I have three favorite ways of organizing my collection of about 30,000 photos. I'd love to hear what other photographers prefer.

1) Logical Views: browse a tree structure. Almost exactly like a folder tree you see in windows but has trees of cameras, exposure, flash fired, and other exif data, as well as tree based on subject, keywords, etc.

2) Searching for data I've previously keyed. Most good photo organization software these days allows multiple photos' data keyed at once so it's easy to key and is forever useful afterwards. Easy to key because I can select all photos of my India trip and type "India, New Delhi", then select and type "Taj Mahal" for a subset, and so on. Takes 15 mins to key data for an entire photo shoot, trip, or whatever.

3) Building small collections of images. Collections I'm working on to print or frame, my favorite wallpaper, or others like building a collection of my best technical aspects like composition, clarity, lighting, etc.

Those I don't like are tags and ratings. I've never found them very useful.

I ask for two reason, one is that I have a large collection I'm always struggling with (although it's getting easier) and also because I continue to improve a photo database system I've built. Please share you're thoughts since I think there are some very intelligent ways out there that we'd all like to hear about. If you don't have a great to to organize, maybe mention those you've tried and don't like.

Cheers,
Glenn
Designer of DBGallery, the photo database system.
www.grrsystems.com/DBGallery

Currently I use IMatch, which has served me very well for about four years. I have over 150,000 images...so I needed something comprehensive.

I migrated to a Mac a couple years ago, which means my photo storage/management has been on a different computer - an old PC. I'm thinking that it's time to switch over to something more robust AND Mac-based. By more robust, I simply mean something that will help me manage my MicroStock accounts in addition to handling storage, etc.

Since Microstock represents a sort of "break" in my thinking - I'm doing things differently now - I think it might be a good time to make the switch. My Microstock portfolio is growing...but only about 450 strong so far.

Glenn...I'll give your software a free download and see what it has to offer.

Question...at least one of the sites I'm supplying buys the exclusive rights outright. I'd like a way to simply keep those images out of my other workflow so I don't make an embarassing mistake and sell something I don't own any more. Does your software handle that in some way?

Cheers,

Scott

You can leave photos of a specific status out of your workflow. I do that regularly. You can create your own "Exclusive" status and assign that status to the photo for the agency it's exclusive at. That should keep exclusive photos out of your workflow. DBGallery still allows you to find that photo via various means so depending on how you search it might still slow up when you don't want it to. But if you follow the same type of workflow that is typically used it shouldn't be a problem. Here's what I do...

I assign a status for each photo to each agency. When I want to submit a list of photos to an agency I select that agency from a the Agency dropdown, and if I want it more fine tuned I'd select "Ready to Submit" from the status dropdown. At this point I have all photos ready to be submitted to the agency I want to deal with. Obviously none of the Exclusive photos would show up. Sometimes I'll submit one photo to several agencies, so what I'll do is select a "Ready to Submit" from the status dropdown and leave the Agency dropdown blank. At this point I have all the photos ready to be submitted.

Workflow is sometimes very individualistic and I'm not sure if what I've explained works for you. DBGallery is fairly flexible on workflow and I think the assigning of an "Exclusive" status would work for you.

Cheers,
Glenn
Designer of DBGallery, the photo database system.
www.grrsystems.com/DBGallery

It seems Logical Views are winning in the poll. There are videos on DBGallery's excellent Logical Views at: grrsystems.com/dbgallery/TrainingVideos/...ws/LogicalViews.html


There are other screencasts of the hot new DBGallery at: http://grrsystems.com/dbgallery/TrainingVideos.htm


Cheers,
Glenn
Designer of DBGallery, the photo database system.
www.grrsystems.com/DBGallery