The best free programs for organizing photo collections. How to easily organize your photo and video collection in Windows by date Sort photos on your computer

Sorting photos based on the similarity of images on them. The application sorts all photos with the same meaning into separate folders, which will assign their own numbers;

Search for similar images/photos according to the sample. All photos similar to the sample will be copied to the folder designated for the output of the result;

Search by photo fragment. This function It's like searching through an entire image. But here the program will look for matches with the selected area on the test photo. All photos that have a similar fragment will be found. Such a search is useful if, for example, you need to find all photos with one person. Select a face, click find, Sortirovchik will do the rest for you;

Create a photo similarity report. A function similar in meaning to searching by fragment, but with the difference that the found images will not be copied to a separate folder.

The photo sorter will show statistics in the form of the number of matches, file names, color similarity parameters, color spread, total match and full match. It can be useful if you need to compare the degree of similarity of one person to other people.

Tools for organizing are in almost every program for working with images. You can often find programs that are both viewers, editors, and catalogers at the same time. These are, for example, Zoner Photo Studio, ACDSee, Nero Kwik Media and many others. No doubt, all-in-one tools are convenient for many users. But if among the many of their features, the main ones for you are those related to organizing photos, it may be worth taking a closer look at specialized programs.

Firstly, such applications are not overloaded extra options- and therefore, in most cases, they work faster and more stable than multimedia combines. Secondly, specialized programs usually offer more tools for searching photos by different criteria. Read about five applications that simplify the organization of your photo collection in the review.

⇡ Daminion 1.0 RC

• Developer: Daminion Software
• Operating system: Windows
• Distribution: Free
• Russian interface: yes

Under its current name, the Daminion cataloger has been in development for more than five years, but its creators have much more experience in writing applications for organizing photographs. Previously, the Daminion developers released the PicaJet program, but later decided to write a completely new application with multi-user access to the photo database and other interesting features. At the same time, a single-user version of Daminion is also available, which is distributed free of charge. The multi-user version is called Daminion Server.

Daminion works with catalogs - databases of photographs, and adding files to the catalog is the user's concern. This means that you need to manually specify the path to the folders with snapshots. In this case, files can be physically copied or transferred to a folder that is used to store data, or they can simply be added to the directory without copying. At the same time, Daminion remembers the relative paths to the files, so when transferring photos to another drive, all data in the directory will be saved. When adding photos to the catalog, you can immediately assign tags to them, or you can do it later - everything is at the discretion of the user.

As soon as the files are entered into the catalog, they are displayed in the program window as thumbnails with captions. In the signature, you can see the basic information about the file: name, resolution, size, shutter speed, ISO. In addition, each thumbnail contains tools for organizing: you can quickly set a rating, mark an image, add keywords, set a color label, view detailed metadata. The user can change the way files are displayed, displaying only images without additional information or vice versa, removing the thumbnails and calling up a list of files with information about them.

If you select an image, you can see more information about it in the Properties panel. There is also an opportunity to supplement this information: indicate the people who are captured on it, the event in which the photo was taken, the place of shooting, the category. For professional photographers, such fields as "Project", "Client", "Copyright" are provided. You can also fill in the fields in the Properties panel in batch mode by simply pre-selecting the desired photos. All changes in the tags are synchronized with the metadata of the files, so information about the files is always present both in the database and in the files themselves.

If the right panel is informational and at the same time serves for data entry, then the left panel - "Tags" - is intended for search. All file search criteria are here at a glance. For example, you can display only pictures located in the same folder, open the "Created Date" list and quickly find a photo by the month it was taken, display only files with the highest rating, and so on. It is very important that, in addition to custom tools for organizing, the program also offers a lot of automatic ones. For example, it's very easy to select geo-tagged photos taken with a specific camera, using a specific lens. There is nothing complicated in using several conditions at once.

There is also an advanced search in the program, which allows you to use up to fifty parameters, including operators AND, OR and others.

There are no image editing tools in Daminion, you can only rotate thumbnails for better viewing. If any changes were made by mistake, you can always roll back to previous version- The program keeps track of revisions. This is especially true for multi-user work with the application.

