems tedious.  Rather than check boxes and then be able to see what items were / weren't checked.

Someone else suggested imatch.

a) Am I thinking wrong on how best to manage pics?  I think this is a great way.... but haven't found an app that works this way, so if it was so great, someone else would have thought of it and someone would have made it?

b) What IS the way you manage pictures and are able to find 1 amongst thousands without looking at each one : ) ?

Right now, I have them in folders by date.  So hundreds / thousands of pics & videos folders under my pics. 

does imatch handle videos?

THANKS!

I'm not aware of any check-boxy form query mechanism in the applications I have worked with, sorry.
This would be quite an elaborate form, considering that IMatch supports over 10,000 search criteria and person and location are just two...

Have you used IMatch yet? Added a couple of thousand of your files to see how IMatch automatically organizes them?
In IMatch searching is often not needed, because you can find files easily with a few mouse clicks.

QuoteWhat IS the way you manage pictures and are able to find 1 amongst thousands without looking at each one : ) ?

1. If you use IMatch face recognition, it will automatically organize images by person in the The People View (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/people.htm#a_the_people_view?dl=h-81)

2. If your files contain location data like country, city, location, IMatch automatically organizes them into matching categories. See the headline Automatic Categorization on this page: https://www.photools.com/imatch/
If your files don't have location data, you can add GPS coordinates in the The Map Panel (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/panel_geo.htm) and let IMatch reverse geocode the files to create county, city, location from the coordinates.

3. Your files are automatically organized by time in the Timeline View (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/tl_basics.htm).

So, this already gives you 3 points to start your search.

1. Do you know the date of your visit to WDW? Yes? Click on it in the Timeline so see all files from that day or week.
Use the People Filter (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/panel_filter.htm#a_people?dl=people) in the Filter Panel to show only files containing one or more persons.

2. Or you start with your son.
Click on his entry in the People View. Now you see all files with your son.
Use the date filter to see only files from a certain date range.
Or use the Location Categories in the Category Filter to filter for a specific location, like USA > Disney World

3. Or, start with the USA > Disney World category. This shows you all images taken there.
Now use the People Filter to show only files with your son.

One of the many unique features of IMatch are IMatch Events (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/events.htm), which allow you to group all files taken during your visit to Walt Disney World into an event. Events are automatically positioned on the timeline, they know which persons are in the images of the event etc. You only click on the event to see all files.

IMatch also offers powerful search features for everything that is stored in the metadata of your files. See Searching (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/search_basics.htm)
Of course all depends on if and how you have added information to your files. IMatch can only find what's in your files.

If you have not used IMatch, I recommend you browse the free video IMatch video tutorials: https://www.photools.com/imatch-learning-center/

Watch at least the overview video on this page: https://www.photools.com/imatch/ which shows all the things I have mentioned above.

Quote from: bobstone on October 20, 2022, 06:21:54 PMdoes imatch handle videos?

THANKS!

Yep, of course IMatch handles videos. No problem. 

And I am sure, if you would try IMatch, you would see, that the person, who recommended IMatch to you, was right. 
This is really a very good program and ways better than Lightroom, in my opinion.

I agree with Sinus