Mr.Ft Loc: Central New Jersey

I'm looking for advice on a program to catalog my photos. Now I'm saving them by dates on a back up drive, but that isn't working for me . Is there a stand alone program I can use for this??

Thanks

srt101fan

I use a program called IMatch. It's too sophisticated and much more capable than what I need for cataloging but you might want to check it out just to give you an idea of what's available.

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

Adobe Lightroom's cataloging feature is one of its strongest selling points. It was the reason Adobe developed it separately from Photoshop. It's come into its own as an editing program, but many people still use its flags, ratings and catalogs as a way of indexing and storing their photos.

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

Adobe lightroom. Non destructive also when you make changes to the image.Be frugal and buy the Lightroom 6 standalone disk .,They have switched to a cloud base system for $10 a month which includes Photoshop as well.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I prefer Lightroom Classic CC and all that comes with it. But, if that's too expensive, Adobe Bridge is free. You have to have an account, but you don't pay anything.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Another for Adobe Lightroom.

From your description I'm assuming your photos are digital or digitized. Either way, Lightroom will be able to catalog them.
There are several ways to use Lightroom. The first way is to apply keywords to every photo. You can do that by groups to make things faster if you have a lot of photos. Another way is to put the photos into collections. Since Lightroom only refers to the location of your photos in a database, one photo can be placed into several (or even many) different collections without having to duplicate the file. You can also apply star ratings to the images (0-5 stars) or you can pick one of 5 color labels.

Lightroom allows you to search for your photos using keywords, stars, text (file name or keywords) or even metadata (date, camera model, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and many other parameters). The metadata is less useful on scanned images but you can make up for it by using the keywords. Metadata can be edited to some extent so you can add a date for a scanned image (if you know the date applicable to the image) or even add a location in latitude/longitude (you can place a photo on a map to get the lat/long parameters).

I also recommend placing meaningful file names on your images. That will help anyone searching through your photopile without knowing how to use Lightroom. It's not as complete but it could help.

If you have a lot of photos, the process of naming and/or keywording could take a while, so start soon.

uhaas2009

I use photo mechanic you can try it before you buy it.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

This is what I use

jcryan Loc: Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic

I use Darktable free open source program that runs on Windows, Mac & Linux. Capabilities are similar to Lightroom but the price is right ;-)

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

My "program" starts with a My Pictures folder. Inside that I have more folders: Cars > Foreign > Antique > Mine, etc. There are lots of programs that will keep track of your pictures, both free and not free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_organizer
http://www.toptenreviews.com/software/multimedia/best-photo-organizing-software/
Basic ideas -
http://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/using-a-controlled-vocabulary-to-organize-digital-photographs--cms-23344

Lots for free -
https://www.digikam.org/
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-digital-photo-organizer.htm
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/10-free-photo-managing-software-you-should-at-least-know/
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-story/412-best-free-photo-management-software.html

Or not free -
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402024,00.asp
http://photo-organizing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-way-to-organize-a-lifetime-of-photos-1429637857

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

That works and is usable by people who have not yet learned how to use the Lightroom features.
The only disadvantage to that approach is that if an image has more than one important characteristic, it has to be duplicated in order to put it into all the folders it needs to be in. Since memory prices generally decrease with time this may not be an important problem.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

I'd recommend Lightroom. I can find an image of just about anything in seconds based on my keywording system and/or on metadata. For example, if I need an image that is horizontal and of a certain animal or maybe a landscape it takes me just a few seconds to find that. Additionally, LR is a wonderful processing application that will do about 90% of what most photographers need. When an image needs more work I move it into PS from LR, do the additional processing, then move it back into LR where it then sits next to the original image. Great system, very easy and efficient but there is, of course as with any new application, a learning curve.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Lightroom Classic CC is THE program for this. Best of luck.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Lightroom Classic

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

What you're looking for is Digital Asset Management software. There are a variety of these programs out there, some for no charge. The nice thing about these are that they are not tied to a photo processor. They are simply a database for managing Digital files.
--Bob