Daminion works not only with graphic files, but also with video, PDF documents. At the same time, the program is optimized for working with very large collections of images (the test database consists of 500,000 images), so you don't have to worry about the stability of its work when adding new files. By the way, for convenience, you can use several independent directories that can be opened in the program at the same time - each on a separate tab.

⇡IMatch 3.6

• Developer: photools.com
• Operating system: Windows
• Distribution: shareware
• Russian interface: no

Despite the fact that the latest version of IMatch dates back to the end of last year, when looking at the program's interface, it seems that it has been around for many years. Really, appearance has always been IMatch's weak point, and against the backdrop of modern interface solutions, small buttons with Windows 2000-style graphics look scary. The author has long promised to redesign the appearance of the application, but so far this has not been done. However, many users still prefer this particular program.

The main reason is the support of scripts, thanks to which you can connect to the program almost any function that is not implemented in it by default. For example, there are scripts for file versioning, for finding files that were incorrectly tagged, for checking the correct names, and others. Scripts do not have to be created manually - many useful additions have already been written by other users of the program and are available on the forum.

Another one important feature IMatch - stable work with large collections of files. The program easily copes with databases containing hundreds of thousands of photos, does not slow down and works quite stably. In addition, IMatch implements a periodic reminder of the need to create a backup.

Like Daminion, this program works with photo databases that need to be manually populated with photographic content. The processes of creating a database and importing images are implemented as a wizard, but despite this, it is difficult to call them intuitive. Too many flags have to be set along the way. By default, the database is sorted by folders in the program window. It is also possible to browse by category, by saved search patterns, by the history of selected files, and so on.

⇡MyPhotoIndex 1.24

• Developer: My Photo Index
• Operating system: Windows
• Distribution: Free
• Russian interface: no

MyPhotoIndex is inferior in functionality to its more advanced competitors, but the program has several important advantages. First, the program is free and has open source. Secondly, it is very simple, and the user does not need to puzzle over where to find this or another option for a long time - they are all at hand.

The program offers the organization of photos by categories, by tags and by rating. Tags can be added immediately when importing images into the database of the program, moreover, several tags that are used most often are already added by default.

Access to all main functions is implemented through context menu. With it, you can add and remove tags, add and edit comments, change the date the picture was taken, send photos for printing, encrypt them, set them as wallpaper on your desktop. Separately, it is worth noting the possibility of data exchange: with one click, photos can be uploaded to Facebook, Flickr and other services.

Using the built-in search tools, the user can search for photos by tags, by title, and by other criteria. A convenient function is to search for images that were taken between two specified dates.

⇡ Photo Event Organizer 1.3

• Developer: Gear Mage
• Operating system: Windows
• Distribution: Free
• Russian interface: no

Of course, it's very good when you have the time and desire to keep your photo collection in perfect order: put ratings, sort pictures into categories and add tags. But, unfortunately, even a simple analysis of hundreds of photographs into folders for some drags on for months. Thanks to large memory cards, we do not have to think about the lack of space and often copy photos to the computer once every two months. And then all the events recorded during this time are in one heap.

Photo Event Organizer is simple program, which helps in simple sorting of running photo archives by date. Specify the directory in which all photos are stored, and also set the time interval that determines the duration of one event. After that, the program will show for what period the photos for which will fall into each folder, and will offer to give a name to each event during which they were taken. If desired, you can sort the photos simply by month or year.

After the operation is completed, you will see new folders with neat names like "October" and "November". Photo Event Organizer can either copy photos to new folders or move them, which is faster, of course. If duplicates are found during the copying process, they will not be transferred to the new folder. Thus, the program can also help free up some space on your hard drive.

⇡ Namexif 1.6

• Developer: Digicamsoft
• Operating system: Windows
• Distribution: Free
• Russian interface: no

And in the end - one more simple free utility, which helps organize photos by adding time information to file names. The information is taken from the metadata written to the file at the time it was created. Once you get files with names like 2013-04-01-17h56m56.jpg, it becomes a little easier to navigate them.

