Photo management software for OS X.

December 10, 2004 11:55 AM

I need help finding a good photo management tool for OS X to use at work. iPhoto can't hold enough photos and I haven't found much else that is similar. [more inside]

Here's what I need. The tool needs to be able to index photos (preferably without moving them, but that's not a deal-breaker) and allow me to tag them with multiple keywords. I'm not sure exactly how many photos we have, but it's more than 1,000 and less than 5,000. We're willing to pay for this but we're a non-profit, so cheap is good. Ideally, I'd like it to work like Flickr, but locally. Oh, I've tried ACDSee and it didn't fit our needs. Any suggestions?

posted by capndesign to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

http://www.iview-multimedia.com/
posted by rajbot at 12:01 PM on December 10, 2004

Have you tried iPhoto 4? I have 1200 photos which was too many for v3 but v4 works great. You can either use the dedicated-keyword feature directly, or enter text into the comments box, which is searchable.
posted by cillit bang at 12:15 PM on December 10, 2004

I thought the latest version of iPhoto could hold up to 25,000 photos, and handle them rather quickly. Probably a strong bet for your needs under OS X.
posted by robbie01 at 12:17 PM on December 10, 2004

Response by poster: I've used iPhoto and it isn't as robust as they'd like to think, even when you're using a fast machine. At home I have a 2.5 GHz DP G5 with 3500 photos and it runs, but not as smoothly as it ought to with all that power behind it.
posted by capndesign at 12:20 PM on December 10, 2004

What rajbot said. iView Media Pro.
posted by stonerose at 12:22 PM on December 10, 2004

I agree with Rajbot and Stonerose. Iview is really worth it. I have over 250 thousand images indexed, and the ability to search different catalogs (by path, filename, keyword, etc) and show the results in a new catalog is priceless.
posted by ig at 12:45 PM on December 10, 2004

Response by poster: I've been looking over iView Media Pro and I'm curious about the licensing. Can I get away with buying one license and using it on two computers or can the software detect that?
posted by capndesign at 12:49 PM on December 10, 2004

While we're on the topic, how about comments on Extensis Portfolio?
posted by neilkod at 12:51 PM on December 10, 2004

For medium-sized collections, Kodak EasyShare may be worth a look. It's faster than iPhoto and it has the same automatic grouping by date that iPhoto has. (One downside I've found: it doesn't find photos with names ending in .JPE, which means it won't grab the photos I take with my Minolta A1 with embedded Adobe ICC profiles until after I rename them. Grrr.)
posted by kindall at 1:13 PM on December 10, 2004

I've been looking over iView Media Pro and I'm curious about the licensing. Can I get away with buying one license and using it on two computers or can the software detect that?

Well, from their site:

This essentially allows you to install a single (license) purchase of iView software on two separate computers as long as they are both owned by you, operated solely by you and they are not used concurrently.

Also, since you are a non-profit, you would probably be interested in this:

iView offers a 10% discount to registered charities and not-for-profit organisations.

Now, if there is some other part of their website that you want us to regurgitate back to you, just let us know. We can also search google for you, if you ask nicely.
posted by rajbot at 1:15 PM on December 10, 2004

I've had a lot of success with Extensis Portfolio (linked above). There's something about iPhoto that's always been in my way but I can't put my finger on it. It's just a chore for me to use and I looked at Portfolio pretty early on in my current OSX incarnation.
posted by jackiemcghee at 1:57 PM on December 10, 2004

Response by poster: Thank you for the snide remark rajbot. I did read through their page, but I missed that. By the way, what's the url for google?
posted by capndesign at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2004

Response by poster: It looks like both Extensis Portfolio and iView Media Pro would suit my needs. I'm going to give both a test run next week. Thanks for all the help. Oh, and sorry to rajbot for my quick jab. I do appreciate you doing my detective work for me.
posted by capndesign at 2:33 PM on December 10, 2004

Extensis Portfolio is a good piece of software. Fast(ish), very versatile, and it deals with whatever you throw at it. It's good for handling non image stuff too. As long as you can swallow the price tag..!

It has some nice export features too. I'm writing a photo gallery system at the moment which can import all the meta data, thumbnails, etc, directly from Portfolio's nice output formats, and it's real easy.
posted by wackybrit at 5:15 PM on December 10, 2004