Image cataloging

[royalpanfan]

Can anyone recommend a non editing cataloging software for images. I use photoshop CS3 for editing, but with many images in raw, psd and jpeg I need to be able to locate the files without spending hours doing it. I keep my images on a large hard drive and a portable back up drive.Thanks for your assistance.

[gldiana]

What's your budget?
I strongly recommend Lightroom 2.0 since it is a great workflow piece of software, editing is just one part of it. Not sure why you'd want something totally separate. As an alternative you could use Adobe Bridge, which is integrated with Photoshop.

I love LR because it makes it easy for me to find my favorite shots. First I discard what I don't need (shortcut x), then I'll go through what's left and assign a 5 star to the best images, then I assign a red flag to the very best (color coding allows you to separate photos and makes it very easy to find them: for example code your best landscape photos green, the sport ones yellow, the wildlife ones black, architecture blue, etc.)

[royalpanfan]

Thanks i will take another look at Lightroom. I tried it when it first came out and as i did not want my images edited just cataloged in the three formats I use raw, (Nef) first then psd and some jpegs. I sort, rate and delete in bridge. But I will take another look at it. Love your area I took some great shots of the fox family that lived neat the fairgrounds in Jackson in spring of 07.

Jack

[gldiana]

Cool. That's actually a block from my house. Pat, Cindy and I took photos there, too.

I'm not sure about this sentence:

>"as i did not want my images edited just cataloged"

Lightroom (or any other program I know) doesn't edit images by itself. LR is divided in 4 modules and Editing is just one of them.

[Mitchell]

I was wondering, I will be getting a laptop for my online school in a few months. And i have all my picture on one external hard drive and i backup my catalog there to so when i get my new laptop can i install lightroom and then just use that catalog?

[gldiana]

Sure you can.

[Johnnycb]

I use LR2 but before that I was using ThumbsPlus which can be found at http://www.cerious.com/thumbnails.shtml
ThumbsPlus is a great cataloging software choice that is affordable, fast and simple to use.

Johnny