Namexif's work is organized in the form of a wizard: first, the user is prompted to specify files or folders. Since the program can look into subfolders, you can immediately select the root directory, and then Namexif will find and rename all the photos at once.

At the second stage, you need to choose the renaming format. For example, an application might leave original name at the end or add arbitrary characters to all names.

Unfortunately the features preview changes, as well as a rollback, are not provided, so it's better to practice on small folders first.

⇡ Conclusion

The requirements for image organization programs may vary, but the end goal for the user is always the same - the ability to quickly find the right photo. Each of the programs discussed above helps in this in its own way, so it remains to choose the one that is best for you. Do not forget that the photos that you cannot find are just as useless as long deleted.

An unbridled desire to photograph anything and everything is characteristic of any owner of a digital camera. Therefore, on the computers of the vast majority of users (who among modern users does not take pictures?), an unimaginable number of pictures accumulate quite quickly, which are often located in randomly named folders and have meaningless names. Finding the right picture in such gigabyte photo jungle is quite difficult, because it is unrealistic to view the entire photo archive every time. As a result, unique pictures that captured some memorable moments of life are likely to be lost among a host of other images.
However, providing quick and convenient access to specific photos is not so difficult. To do this, you need to think carefully about the system for storing images in your photo archive and involve specialized software tools in the process.

Storing pictures on a computer

The first step is to clearly understand that storing all the pictures in a digital camera is not the most convenient and, of course, not the most reliable way. It is better to download photos to your computer after each photo shoot, and do it as soon as possible - while the memories of the events are still fresh in your memory. After that, it is wise to immediately get rid of bad shots - blurry shots, dimly lit photos, out-of-focus shots, etc. Of course, some of them can be improved by certain software tools, however, if the same images are available best quality It is clearly not worth spending time on correcting shooting defects.

Of course, when importing photos to a computer, it is better to dump them not in randomly created folders - in otherwise in the future, you will spend a lot of time searching for the right pictures. You should develop some kind of hierarchical system for storing images (taking into account the nuances of a possible search), and then save the images in accordance with your own system of rules.

There are many options for organizing the storage of images in the photo archive. Most often, when distributing images into folders, they are guided by the calendar-geographical principle (in this case, the date and place appear in the folder name - for example, 2011_05_27_Crete) or divide the images into folders based on the events on which they were taken (say, 2011_07_31_Birthday) - Fig. . 1. You can also take into account the theme of pictures in the system (landscapes, animals, flowers, etc.), etc. In general, each user will have his own version of the hierarchy in the photo archive, which depends on the significance of certain criteria for him.

Rice. 1. Possible option
photoarchive folder structures

In addition, it may be useful for search if you mark photos with keywords (family, vacation, corporate, etc.), thereby combining them into virtual thematic collections. This will allow in the future to quickly identify (by filtering or otherwise - depending on which software tool will be used to solve this problem) images, taking into account the keywords of interest. It is faster to assign such keywords when importing images from the camera, although you can do this operation later - after saving the photos to disk. Unfortunately, in any case, the initial process of assigning keywords will require some time and effort, although modern software allow you to assign keywords to groups of photos at once, which significantly speeds up the process. In addition, you need to approach the assignment of keywords thoughtfully - with an eye to the expected needs and based on the software tools that will be used to manage the photo archive.

As for the file names, everything is not clear. It is desirable to use descriptive filenames that make it easy to identify what kind of image it is, since it is completely unrealistic to guess from the name of the DSC_0705 view that this is, say, a photograph from a family vacation in Thailand. Therefore, it is better to rename pictures according to a template. The type of template is determined by the nuances of the search. It seems to us preferable to have the date (perhaps only the year and month) and the frame number in the name of the snapshot - for example, 2011-09-05_0015.jpg or 2011-09_0015.jpg (15th frame taken on September 5, 2011 or September 2011 ) - rice. 2. It is also possible to add the name of a place or event to the name of the image - a variant of the name of a specific photo from the group in this case may look like: Thailand_2011-09_0015.jpg. Such renaming should be carried out in batch mode (manually renaming hundreds and thousands of files is completely unrealistic) - it is better during the process of importing files or immediately after uploading them to the photo archive.

