Digital photo software is designed for people who want to organize and share personal and family photos, but don't want to spend a lot of time editing them. In addition to helping you browse and sort through your image collection, they also allow you to catalog your media with keywords, descriptions and categories. These tools usually do not offer pixel-level editing capabilities, but they do provide easy, one-click corrections plus printing and photo sharing features.
I've recently updated the list with several new selections based on reader suggestions, and a couple of them are even free! Keep the suggestions coming, but remember... this category is for digital photo software for organizing, quick fixes, and sharing, and not full pixel-level photo editors.
• Top Digital Photo Software for Family Photos
If you just need something to browse and quickly view your photos in folders, check out the Top Thumbnail Image Browsers for Windows.
Post your suggestions for digital photo software for home users. Your suggestions may be included in future updates to my Top Digital Photo Software for Family Photos article.
ACDSee. I’ve used Picasa, Adobe Photoshop Album, and tested others, and so far, none have the speed, flexibility or features of ACDSee. They don’t lock you in, you can export your entire database to XML, you can copy your tags into the EXIF data, do tags searches (both and AND or), and many, many other things. I actually did a small writeup on some of these apps a long time ago here – http://frozenpixels.wordpress.com/managing-your-photos/
I highly recommend FastStone Image Viewer. It’s great for downloading and organizing. I especially like its ability to compare up to four images on the screen at once. That really helps when I’m trying to decide between bracketed versions of the same scene.
You should take a look at Faststone Image Viewer-Simple, quick and nimble. I have used every version of Adobe Elements and will be buying Version 6 soon, but this Faststone is beautiful for simply viewing the photos and it can catalog also.
Thanks for all the FastStone recommendations. For the record, it does not fit all my criteria for this category, but I have it listed in my Top Thumbnail Image Browsers for Windows article.
I wish you’d take a look at the software sold by Creative Memories (a 20 yr.old company that specializes in “guaranteed” photo-safe products. The software called Memory Manager is only $39.00 and will do what most higher priced software does without much of a learning curve. It will not only organize photos (you can type in 2 names and find pictures with only those 2 people in them) but also edit (clone,remove/add color, red-eye, adjust horizon, etc) but also let you create an album from the pictures. For the money – it’s GREAT and I don’t have to be computer-savvy to use it!
Check out CaptureNX by Nikon – a full-featured editor which, to me at least, is much easier to navigate than the Adobe offerings.
IDImager is hands down the most powerful and versatile photo management system there is, and has the best customer support out there. It can be used just to categorize images, or for so much more – creating web pages, editing, sharing, creating slideshows, etc. Great.
I would love to see you review Creative Memories program – Memory Manager. I have used Picasa for years and about 1.5 years ago moved to this program (because of Picasa’s limitations at the time). I love Memory Manager. I have also used Photoshop but it’s just too overwhelming (I think) for the non-professional user.
I look forward to your reply.
On the enterprise level, VeriPic seems to have the best product out there.
I’ve looked at various cataloging applications but haven’t found what I am after. I need something that lets me add multiple data to each photo without it being in the file name. However I don’t want it to reorganise my current cataloguing. I want to be able to search for and photos by any word in the captions. Any suggestions?
Michael: Several of the ones in my list should be able to do what you are asking for, unless I am not understanding your issue. Why don’t you come to the discussion forum and tell us a little more about your current system and how you feel it falls short.
Creative Memories’ Memory Manager 2 is very good for the hobbyist. What I like about it is you can easily journal about the photograph. I also like that you can list the date as a just a year (works great for all those photos I had digitized!) Plus, the organizational hierarchy it uses is intuitive for me. I have a Mac and I run both OS X and XP on it. I have iPhoto on the Mac side and Memory Manager on the XP side. I keep trying to get used to iPhoto, but I just don’t like it as much as Memory Manager.
I find that several programs I’ve tried/researched do what Vista’s Photo Gallery does. Is that, free with the OS, not worth mentioning in your list or do any programs you know of perform way better than that? Do you mind emailing me your thoughts?
Samir: I’ve written about it here: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/freesoftware/ig/Free-Graphics-Software/Windows-Live-Photo-Gallery.htm
I just haven’t updated my list since adding it to my site. I will probably go in the #3 slot when I do my next revision. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Is there no product that allows essentially unlimited key word tagging of photos, without unwanted editing functions? The desire here would involve a program that could sort photos’ key word tags on multiple terms (like the 2007 version of Microsoft Excel).
For example, a single request of the program might ask for all photos tagged with any of the following terms ‘Uncle Jimmy’, ‘garden’, ‘vegetable’, ‘2008′.
@Ambassador: Several in my list can do that. Give them a try.
Creative Memories Memory Manager has features that leave the competition in the dust for its $39.95 price. The organizational system allows me to find any image of any person doing anything at anytime in approximately 1 second. It keeps track of what I’ve printed, has automatic backup, lets me document details in a journal box that’s tied to the photo. WOW! I love it! You can go to http://www.creativememories.com to find a consultant to order it from.
Here’s another rec for Creative Memories Memory Manager – on sale now for $29.95 and it is due for an upgrade in April that will be just $10 for current and new users. The upgrade will offer great new functionality for editing (including picture to picture clone). The organizational system can’t be beat and it is really easy to tag a file multiple times without making duplicate copie of the file.
Thumbsplus by Cerius is an excellent cataloger. The built in editting features are pretty good, too.
