Know any good tools to help with sequencing photographs?
November 13, 2015 12:20 PM Subscribe
Looking for a good way to work with my own photos in jpeg form, narrowing down and sequencing sets of photos for exhibitions, galleries, submissions, books, and what have you. Are there any good apps or programs that might help with this?
What I would optimally like is some sort of interface that would allow me to drag, drop, and move low-res images around, and easily remove or add to the set. Preferably, an online/cloud-based tool .
I use Flickr quite a bit for sharing my work (I shoot film, and there's still a good community there of like-minded folks), but their interface for creating and editing the sequence of sets just blows.. it shrinks and crops everything down to a square at about 50 by 50 pixels, and doesn't give my any sort of feel for the overall sequence,, how things look together etc, so I find it basically useless for this purpose. I don't need to be using full-size images, but I do want to see the full crop, and I think something closer to 400px wide or thereabouts would be sufficient.
Would love to hear about any options or ideas you may know about.
FWIW I use Windows OS, and while I would prefer an online tool, I'd be interested in hearing about any other programs you may know about.
Thanks!
What I would optimally like is some sort of interface that would allow me to drag, drop, and move low-res images around, and easily remove or add to the set. Preferably, an online/cloud-based tool .
I use Flickr quite a bit for sharing my work (I shoot film, and there's still a good community there of like-minded folks), but their interface for creating and editing the sequence of sets just blows.. it shrinks and crops everything down to a square at about 50 by 50 pixels, and doesn't give my any sort of feel for the overall sequence,, how things look together etc, so I find it basically useless for this purpose. I don't need to be using full-size images, but I do want to see the full crop, and I think something closer to 400px wide or thereabouts would be sufficient.
Would love to hear about any options or ideas you may know about.
FWIW I use Windows OS, and while I would prefer an online tool, I'd be interested in hearing about any other programs you may know about.
Thanks!
Lightroom does exactly what you ask. Drag and drop ordering, side by side comparison of one or more within a set, filtering on one or more criteria, images in multiple sets, etc.
posted by gyusan at 2:24 PM on November 13, 2015
posted by gyusan at 2:24 PM on November 13, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks so far :)
To be clear, storage is not what I'm asking about. As I mentioned, I shoot on film, and scan the negatives myself, so being selective within my overall body of work is not an issue. I'm talking more about being able to narrow down the "long list" of images that might fit whatever theme to the 16-32 or so most fitting images to be posted as a gallery on my website or submitted to a call, for example, and the ability to evaluate options as far as how they look in sequence.
I'm not looking for cloud storage, but the ability to be able to work with the images in this manner remotely from my own computer.
posted by wats at 3:56 PM on November 13, 2015
To be clear, storage is not what I'm asking about. As I mentioned, I shoot on film, and scan the negatives myself, so being selective within my overall body of work is not an issue. I'm talking more about being able to narrow down the "long list" of images that might fit whatever theme to the 16-32 or so most fitting images to be posted as a gallery on my website or submitted to a call, for example, and the ability to evaluate options as far as how they look in sequence.
I'm not looking for cloud storage, but the ability to be able to work with the images in this manner remotely from my own computer.
posted by wats at 3:56 PM on November 13, 2015
Best answer: wats, it sounds like you are effectively looking for an online "light table" - a scratch pad for arranging and organizing digital images. Is that correct? I don't have any specific products in mind, but I feel like I have seen some in the past, and I will keep looking. But hopefully that analogy will help others too.
posted by misterbrandt at 4:02 PM on November 13, 2015
posted by misterbrandt at 4:02 PM on November 13, 2015
Sorting through, culling, and editing photos is what Photo Mechanic is great at. It's not cloud based, but imho that's a good thing. It's a lot faster to do locally, especially when you have a lot of images to go through. Free trial. Worth a shot.
Since I've now recommended it in two separate threads in a single week, I feel the need to say that I have no affiliation. I have just used it for many, many years and think it's a great tool.
posted by primethyme at 5:58 PM on November 13, 2015
Since I've now recommended it in two separate threads in a single week, I feel the need to say that I have no affiliation. I have just used it for many, many years and think it's a great tool.
posted by primethyme at 5:58 PM on November 13, 2015
I use Lightroom for this very thing (amongst others).
posted by culfinglin at 11:30 AM on November 14, 2015
posted by culfinglin at 11:30 AM on November 14, 2015
Best answer: What about a web app like Realtime Board? It gives you a blank white world to upload images to and drag them around? And I think you could fit within their limits for the free account, if your images are not too too big.
posted by misterbrandt at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2015
posted by misterbrandt at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
I start a new folder per year. In.the folder are subfolders for what I shoot. As a New Years exercise you could look through your year and make a folder of your best. In every case I save a tiff and a jpeg of my work. Tiff and Jpeg are tagged differently. So they are easy to identify even just by sliding over them. You learn to be choosy about what you save, and never delete images using the camera viewfinder, always look at them large. Make a deal with yourself about how you name your images.
I don't like the cloud, or off site storage.
posted by Oyéah at 2:08 PM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]