Rice. 2. Batch rename files

When developing a variant of the hierarchical division of photographs, it is worth being guided by two important principles. First, if possible, place the same type of photos together - in the future this will simplify orientation. Secondly, each image must be entered into the archive in a single copy, otherwise the volume of the archive will increase significantly, and difficulties will arise if it is necessary to edit images that have duplicates. It should also be noted that it is more convenient (both in terms of orientation and in terms of the intended backup) to store your photo archive on a separate disk or in its separate partition (ideally, on a separate external drive), where no other information will be stored.

Snapshot management

After setting up a hierarchical system for storing images on disk, you can manage the photo archive using a variety of software tools. The easiest and most affordable way is to use Windows 7 Libraries. Libraries are, in fact, virtual folders in which files are combined, regardless of their physical location. This makes it easier to find, use, and organize files on your computer or on the network. By default, Libraries are designed to help you manage your documents, music, pictures, and videos more efficiently, although you can use them to organize other files if you like. Viewing files in libraries is carried out in the same way as in ordinary folders.

In the case of working with your own photo archive, it makes sense to create a library specially designed for this, give it an appropriate name (for example, “Photo Archive”), and then directly from the explorer indicate to Windows the range of folders that the new library will contain (Fig. 3). It is worth noting that the indicated folders with photos can be stored on different media (for example, on the hard disk of a stationary PC and an external hard disk), but, nevertheless, after placing them in the library, it will be possible to view the corresponding images in one window. And the convenience is not only in this - it will also be possible to arrange files by properties (for example, by date, type, etc.), sort and group them according to a number of parameters, including keywords (Fig. 4).

Rice. 3. Determining the range of folders for the created library in Windows 7

Rice. 4. Grouping pictures based on keywords through libraries
Windows 7

You can go the other way - use the graphics viewer you like, which has minimal functionality for organizing photo collections - as a rule, support for categories, tags and ratings (similar features are provided in many solutions of this kind). Which decision to choose is a matter of taste and wallet, since you can find both recognized commercial products and quite worthy alternative free applications on the market. As an example, let's take a well-known to most users paid program ACDSee and the increasingly popular free cross-platform viewer XnView. Both named software product designed for viewing, organizing and easily editing images.

Working with images in these solutions is easy and convenient, since the developers have provided different options for viewing images, included simple tools for performing basic editing operations, thought out functionality for convenient exchange pictures, etc. As for organizing a photo archive and getting quick access to images of interest, here, of course, the possibilities are more impressive than in the libraries of Windows 7 (that's what specialized software is for!). For example, rating images allows you to assign to each image a certain value in terms of its value (for example, quality), so that in the future it will be possible to quickly find the most popular original images. The use of color marks also simplifies organization - with such marks, for example, you can mark images at different stages of the workflow (in some colors - original images, in others - images after correction, in others - images selected for printing, etc.) - fig. . 5. No less convenient is the use of categories, thanks to which you can instantly find images belonging to a specific category or even several at once (Fig. 6).

Rice. 5. Using custom color labels to highlight pictures
in ACDSee

Rice. 6. Quick access to images from two categories at once in XnView

As a rule, an even more convenient option for managing a photo archive is provided by photo organizers, which are designed to organize and sort digital photographs. Therefore, it is not surprising that these products have more advanced features for organizing photo collections and quickly searching for pictures in them. There are many such solutions on the market. Some of them (such as Apple Aperture, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ACDSee Pro Photo Manager, etc.) are quite expensive, difficult to learn and aimed at professional photographers. At the same time, home users also have nothing to complain about - they have numerous compact and easy-to-learn applications that are affordable or even free. Examples of such programs include Zoner Photo Studio, PicaJet, and Picasa.

Cataloging pictures using photo organizers is as easy as shelling pears - just place each photo immediately in its logical catalog category (Fig. 7) or first in the general storage, and then assign categories to the pictures (often with the ability to highlight different categories with icons), ratings and tags, and also assign keywords (this will determine whether images belong to specific logical groups). Note that you can assign keywords to all selected images at once and not just one keyword at a time (Fig. 8) - this significantly reduces the complexity of this operation.

