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Old 22-03-2007, 10:46 AM posted to aus.gardens
Graham Corbin Graham Corbin is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2007
Posts: 23
Default looking for photo album program?

Again, I am not confident I really understand your needs but IDimager
will do what I think you are after. To summarise, IDimager has built in
- downloader with lots of smarts to automatically download photos from
camera, save in directories dependent on photos and set file names
dependent on photos
- Catalogue explorer to arrange photos on disc. ie. rename files &
directories and move, etc.
- Album Explorer to organise photos in an Album hierarchy, just like a
disc structure but independent to it. Photos can be in multiple albums,
etc. Albums give you another way to organise your photos independently
to where they are stored on your hard disc or CDs.
- Full access to EXIF photo data including ability to store Titles,
Headlines, Descriptions, Keywords, Ratings plus heaps more fields in
EXIF and even your own fields you create. (EXIF is how all the camera
information like photo date, camera model, camera configuration, etc is
stored in the photo file.)
- Photos are fully searchable by all EXIF data, even the keyword
hierarchy making keywords a very very powerful way to find your photos.
- Photo editing with all the usual things plus the ability to add Titles
and Watermarks and even batch add these.
- You can save directories and/or Albums including hierarchies to CD as
JPGs, as a website or as a video slideshow. These can have titles added
if you wish plus you have complete control over how things are exported.
- Lots more stuff, but I won't bore you anymore.

I think Albums will do everything you require plus more. When you wish
to share your photos with others, I think a website or slideshow on CD
will meet your needs. I suggest you just download IDimager Lite (free)
and see if it meets your needs. You can download the manuals at
http://www.idimager.com/downloadmanuals.htm (20MB) and the program at
http://www.idimager.com/download.htm (39.5MB) so these are hefty
downloads but well worth it. Again, I warn this is high end software so
it does an awful lot of stuff and looks very daunting to start. It takes
a while to understand its features so be prepared to take some time to
come to grips with it.

By the way, I am not associated with IDimager in any way. I did a lot of
searching to find some photo organisation software and found everything
was very lacking, especially the ability to work with photos stored on
CD or DVD. I came across IDimager and found it does everything I need
plus much more. It does so much I am still discovering really useful
stuff in it. I use the Lite version myself and find it excellent, doubly
so with a price of $0. Check it out. The effort to learn a top end
program like IDimager is worth it to avoid the limitations inherent in
the simpler programs.

PS. Sorry this is such a long post. I get carried away some times!