An image organizer or image management application is application software for organizing digital images.Cynthia Baron and Daniel Peck, The Little Digital Camera Book, July 1, 2002 pp:93Julie Adair King, Shoot Like a Pro! Digital Photography July 28, 2003 pp:21-23 It is a kind of desktop organizer software application.
Image organizer software focuses on handling large numbers of images. In contrast to an image viewer, an image organizer can edit image tags and can often upload files to on-line hosting pages. Enterprises may use Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions to manage larger and broader amounts of digital media.
Some programs that come with desktop environments, such as gThumb (GNOME) and digiKam (KDE) were originally simple image viewers, and have evolved into image organizers.
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 User roles and permissions enable controlled access to certain images while preventing access to others. 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 or in sidecar files."Who’s got the tag? Database truth versus file truth" by Jon Udell 2007 Share: 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 or Phase One Media Pro). 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 their hard drive. While they provide maximum flexibility, manual organizers rely on the user to have their 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 purposes, procedures, and outcomes.
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:http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/03/lightroom_and_the_future_of_or.html Lightroom and the future of organizing photos colour, shape and texture recognitionhttp://www.ctr.columbia.edu/~jrsmith/html/pubs/PAMI/pami_final_1.html Automated Image Retrieval Using Color and Texture (1995) (For example, Picasa experimentally allows searching for photos with primary colour names.) subject recognitionhttp://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1232330.1232374&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE Content-based object organization for efficient image retrieval in image databases (2006) fully or semi-automated facial, torso or body recognitionhttp://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2004-15/2004-15.pdf Semi-Automatic Image Annotation Using Event and Torso Identificationhttp://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw62/wilcox.html Managing Digital Photo Collections (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.http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=957093 Temporal event clustering for digital photo collections 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 untagged image and some template image which is associated with a keyword, and then propose that the operator apply the same keyword(s) to the untagged images
Notable image organizers
Program OS Type License Metadata Geotagging Facial recognition Map display Synchronizes with online library Notes ACDSee Windows IPTC Exif XMP ≤ 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 Lightroom CC Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Webcloud-based database not compatible with Lightroom Classic CC Adobe Lightroom Classic CC Windows and macOScatalogue-managed local folders IPTC Exif XMP Flickr, PicasaWeb, Piwigo, SmugMug with plugins Professional image management application database, asynchronously catalog DVD collections of 10,000's of photos. Has built-in RAW Editor that allows to edit RAW images in batch Adobe Photoshop Album Windows and macOS discontinued in 2007,superseded by Elements Organizer Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer Windows and macOS Exif IPTC XMP Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Email Component of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Also supports management and sharing of video clips. Aperture macOSlocal database Exif IPTC XMP iCloud, Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug discontinued in 2015,superseded by Photos (Apple) CodedColor PhotoStudio Pro Windows IPTC DBGallery Windows Cloud and On-premise IPTC Exif XMP Team features such as version control and activity logging. Support for very large collections (millions). Accessed using web browsers. digiKam KDE (Linux, macOS, Windows) IPTC Exif XMP 23hq, Facebook, Flickr, Gallery2, Piwigo, SmugMug Image management application database, deals with collections of 100,000's of photos Digital Photo Professional Windows F-Spot Linux discontinued in 2017 FastStone Image Viewer Windows Exif Fotostation Windows, macOS Geeqie Linux Google Photos iOS, Android and Web IPTC Integrated with Google online tool suite. gThumb Linux iPhoto macOSlocal database discontinued in 2015,superseded by Photos (Apple) KPhotoAlbum Linux * * Has an option to tag faces on photo manually Phase One Media Pro Windows and macOS IPTC Exif XMP discontinued in 2018,superseded by Capture One Photos (Apple) macOS, iOS and Webcloud-based database Default photo manager for macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS. Supports editing, iCloud, printing, sharing, searching. Photos (Windows) Windows Default photo manager for Windows 8 and later. PicaJet Windows Exif IPTC XMP Flickr, Fotki Multi-user database access, unlimited category-nesting levels, hiding private images, supports for more than 60 image file formats Picasa Windows, macOS and Linux IPTC (per folder) PicasaWeb discontinued in 2016,superseded by Google Photos Shotwell Linux Exif IPTC XMP Facebook, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Piwigo non-destructive editing, one-click autoenhance Shutterfly Studio Windows ViewMinder Windows discontinued in 2007 Windows Photo Gallery Windows IPTC Exif XMP OneDrive, Facebook, Flickr, Inkubook plus more with plugins discontinued in 2017,superseded by Photos (Windows) XnView Windows, macOS and Linux local database IPTC Exif (per file) Imgur, ImageShack Zoner Photo Studio Windows Exif IPTC XMP Using HTML templates Program OS Type License Metadata Geotagging Facial recognition Map display Synchronizes with online library Notes
See also Image viewers Image retrieval Digital asset management Comparison of image viewers Desktop organizer Personal wiki
References
Further reading Multimedia Information Retrieval and Management: Technological Fundamentals and Applications by David Feng, W.C. Siu, Hong J. Zhang Multimedia Networking: Technology, Management, and Applications by Syed Mahbubur Rahman Multimedia and Image Management by Susan Lake, Karen Bean
External links