Rice. 7. Add files from disk to PicaJet category

Rice. 8. Assign keywords in Zoner Photo Studio

All this will allow you to quickly find the necessary photos in the future by searching, filtering, sorting and grouping. Of particular note is the ability to take into account when searching and filtering keywords, which makes it possible to perform complex search queries(taking into account not only one, but also several keywords) - fig. 9. In particular, by manipulating keywords, you can easily find in the depths hard drives all pictures with a sunset on the river, a son on a bicycle, temples under restoration, blossoming apple trees, etc., even if you shot such objects in the course of things, many times and at different times.

Rice. 9. Quick Keyword Search in Zoner Photo Studio

Briefly about products

ACDSee 14.3

Developer: ACD Systems

Distribution size: 71.8 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7

Distribution method: shareware (30 day demo - http://www.acdsee.com/en/free-trials)

Price:$29.99

ACDSee is a world famous graphics viewer (Fig. 10) aimed at both professionals and home users. Includes tools for quick and easy viewing of files of various graphic formats, as well as audio and video files and archives. In addition to viewing graphics, this solution can be used for editing and cataloging images, batch processing files, finding duplicates, online image sharing, etc.

Rice. 10. Working with pictures in ACDSee

Cataloging in ACDSee is based on the use of categories, ratings and colored labels. Categories are created manually (there is a predefined list of basic categories) and can be nested; For better orientation, the categories are highlighted with different icons. The ratings in this program are basic, but the labels can be edited, which allows you to select images into logical groups in accordance with personal tasks. There is support for keywords and geotags, it is possible to edit EXIF-??and IPTC-data. Imported in category pictures from the most different devices: hard drive, CDs, digital cameras, flash drives, scanners, etc. Batch file renaming is supported. With one click, you can send files selected from different places according to some principle to the so-called Image Basket for further editing or sharing. When viewed, images are displayed as thumbnails, full screen, or as a slideshow; if necessary, individual fragments of the image can be easily viewed in an enlarged form with the help of a “magnifying glass”. It's easy to access the images you want faster by sorting, grouping, and filtering based on image size, date, rating, tags, EXIF ​​data, categories, and keywords.

The editing panel built into the program, in addition to supporting basic operations (rotation, cropping, etc.), will help you correct the image exposure, adjust levels and curves, perform color correction, get rid of red-eye and noise, and also apply standard filters to the image. These operations can be performed on not only single images, but also on several images at once in batch mode. Tools are provided for comparing images and converting them to other raster formats. In addition, ACDSee allows you to burn images to CD/DVD, combine them into slideshows, PDF files and web albums, as well as easily share images by uploading them to social networks, to FTP servers, etc.

Zoner Photo Studio 14

Developer: Zoner Software

The sizedistribution kit: Zoner Photo Studio Free - 26.7 MB; Zoner Photo Studio Pro - 87.7 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7

Distribution method: Zoner Photo Studio Free - freeware; the other two editions are shareware 30 day demo (http://www.zoner.com/ww-en/download-free-photo-program)

Price: Zoner Photo Studio Home - $34.99, Zoner Photo Studio Pro - $69.99, Zoner Photo Studio Free - Free

Zoner Photo Studio is a recent but well-established program for managing, editing and sharing photos (Fig. 11). Capabilities this decision impressive, many functions are implemented by developers with an eye on professional products, in particular on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The program is presented in three editions: free Zoner Photo Studio Free and two commercial - Zoner Photo Studio Home and Zoner Photo Studio Pro. The free edition features are limited to basic functionality. In addition, this edition does not have a 64-bit version and does not support GPU acceleration, as well as dual monitor operation.