I made a mistake and switched from
Thumbsplus to Photoshop Elements cataloger and…what a mess. The photoshop cataloger is ridiculously buggy, at least on my machine. I upgraded the software and…the newer version is just as buggy. In a one month period it has crashed 166 times…locked up, lost thumbnails, etcetera. Painful but with several thousand images it’s now almost as painful to switch away from it.
@Adrian: This is not typical behavior. If Photoshop Elements is crashing that much for you, there is something wrong on your system. This article has some suggestions which may help: http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/faq/a/troubleshooting.htm
I am trying to find if ACDSee photo editor is supported under Windows 7. Does ANYONE have an answer?
@Rachel: I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. There isn’t much difference from Vista to Windows 7. Why don’t you download the 30 day trial and try it.
I also have used ACDsee for years, and also tried the others, – Adobe, Picasa, Faststone, Corel. I think ACDsee is by far the best..lots of options, fast, and logical..also great for batch renaming, batch conversion,,,,etc. I don’t like their editing features, I use Adobe Elements for that, but I have not tried ACDsee Pro version….
I agree with some of the other comments. It doesn’t get any better than Creative Memories’ Memory Manager. The software is easy to use, has more cool features than I’ll ever use, and if I need help, I just call my consultant.
I think for beginners – nothing like Proshow Gold and pros Proshow Producer by Photodex Corporation. It;.s Great!!
FastStone, XnView, IrfanView, PaintNet all free and very good.
XnView is the best. It allows IPTC data which as an archivist seems essential in order to preserve data for future generations. Faststone and Irfan are also verygood
Pixelmator was voted “best photo editing software” by About.com: Mac. There is a free demo too.
Creative Memories Memory Manager 3.0 (MM3.0) is a terrific photo organizer and photo editing program. It allows for searching based on image title or folder location or journaling as well as based on date. In addition, it allows for up to 5K characters for journaling! Photos can be organized in multiple folders but only one (1) copy of the photo is actually stored. Photos in MM 3.0 can be directly shared with Creative Memories digital scrapbooking program StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0. MM 3.0 is a bargain at $39.95!
At the top of the list should be Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Light Room. They are a bit more on the Pro side but nothing prevents you from using them at home.
@Rodrigo: They are at the top of my Digital Darkroom list. http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/digitalphotography/tp/digitaldarkroom.htm
I wanted a good tagging tool and found Zoner. I find this the best because it tags the actual photos and this can be read in other software. I use Windows Live to delete unwanted tags. Zoner can also edit in RAW mode etc. but I really only wanted a good tagging tool. Picasa is really not very good at tagging and it doesn’t tag the actual photos anyway.
You might take a look at Zoner as I prefer it to Picasa, Photoshop, Paintshop and Windows Live for tagging. It is free and doesn’t seem to get mentioned much.
i teach people how to manage their digital images and find Memory Manager by Creative Memories the best software on the market, for $39.95 it is a great bargin, easy to use and great for organizing photos as well as basic editing.
This weblog aided me!
Hi Sue,
I would highly recommend Sagelight Editor. I have not delved in depth into the pros and cons of the softwares you mentioned, and I am no expert in Sagelight Editor either as I just purchased it and noticed the diversity and uniqueness of some of the features which are very advanced especially for EDITING photos.
It think it might have some features not available in many of the other excellent programs you mentioned. I am pretty certain each has its own advantages.
I have been happy with what it has done for my pictures.
Here is the link for this program:
http://www.sagelighteditor.com/
Sincerely,
Eric Daniels
Thanks for the suggestion, Eric. I recently added Sagelight to my picks for digital darkroom software. Without the organizing and sharing features, it does not meet my criteria for this category.
Great comments. I have used several of these. I have settled in with CM Memory Manager 3.0 and I also have tagged all the photos in Picasa (initally lengthy process but so great to have it done).
Now when I add or edit in Memory Manager, Picasa tags it automatically and I don’t have to do anything.
I wish I could just use Memory Manager exclusively, but of course it has no facial recognition capabaility.
The only disconnect is that I put photo dates in for many older family photos on Memory Manager and they do not show in Picasa. Has anyone found a way to deal with this?
I’ve XN View for some time. It has one useful feature that I’ve not seen in other programs: the ability to crop photos to the same proportion as the originals.
I’ve been using XnView for several years and I like it a lot. It does seem to slow down when confronted with opening a folder containing 1000 images, though [WinXP, 3GB RAM]. I would like to hear your take on XnView.
Thank you
@Steve: You can read my take on XnView in my review. It’s also in my list of Top Thumbnail browsers and I have written several tutorials for it.
Have you reviewed Thumbs Plus? It has an amazing ability to find duplicates across directories and multi-folder layers, also grouping photos that were cropped from a larger image.
XnView is my favourite. Add IPTC comments including templates, view all EXIF comments, neatest crop system I’ve ever seen and free. Excellent forums too.
I’ve actually never really had the money to buy any expensive photo editors, so I’ve only really used free (or outdated) ones. One of the free programs that I’ve liked the most is Paint.NET. It’s a pretty simple editor that can get really good results. One of the reasons I like it for my best digital photography is that it has a forum where people post all kinds of free plugins/extensions!
I just saw a demonstration of Creative Memories Memory Manager and it looks very good and user friendly. You also have access to a CM consultant at no charge and the software is inexpensive and on sale this month. I have no experience with any software of this type but have just started taking digital photos and wish to organize. Many people have commented favorably on your site but I am hoping they are not all consultants for CM just promoting their product. The things they have posted sound so similar to what the consultant said when she demonstrated the product. Is there any way to know if this is true? How did you find the software? Thank you so much!