thescruffypiratedotorg

What I want from a photo organizer

So, I have used quite a few different methods in the past for organizing my photos.

I started out organizing them by having a folder structure that was a date hierarchy, like this: Photos folder → Year → Month → Photos!

But this made it hard to find specific pictures. Like this was really bad at "Show me all photos with my dad in them" or "Show me all photos from 2004". And so on. Then my friend Ryan told me about this program call iView MediaPro (now bought out and called Microsoft Expression), which seemed to be the answer to all my problems! I could tag photos with specific people and where they were taken and search them pretty easily. But it turned out that I hated iView MediaPro. For a number of reasons, and it was buggy.

So, I went back to organizing my photos in folders. And then I found Flickr. Which seemed awesome. I loved having my photos online so friends and family could see them. And I liked all the options I had for organizing and tagging and searching my files. But it turned out I didn't like organizing my photos through Flickr. I didn't feel comfortable trusting some other website with all my information. Not for privacy concerns, but more that what if they go out of business. Or what if I want to organize things in a different way? I like being in charge of my data, AND understanding where and how my data is stored. And I wasn't really into the social aspect of Flickr. I could care less about other people's photos.

Finally, I am on a Mac, so I tried iPhoto. But after having my photos online, I don't want to go back organizing them just on my computer.

This really only left 1 option. Write a website (if Flickr did anything, it proved to me that a website was the way to go) myself. Now I have wanted to do this for at least 3 years but have never gotten around to it.

Well, recently I started working more on my webcam photos (the result of which you can now see at the top of all TSP pages) and I wanted to make a way for people to browse further back in time, through all the old webcam images (that I have).

And with this tinkering around I have started to see how I would make a photo organizer. In all the time I have wanted to write this, I have been building a list of features I want.

Here they are:

  1. I want to write it myself. I am not interested in some third party product. I have had enough of those. And it would be a lot of fun.
  2. I want to be able to organize my photos on my computer. Yes, it will be a website, but I want to be able to run it locally so I don't have to deal with slow internet connections or a lack of internet altogether.
  3. I want to be able to store them on my computer in anyway I see fit. I have normal everyday photos and they get organized by event. I have photos that get taken by my webcam and they get organized by day. I have photos that I take for my One a Days and they also get organized by day (but in a different folder). I shouldn't have to put my photos in a specific place!
  4. I want to be able to publish them online to share with friends. I should be able to choose which ones I publish.
  5. In terms of meta data, I want to be able to tag my photos, caption them, put them in albums, specify their location and (like facebook) mark who is in what photo (but unlike facebook, be able to change the size of that god damn framing box).
  6. I want to be able to rotate photos that are sideways.

Things I don't really care about:

  1. Editing the photos. I don't want to be able to change darkness/brightness or saturation or crop them or any of that. Or fix redeye. For a number of reasons.
    1. I don't ever do this
    2. I'm not interested in writing a photo editing site, just a photo organizing one
    3. This would be a lot of work
    4. There are better things out there for this anyway.
  2. Permissions. I don't like dealing with these, they are a pain and confusing and not worth my time. But if I make it so I can publish the photos online I'll make it so I can publish to different sites. Then potentially I could publish public photos to one site, and publish private photos to a different password protected site. That is good enough for me.

The one thing that I would like that I haven't addressed is comments. I want people to be able to comment on my photos. So that might be built in too.

Anyway, after this long ramble, my question for you is:

What would you want from a photo organizer?

Not that I am going to pay any attention to it, but I would like this to be useful to other people, so I am curious about what other people would want.

3 March 2009 09:08pm UTC • 303 views • 4 comments

Tagged with photos, question, organizer, ramble

4 comments

  1. georrrge 110

    4 March 2009 01:03am UTC

    I notice you didn't mention anything about Picasa - have you ever tried it? They have a Mac version now. I like it about a million times more than iPhoto.

  2. Seamonster Bruce! 97

    4 March 2009 02:14am UTC

    Make so it has the option of showing pictures at different resolution settings and so it saves multiple resolution versions in the server for quick viewing. Also make so once you pick a view (like all pictures of Bruce) you have the option of downloading your whole view as a zip file (or other archived format). You might also want to make so you can tag it with geographic information so all the pictures will show up on a map. And you need to implement face recognition (I think Picasa and iPhoto have it?). You might as well make so other websites can link to your picture through an easy path which includes info about the resolution or the query for the zip file. Also make ratings for pictures. Lots of times I unload my camera and there are a lot of pictures that are just not that interesting but I still don't want to just delete.

  3. Seamonster Bruce! 97

    4 March 2009 02:17am UTC

    Also include a terms of usage that prohibits it being used by prospective employers, etc. You don't want those naked slacklining pictures to hurt your resume.

  4. Peon Peetie 38

    4 March 2009 10:55am UTC

    file management. i assume you want to keep the original files somewhere, and that's important for me. because i don't want to be forced to use the app if i want to, say, attach a photo to an email. i suggest doing this with a ton of aliases. for example, maybe all of the files are by date, like you said. year / month / day / event (or something).

    then, in the root of your library, have a few folders with the broadest terms: by person, by location, by date, by theme (whatever that means), by keyword. then, within each of those, you'll have another directory with people, locations, etc. then, inside of that will be a link to the actual file. that would be wonderful.

    also, can you make it sync with iphone somehow so i can sync with my iphone/ipod/appleTV?

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