Rice. 11. Organize your photo collection in Zoner Photo Studio

Zoner Photo Studio allows you to create a photo archive as a set of albums based on an existing folder structure or manually. Albums have an unlimited nesting level, and the easiest way to create them is by dragging the corresponding folders with pictures from the Explorer window onto the Albums folder of the program navigator. You can replenish the photo archive directly from devices (from camera memory cards, scanners, etc.), as well as by receiving images from websites, PDF files, etc. When viewing images, they are displayed as icons or thumbnails; to speed up access to images of interest, it is easy to use sorting, built-in search and filtering. When filtering and searching, EXIF ​​data, keywords, service text information (title, description, etc.), as well as ratings, tags and GPS coordinates (the latter are entered manually or read from Google maps) can be taken into account. It is possible to batch rename files according to a template.

The editing options are also impressive and will interest both beginners and advanced users. The former may be limited to basic functions (rotation, cropping, straightening, automatic image enhancement), while the latter will be interested in advanced editing functions such as adjusting levels, color editing, improving exposure, noise reduction, etc. Any changes can be applied not only to one, but also to several images at once in batch mode. There is also functionality for converting images from RAW formats to bitmap formats and editing EXIF ​​data. Favorite photos can be easily combined into a PDF slideshow or converted into a postcard, and even 3D and HDR images can be created. As for publishing, it is worth noting the creation of web galleries, recording DVD presentations, printing (from templates and photo calendars), sending by e-mail, as well as uploading to Facebook, Flickr and Picasa web albums.

PicaJet 2.6

Developer: picajet.com

Distribution size: PicaJet FX - 5.91 MB; PicaJet Free - 4.81 MB

Work under control: Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/7

Distribution method: PicaJet Free - freeware; PicaJet FX - shareware, 15 day demo (http://www.picajet.com/en/index.php?page=download)

Price: PicaJet FX - 490 rubles.

PicaJet is a convenient and very easy to use program for cataloging image collections (Fig. 12). It is presented in two editions: free PicaJet Free and commercial PicaJet FX. The free edition includes only a basic set of functions - in particular, it does not provide for the creation of categories, the possibilities of sorting and searching, etc. are more than limited, so we do not recommend choosing PicaJet Free to manage large and complex archives. The commercial edition has all the necessary set of functions for effective organization of photo archives, and it may well suit most home users.

Rice. 12. Managing your photo collection in PicaJet

To organize the photo archive, PicaJet uses categories that are created automatically when adding images based on the existing folder structure and / or on the basis of IPTC data, or manually. The nesting level of categories is not limited. You can add pictures to the collection from a digital camera, scanner, webcam, CD/DVD, and hard drive folders. To speed up the process of including images in the photo archive, it is allowed to use hot keys; you can also quickly import images from File Explorer by dragging and dropping. In order to better identify categories, they can be assigned a variety of icons. Categories are assigned during import or manually, for which it is enough to drag a group of images onto a category. There is functionality for batch renaming of selected files based on templates. If necessary, it is easy to add a description and / or rating to the selected images. Photos can be viewed with grouping and/or sorting by date, rating, import time, etc.; pictures can be displayed as a slideshow when viewed.

The editing plan includes operations such as cropping and rotating, red-eye removal, sharpening, auto-correct, and so on. It supports quick correction of several images with one click, as well as resizing them and converting them to another graphic format on the fly. It is possible to print photos in popular formats (including 9×13, 13×18, 10×15), as well as editing metadata (EXIF and IPTC). As for the exchange, it is worth noting the presence of functionality for creating photo galleries for publication on the website, burning photo collections to CDs, sending photos to mobile phone, as well as optimizing photos for sending them by e-mail.

Picasa 3.9

Developer: Google

Distribution size: 14.5 MB

Work under control: Windows XP/Vista/7

Distribution method: freeware (http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa39-setup.exe)

Price: is free

Picasa is a popular tool for organizing, viewing, and easily editing photos (Figure 13), and is known in no small part for its tight integration with Picasa's web albums. Such integration expands the possibilities of sharing pictures with other users, and this is a definite plus. And the functionality of this program as a whole is at the level. However, the method of organizing images implemented by the developers, in our opinion, is not very successful. In addition, the application is quite demanding on resources and is accompanied by a very mediocre help system.

