Photo Issues

October 3, 2005 3:41 PM

Help my non-profit's photo problem! The non-profit organization I recently started working with has nearly 2,000 photos from years past that I'd like to sort in a meaningful fashion, whether by filenames and folders or with a program. I'd like people to be able to browse/search by date, the program involved (After-School, Food Pantry, etc), and the activity going on in the photo. The clincher: Must be easy to use, free, and can run on Windows 98.

The limitations of naming files and folders has me lost at the best way to arrange these things. Do you have a special system for naming files and folders that keep your photos sorted in a pretty, easily browsable manner?

It seems like a program with a way to tag photos would be best, but I haven't looked at any programs because, well, I don't know whether the staff would be able to adapt. They're really nice people, just not very well-versed in computer usage. The program would have to be easy, really easy. Like, "Opening Windows Explorer and browsing the folders" easy. The free and Windows 98 requirements aren't up for discussion, unfortunately.

Help this organization get more organized! Thank you, MeFi!

posted by anonymous to Technology (11 answers total)

Picasa?
posted by Rothko at 3:43 PM on October 3, 2005

Seconding Picasa.
posted by keswick at 3:44 PM on October 3, 2005

I haven't used Picasa, but Irfanview is pretty easy, free, and does a lot of different things. And yes, it runs on Win98.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:58 PM on October 3, 2005

Response by poster: Oh, forgot to mention. We have a server where all the pictures are stored.
posted by Anonymous at 4:26 PM on October 3, 2005

luriete: I thought about that, but unless things changed with Yahoo's purchase, there's a cap on how much can be uploaded/viewed on Flickr without a Pro account.
posted by keswick at 4:31 PM on October 3, 2005

Picasa.
posted by bshort at 4:43 PM on October 3, 2005

I'm sorry, your question is rather confusing. You say you want to be able to browse by filename, by folder, or by date? You can do all of that via windows explorer, even in 98.

2,000 photos is not that many, really.

Just go up to the View menu, and select 'details', then just the 'modified' column heading, and the pictures will be sorted by date. Or you could right click in the folder view, select 'arange icons' and then chose 'by date'.
posted by delmoi at 5:33 PM on October 3, 2005

Response by poster: I'd like a way to identify the photos by the activity in them, the program running the activity, the date of the activity, and perhaps even the people involved, and then be able to sort the photos by those different variables. Like I said, I thought tagging would be the best way to do it that didn't involve long, overly complicated filenames. Which would have to have their own sorting system, anyway.
posted by Anonymous at 7:54 PM on October 3, 2005

Picasa is free... but not as good as Adobe Elements.
posted by Mroz at 10:01 PM on October 3, 2005

Piacasa does all you need and its free.
posted by FidelDonson at 2:39 AM on October 4, 2005

Thumbsplus is shareware.
posted by cogat at 4:55 AM on October 4, 2005