Acat1234

Am purchasing a Nikon D3500 and need a basic photo editing and organizing program. I have thousands of pictures I need to organize and lightly edit/enhance. My procrastination has finally caught up with me. To say I am a beginner is giving me way too much credit.

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Photoshop Elements available for $70 from B&H Photo or Best Buy. No subscription required. Full featured with only moderate complexity.

Barn Owl

Acat234, For the basic sorting and organizing--later typing in labels--you might like Breeze Browser Pro. I could never do all my editing without it.

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

Consider Adobe Lightroom 6 stand alone disk.

DGStinner Loc: New Jersey

Lightroom 6 can't read the raw files from a D3500. The OP would need to convert to DNG before using Lr6. The latest version of Lightroom Classic CC (v8.1) natively supports the D3500.

jamesl Loc: Pennsylvania

"ON1 Photo RAW 2019", "Luminar 3" (being released tomorrow, 12/18/2018) or "Photoshop Elements".

photogeneralist Loc: Lopez Island Washington State

Tomorrow the new Luminar 3 rolls out. If it's anything like my Lminar 2018, it has a fairly intuitive user interface (learning curve/ease of use) with as much functionality as you are likely to need. Since it has it' s own photo library. I may be able to transfer my 28,000 photos ffrom Apple"s Photos Library and bypass Apple Photos library entirely.

salikenphoto Loc: S.E. corner of British Columbia Canada

My answer would be to consider where you are going with your photography. Decide how much editing you are going to do then go look for a program that will meet your goals. There will always be a a learning curve. That is why I say choose what you may need in the future and then you will only have to learn one program. I have gone through several and now I am looking at doing the Adobe suite. Yes it is a monthly rental but very powerful programs so once again I will be learning new programs. The good part is there is no end to the people on you tube that are happy to show you for free no matter what program you are going to use. Hope this helps you.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Yes, buy this and organize your images. Or pay monthly and get Photoshop CC, and LR CC and organize them with Lightroom Classic CC. $9.99/month

Bill_de Loc: US

Based on the information the OP provided this is a good choice. Excellent organization capabilities with very capable editing. Also has good tutorials.

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Acat1234

Thanks everyone for the very thoughtful and informative suggestions. Appears PS Elements might be the way to go.

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

Create a partition and put Linux on your PC .....lots of free programs there

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

As long as you are fine with processing only 8 bit color, Elements will do a fine job, and the Elements "Organizer" module produces image tags that are readily transferrable when you decide that you need the range of 16 bit or 32 bit processing and upgrade to Lightroom or other software. Just be aware that you're getting significantly less IQ with Elements than with the full Lightroom/Photoshop package or most of their competitors.

I waited too long to make the switch, and have many old images that I wish I'd done a better job of processing on. I spend ten bucks a month on takeout coffee, on one burger at lunch, or many other things that bring me far less value and pleasure of always having the latest version of what most pros think is the best photo processing suite out there.

I hate to sound like an Adobe fanboy, but this full feature digital darkroom brings me a lot more joy than those five coffees do!

Andy

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

FastStone Image Viewer will allow you to organize and has editing capabilities that may satisfy your requirements.

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

Are they all digital? Or do you have a shoebox full of prints you're adding to your digital shots?

I personally like the Adobe photography package, but a lot of people don't like the subscription model. It's fine if you're an active photographer and generating lots of new photos but if you're just doing a one-time organization it's probably overkill.

One thing I would suggest is that you use folders and filenames with meaningful names. Even if you use something like Lightroom, which is very powerful in organizing things through keywords, collections, and sets. LR takes some skill to do searches (not a lot of skill, but some). I have no problem with LR searches but nobody else in my family knows how to search with LR and I'm getting along in years so at some point I won't be here to find things. Assuming that my family are at least interested in the photos of family things, having meaningful file names and folder names gives them a fighting chance of finding things.

Long ago I bought Downloader Pro, which can take files from the camera card (or from somewhere on the hard drive) and rename them. It's very flexible and I find it easy to use. More details at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1595