An image organizer or image management application is application software focused on organizing digital images. Image organizers represent one kind of desktop organizer software applications.
Image organizer software is primarily focused on improving the user's workflow by facilitating the handling of large numbers of images. In contrast to an image viewer, an image organizer has at least the additional ability to edit the image tags and often also an easy way to upload files to on-line hosting pages.
Some programs that come with desktop environments such as gThumb (GNOME) and digiKam (KDE) were originally programmed to be simple image viewers, and have since gained features to be used as image organizer as well.
Common image organizers features
- Multiple thumbnail previews are viewable on a single screen and printable on a single page. (Contact Sheet)
- Images can be organized into albums
- Albums can be organized into collections
- Adding tags (also known as keywords, categories, labels or flags). Tags can be stored externally, or in industry-standard IPTC or XMP headers inside each image file.
- Resizing, exporting, e-mailing and printing.
Not so common, or differentiating features
- Pictures can be organized by one or more mechanisms
- Images can be organized into folders, which may correspond to file-system folders.
- Images may be organized into albums, which may be distinct from folders or file-system folders.
- Albums may be organized into collections, which may not be the same as a folder hierarchy.
- Grouping or sorting by date, location, and special photographic metadata such as exposure or f-stops if that information is available. See Exif for example.
- Images can appear in more than one album
- Albums can appear in more than one collection
- Grouped or stacking of images within an album, by date, time, and linking copies to originals.
- Adding and editing titles and captions
- Simple or sophisticated search engines to find photos
- Searching by keywords, caption text, metadata, dates, location or title
- Searching with logical operators and fields, such as "(Title contains birthday) and (keywords contain cake) not (date before 2007)"
- Separate backing up and exporting of metadata associated with photos.
- Retouching of images (either destructively or non-destructively)
- Editing images in third-party graphical software and then re-incorporating them into the album automatically
- Stitching to knit together panoramic or tiled photos
- Grouping of images to form a slideshow view
- Exporting of slideshows as HTML or flash presentations for web deployment
- Synchronizing of albums with web-based counterparts, either third-party (such as Flickr), or application specific (such as Lightroom, Phase One Media Pro, Photo Supremeand Picasa)
- Retention of Exif, IPTC and XMP metadata already embedded in the image file itself
Two categories of image organizers
- Automatic image organizers. These are software packages that read data present in digital pictures and use this data to automatically create an organization structure. Each digital picture contains information about the date when the picture was taken. It is this piece of information that serves as the basis for automatic picture organization. The user usually has little or no control over the automatically created organization structure. Some tools create this structure on the hard drive (physical structure), while other tools create a virtual structure (it exists only within the tool).
- Manual image organizers. This kind of software provides a direct view of the folders present on a user's hard disk. Sometimes referred to as image viewers, they allow the user only to see the pictures but do not provide any automatic organization features. They give maximum flexibility to a user and show exactly what the user has created on his hard drive. While they provide maximum flexibility, manual organizers rely on the user to have his/her own method to organize their pictures. Currently there are two main methods for organizing pictures manually: tag and folder based methods. While not mutually exclusive, these methods are different in their methodology, outcome and purpose. Presently, many commercial image organizers offer both automatic and manual image organization features. A comparison of image viewers reveals that many free software packages are available that offer most of the organization features available in commercial software.
Future of image organization
There are several imminent advances anticipated in the image organization domain which may soon allow widespread automatic assignment of keywords or image clustering based on image content:colour, shape and texture recognition (For example, Picasa experimentally allows searching for photos with primary colour names)
- subject recognition
- fully or semi-automated facial, torso or body recognition (For example, FXPAL in Palo Alto experimentally extracts faces from images and measures the distance between each face and a template.)
- geo-temporal sorting and event clustering. Many software will sort by time or place; experimental software has been used to predict special events such as birthdays based on geo-temporal clustering.