Rice. 13. Organize your photo archive in Picasa

Picasa uses albums to catalog images, you cannot create sub-albums. Albums are filled manually by disassembling the images found after scanning or importing, which takes a lot of time from the user. Scanning hard drives is launched the first time the program is launched, and by default it scans all hard drives computer, which is quite a long time - it is better to interrupt this process, manually correct the list of scanned directories through the folder manager and restart the scan. Photos from hard drives are added to photo collections automatically as scanning progresses, and you can add photos manually by importing images from cameras, CDs, memory cards, scanners, webcams, and more. In addition to albums, Picasa has another cataloging tool, the People collection. With its help, cataloging of images by the people depicted on them is provided with the connection of face recognition technology. This collection is created in the floor automatic mode- faces in all pictures are automatically recognized, and then the user needs to specify the faces of interest in the pictures to create albums corresponding to them. When viewing images, they are displayed in the normal mode or as a slideshow, taking into account the specified sorting option (by name, date, etc.). To speed up access to the desired pictures, you can mark your favorite photos with tags, as well as use tags - they resemble keywords and make it easy to find photos later through the built-in search. You can also specify geographic data to link images to a Google Earth map.

Built-in editing tools allow you to resize photos, rotate them, crop them, and perform a number of image correction operations (removing red-eye, alignment, adjusting contrast and color balance, etc.). In addition, it is possible to rename several photos and batch edit them, as well as online image editing using the Picnik.com service. There is functionality for printing photos in basic formats, as well as editing EXIF ​​data. If you want, it's easy to create a photo collage of the selected pictures, burn the pictures to a CD, create a video by combining photos into a slideshow, or publish to Blogger. You can also share your albums with others after adding them to Picasa Web Albums.

XnView 1.99.1

Developer: Pierre E Gougelet

Distribution size: 4.36 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista/7; There are versions for Mac OS X and Linux

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.xnview.com/en/download.html)

Price: free (for private non-commercial or educational use)

XnView is a free cross-platform viewer for images and other multimedia files (Fig. 14) with support for very a large number formats (for this moment- more than 500). The program allows you to easily view, process and convert image files, and is equipped with a number of additional features, including the presence of simple tools for organizing photo collections.

Rice. 14. Working with a collection of snapshots in XnView

Photo archive management in XnView is based on the use of categories, the nesting of which is unlimited. Assigning categories to images is done manually and is possible for all selected or marked files at once. You can add pictures to the photo archive from a disk, as well as from scanners and digital cameras. In addition to category support, you can assign ratings, color labels, and tags to your many photos to make it easier to navigate. When viewing photos, it is allowed to include sorting by date, rating, format, width/height, orientation, description, comment, etc.; You can view the selected pictures as a slideshow. A built-in search is also implemented in the program, taking into account the basic parameters of images, including EXIF ​​and IPTC data. You can batch convert and batch rename files.

The utility is equipped with a basic set of image editing functions (including resizing, rotation, cropping), allows you to adjust brightness, contrast, gamma and color balance, has tools for auto tuning levels, red-eye removal, simple filters and effects, etc. Many operations can be applied to a group of images at once in batch mode. It is possible to edit IPTC data. If necessary, the XnView utility can also be used to compare images, print files, create panoramic images, take screenshots, generate multi-page files and web pages, and a number of other actions.

Conclusion

Photo archives are different for everyone, as well as the requirements for working with them, however, for all users, searching for the right pictures in the archive takes a lot of time. It can be drastically accelerated only by the correct organization of the photo collection, which implies a well-thought-out system of catalogs in the archive and the use of specialized software tools.

Each user chooses a hierarchical system himself, based on the subject of the pictures and his own priorities - the main thing here is that you feel comfortable. As for software tools, it all depends on the user's requirements in terms of cataloging and the complexity of the intended search. For some, the capabilities of Windows 7 libraries or a simple free viewer will be quite enough, others will prefer more functional paid solutions: popular program for viewing ACDSee or one of the considered photo organizers, among which the Zoner Photo Studio program seemed to be the most convenient for cataloging.

