Photo organizing software (PC) for my mom

October 25, 2006 5:26 AM

Photo organizing software (PC) for my mom

Alright, I'm going to teach my mom how to organize photos on her PC. She currently doesn't use any program to organize them, but rather just puts them in folders inside My pictures without even re-naming them. Of course it's impossible for her to find photos now, since she has hundreds of them.

I use iPhoto on the Mac and am looking for something similarily easy for my mom's PC. What I basically want her to be able to do is the following: Change name of photos, organize into albums, remove red eyes, add tags (for single or multiple photos), and export to Flickr.

This of course has to be as easy as possible. Any ideas? The program doesn't have to be free, the important thing is that it's easy enough so she'll use it.

posted by einarorn to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Picasa would be pretty much ideal, except that export-to-Flickr is not transparent. (But doable: you just set up an export-via-email account.)
posted by holgate at 5:45 AM on October 25, 2006

Second the vote for Picasa; I switched to the mac a few months ago, and really miss it.
posted by willmize at 6:05 AM on October 25, 2006

I just got Arcsoft Photobase 4.5 with my new camera, seems great and does all the things you request (Flickr same as above though). Free to try here.
posted by DOUBLE A SIDE at 6:06 AM on October 25, 2006

Flock has a nice Flickr integration that lets you drag & drop directly from Picasa.
posted by harmless at 6:08 AM on October 25, 2006

Thirding Picasa.
posted by dmd at 6:19 AM on October 25, 2006

Picasa.
posted by dgeiser13 at 6:27 AM on October 25, 2006

Also Picasa just added Web Albums.
posted by dgeiser13 at 6:31 AM on October 25, 2006

x-ing Picasa. Got my parents set up on it (and now I no longer receive 1.3mb images in the mail since the mail-from-Picasa reduces them automatically).
posted by inigo2 at 6:31 AM on October 25, 2006

Picasa for sure. It's really, really easy to get your head around and all changes happen in real time. Spend ten minutes with it then teach your Mom and she'll be golden.

It's a Google product, and can be found here.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:38 AM on October 25, 2006

I'm really happy with ThumbsPlus.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:43 AM on October 25, 2006

Picasa as well. It's still plenty fast with over 30,000 x 2MB photos in it. There's a new version out that's a nicely refined.
posted by wzcx at 11:03 AM on October 25, 2006

Alright, Picasa it seems to be.

However, is there no such thing as the iPhoto-to-Flickr plugin available for Picasa? I've been looking around for the email-to-Flickr thing, and it seems like just the thing that my mom would never, ever bother learning.

Is there no easy way to create Flickr albums and then export images with tags and descriptions to Flickr? I've got my mom to use Flickr because that's where all my photos are, so I'd rather not have to teach her to use another service like Picasa Web Albums.

Does anyone have experience with Picajet? I read somewhere that it has better Flickr integration.
posted by einarorn at 11:21 PM on October 25, 2006

You mean Picasa albums and then export images to Flickr?
posted by dgeiser13 at 3:05 PM on October 26, 2006

Yes
posted by einarorn at 7:51 AM on October 27, 2006