There are many digital photography software programs today that help you organize your digital pictures. Some are called image viewers while others are called digital asset management programs. They can be free of charge or can cost hundreds of dollars to buy. How can one make sense of all these options? It is actually pretty simple because there are essentially three categories of image management programs. Read on to find out what they are.
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Third category: Digital photography software driven by a database
The most complex image management software programs are those that are database enabled. Programs like Picasa, ACDSee and Adobe Lightoom are the well known programs from this category. What is special about this category? Well, it’s the database that comes with each of these programs. You as the user, will have no idea that there is a database underneath…unless you look more carefully.
What is this database used for? Primarily, the database for this class of image management programs is used for storing all (literally all) image metadata. This includes all EXIF, IPTC and XMP (in some cases) metadata found in all the images imported into the tool (Read The road frequently traveled by image metadata).
In addition, the physical location of the images is also imported into the database as well, so that if you move images outside of the program, you will have to sync your program with the actual image folders. This means that this class of programs do not provide a direct view of the image folders on your computer. What you see as folders in these programs, are actually just pointers to the actual physical location of the images.
The main difference between this class of image management programs and the other two classes is the fact that any editing of the images can be done virtually, meaning that all the transformations of the images do not affect the original image unless they are applied to the image. In other words, these programs work on virtual copies of the original images and it implies that all the changes made to an image can be reversed if needed. This can be a great advantage for more advanced photographers who spend a great deal of time on modifiying their pictures. For most home users, this feature can be cumbersome and not very useful.
The main advantages of this class of image management programs are: excellent image metadata management capability (for the most part), great speed when searching large image collections based on image metadata fields and image transformations can all be reversed.
The main disadvantage of this class is complexity. It takes a while to get used with these programs and be able to use them efficiently. In order to used these programs efficiently you need to understand where the database resides on your computer (it can be called a catalog, or repository or something similar). You need to find out and learn how to back it up. Also, you must learn how to synchronize the image collection on your computer, with the image collection your program “sees”. Unless synchronized, your program only “sees” what you have synchronized.
The best examples of this class of image management programs are: Picasa (which is free, but has limited image metadata support), Adobe Lightroom (arguably the best image management tool but with a high price tag) and ACDSee Pro version (seems to be great and not as pricey as Lightroom).
Additional resources
To download any of the free programs mentioned here please visit my recommended photography products page.
Start learning now: Download my "BIG" book. Download my Picasa book.
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Related articles:
- There is one big difference between image viewers and DAM software
- How to choose the perfect digital photography software
- What makes photo management software tick?
- The road frequently traveled by image metadata
- How to choose the right software for organizing your pictures
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