Free software for photo collection | picasa picasa, a popular tool from Google, is a handy free program that will meet the requirements of most users. Available - a wide range of tools for organizing a photo collection and basic image processing tools. The user has the ability to sort photos into folders on the computer or create virtual albums to distribute photos within Picasa. A set of labels and geotags allows you to distribute images by the place where they were taken, or by the names of the people imprinted on them. Basic editing tools include cropping, scaling, rotating, and red-eye reduction tools - everything you need to put your photos in order somehow. You can apply various filters and indulge in other fun tricks.

Free software for photo collection | Zoner Photo Studio Free This program is probably not as "sharpened" for organization as Picasa, but at the same time Zoner Photo Studio Free will appeal to those who like to edit photos. This is not just a tool for organizing the archive - it is a complete set of numerous photo editing tools. Included - a wide range of retouching and editing tools, quick filters and much more. Zoner Photo Studio includes all the necessary tools for creating various photo projects - from panoramas to calendars.

Free software for photo collection | StudioLine Photo Basic 3 StudioLine Photo Basic 3 allows you to sort your photo collection and slightly edit pictures. Photo editing tools include cropping, rotating, scaling, and red-eye correction, among others. From an organizational point of view, Photo Basic 3 prompts the user to apply tags and geotags, as well as descriptions, to images in a directory that can be organized into folders. Slideshow and online gallery tools make it easy to publish your pictures or share them with other users.

Free software for photo collection | JetPhoto Studio 5 JetPhoto Studio 5 offers most of the tools users need for editing and storing photos: organizing an album, applying tags and geotags, but the main advantage of the solution is advanced photo publishing capabilities. Among the many options are the ability to publish images to Flickr and its own JetPhoto Server, as well as the creation of a Google Map gallery from geotagged photos. You can even quickly create Flash galleries and slideshows for web design projects, and view images through the Flash player and browser.

Free software for photo collection | XnViewMP XnViewMP is a free quick image viewer that supports over 500 formats. With it, you can sort common .jpg or .png files, as well as explore rare formats. XnViewMP is perfect for such tasks. It won't be able to quickly sort files automatically (like Picasa), but XnViewMP has editing tools to change image metadata and tags in batch mode to quickly apply tags to entire arrays of images.

Free software for photo collection | FastStone Image Viewer FastStone Image Viewer- A handy image viewer that has the functions of editing and organizing photos. FastStone has a wide range of basic image processing tools, supports tagging, viewing EXIF ​​data, and other annotation and sorting capabilities. Although FastStone does not have the ability to upload photos to social networks or cloud storage, is a great tool for viewing, editing and organizing your photo archive if you keep it on one computer.

Free software for photo collection | MAGIX Photo Manager 12 MAGIX Photo Manager 12 is the latest version of the MAGIX Photo Manager line of software, which combines many functions for organizing, editing and publishing images. With the help of organizing tools, you can categorize pictures and sort them by file name, creation date, or thematic tags. MAGIX includes a number of image editing features. Free version does not support functions such as editing panoramas and automatic sorting of images, but, in general, MAGIX Photo Manager 12 does its job well.

Free software for photo collection | Phototheca Phototheca is a free photo archive organizing tool that doesn't focus on complex editing features, but instead focuses on getting your photo collection in order. By importing photos into the Phototheca database, they can be automatically sorted by events (for example, if the photos were taken on the same day or are stored in the same folder), placing them on the timeline. The images can then be tagged, assigned to other events, or sorted into their own albums. In addition, the Smart Album feature allows you to create dynamically updated collections based on selected criteria such as camera type, creation date, or label.

Free software for photo collection | DigiKam DigiKam is an open platform for organizing photos, ported to Windows and offering a wide range of options functionality. Image collections can be sorted by folders, albums, labels; thus, DigiKam is quite a flexible tool that takes into account your preferences when organizing your photo collection. Metadata such as comments, ratings and other criteria can be viewed, edited and stored in a SQLite database or used in files. Support for tables and RAW format greatly simplifies the process of comparing photos, and additional features available as plugins greatly expand the functionality of this tool. Among the disadvantages of the solution is that this application is still in development and cannot boast of stable work on Windows.