USB key-friendly photo viewer for Windows /w tagging?

October 3, 2009 1:04 PM

Can you recommend a lightweight, USB key-friendly photo viewer software for Windows that supports tagging?

If Cornice Portable supported tags (or was still under development) that would be perfect, as I use PortableApps on my thumb drive. Ideas/suggestions?

posted by onshi to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Correction, Cornice Portable would be perfect if it supported tags and didn't constantly throw errors at me!
posted by onshi at 1:14 PM on October 3, 2009

Irfanview Portable?
posted by sharkfu at 1:17 PM on October 3, 2009

Does Ifranview Portable support tagging? I don't see it listed among the features at that link.
posted by onshi at 1:22 PM on October 3, 2009

Wait, I'm not sure if Irfanview supports tagging, as I realized I'm not quite sure what you mean by tagging-- IPTC comments?
posted by sharkfu at 1:23 PM on October 3, 2009

By tagging, I mean a function that allows me to assign keywords (e.g. "family", "trees", "Toronto", etc.) to photos and to display or, better still, search based on those keywords.
posted by onshi at 1:24 PM on October 3, 2009

I'm certainly not an expert on this, so I did some investigating. As far as I can tell, "tagging" is a nebulous / non-specific feature. I suppose if the app is creating its own database with tags / keywords, that's an accurate description. But it appears this database isn't a standardized format and only works for that app and isn't cross-platform, which is what I'm assuming you're going for.

I'm assuming you're talking about metadata that can be embedded into the files themselves, read by other apps, even cross-platform. If so, this article about picture metadata does a good job describing the difference between IPTC, XMP, and EXIF metadata.

So irfanview portable can edit IPTC metadata, although its IPTC editing may not be as developed/ easy as other apps. Also, it appears Picassa's "keyword" function embeds these in IPTC metadata. A post here, shows how you can make a portable version of Picassa.

In any case, I'm sure googling "portable IPTC editing" or similar things might turn up more options. The tagging features of this app look rather cool, but I don't believe it's portable (I mention it on the off chance you can make your own portable version the same way picassa can be made).
posted by sharkfu at 2:20 PM on October 3, 2009

Very helpful, sharkfu; however, your "a post here" link goes to iTag instead of your intended target URL.
posted by onshi at 3:05 PM on October 3, 2009

Oops, sorry. Fixed link.
posted by sharkfu at 3:08 PM on October 3, 2009

Actually I was looking for the link about portable Picassa :)
posted by onshi at 3:32 PM on October 3, 2009

Ah, sorry again: Picasa link

"I simply installed Picasa 2 to the hard drive, found the program folder, copied it to my flash drive and ran the executable from the flash drive. If you only want Picasa to temporarily find pictures on other computers, I think this is all you need to do. Good luck."
posted by sharkfu at 3:50 PM on October 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

How about portable XnView?

I'm fairly certain it supports tagging.
posted by noztran at 7:09 AM on October 5, 2009