In general, these methods either:
- automatically assign keywords based on content, or
- measure the distance between an unclassified image and some template image which is associated with a keyword, and then propose that the operator apply the same keyword(s) to the unclassified images
Notable image organizers
| Name | OS | License | Metadata | Geotagging | Facial Recognition | Synchronizes with Online Library | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACDSee | Windows | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMP | Yes | No | Yes ≤ 25 GB to ACDSee online,flickr, SmugMug,
and Zenfolio
| Supports: >100 file formats, Unicode, batch processing, viewing contents of archives formats, non-destructive editing, DB export, R/W to CD, VCD, DVD. Contains: SMTP email client, FTP transport, duplicate file finder. |
| Adobe Photoshop Album | Windows and OS X | Proprietary | Yes | No | No | This product has been discontinued. | |
| Bynder | Windows, Mac OS X,Linux | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMPDublin Core | Yes | No | Yes | |
| CodedColor PhotoStudio Pro | Windows | Proprietary | Yes IPTC | No | No | ||
| DBGallery | Windows | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMP | Yes | No | No | A multi-user, network-based, image database system typically used by small to medium size companies. Runs on an internal network with a proprietary internet sharing option. A personal version is available. |
| digiKam | KDE (Linux, Mac OS X,Windows) | GPL | Yes IPTCExif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes
23hq,Facebook, Flickr,Gallery2, Piwigo,SmugMug.
| Image management application database, deals with collections of
100,000's of photos
|
| FastStone Image Viewer | Windows | Freeware | Yes Exif | ||||
| F-Spot | Unix | GPL | Yes | ||||
| Geeqie | Unix | GPL | Yes | No | No | ||
| gThumb | Unix | GPL | Yes | ||||
| IMatch | Windows | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMP | Yes | Yes | No | |
| iPhoto | OS X | Proprietary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| JBrout | Windows, Linux | GPL | Yes IPTC | ||||
| KPhotoAlbum | Unix | GPL | |||||
| Lightroom | Windows and OS X | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes PicasaWeb,Flickr, Piwigo,SmugMug with
plugins
| Professional image management application database, asychronously
catalog DVD collections of 10,000's of photos
|
| Phase One Media Pro | Windows and OS X | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMP | No | No | No | Phase One Media Pro is a professional photo manager that makes it easy to manage both photo and video assets. Supports over 100 file formats. Asynchronously manage, add keywords and ratings to catalog with up to 500.000 photos. |
| Picasa/PicasaWeb | Windows, OS X andLinux | Freeware | Yes IPTC | Yes | Yes | Yes (PicasaWebonly) | 1 GB free online storage, integrated with Google online tool suite |
| PicaJet | Windows | Proprietary | Yes ExifIPTC XMP | Yes Flickr,Fotki.com | Multi-user database access, unlimited category-nesting levels, hiding private images, support for more than 60 image file formats | ||
| Phototheca | Windows | Proprietary | Yes ExifIPTC | No | Import photos into library, organize, view and sort basing on metadata. Detects duplicates, hide private photos. | ||
| ResourceSpace | Cross-platform (web application) | BSD license | Yes IPTCXMP Exif | Open source Digital Asset Management solution. | |||
| Shotwell | Linux | LGPL | Yes ExifIPTC XMP | No | No | Yes Facebook,Flickr,PicasaWeb,Piwigo | non-destructive editing, one-click autoenhance |
| Shutterfly Studio | Windows | Freeware | Yes | ||||
| ViewMinder | Windows XP and 2000 | Proprietary | Discontinued in 2007 | ||||
| Windows Photo Gallery | Windows 10, Windows 8,Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 | Proprietary | Yes IPTCExif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes OneDrive,Facebook, Flickr,Inkubook plus more with plugins | OneDrive offers 15 GB of free online storage (and extra 15 GB if automatic photo upload from smartphone is enabled). The latest version of the suite drops the Windows Live portion of the name and is no longer compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista |
| XnView | Windows and Unix-like | Freeware | Yes IPTCExif | ||||
| Zoner Photo Studio | Windows | Proprietary | Yes ExifIPTC XMP | Yes | No | Using HTML templates | |
| Digital Photo Professional | Windows | Proprietary |
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