Image organizer

An image organizer or image management application is application software focused on organising digital images.^[1]^[2] Image organizers represent one kind of desktop organizer software applications.

Image organizer software is primarily focused on improving the user's workflow by facilitating the handling of large numbers of images. In contrast to an image viewer, an image organizer has at least the additional ability to edit the image tags and often also an easy way to 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 programmed to be simple image viewers, and have since gained features to be used as image organizer as well.

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
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.^[3]
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, Phase One Media Pro, Photo Supreme and Picasa)
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 his hard drive. While they provide maximum flexibility, manual organizers rely on the user to have his/her 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 their methodology, outcome and purpose. Presently, 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:^[4]

colour, shape and texture recognition^[5] (For example, Picasa experimentally allows searching for photos with primary colour names)
subject recognition^[6]
fully or semi-automated facial, torso or body recognition^[7]^[8] (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.^[9] 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

Name	OS	Type	License	Metadata	Geotagging	Facial Recognition	Synchronizes with Online Library	Notes
ACDSee	Windows		Proprietary	Yes IPTC Exif XMP	Yes	No	Yes ≤ 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 Photoshop Album	Windows and macOS		Proprietary	Yes		No	No	This product has been discontinued.
Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer	Windows and macOS		Proprietary	Yes Exif IPTC XMP	Yes	Yes	Yes Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Email	Component of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Also supports management and sharing of video clips.
Aperture (Apple)	macOS	local database	Proprietary	Yes EXIF IPTC XMP	Yes	Yes	Yes iCloud, Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug	discontinued, but still working on current OS
A Photo Manager^[10]^[11]	Android 4.0 and up		GPL	Yes Exif XMP (IPTC (read only))	Yes	No	Yes Meta data Sync between android and pc but not online^[12]	Can handle big local image collections (15000+ images in 1000+ folders). Tag support
CodedColor PhotoStudio Pro	Windows		Proprietary	Yes IPTC	No	No
DBGallery	Windows		Proprietary	Yes IPTC Exif XMP	Yes	No	No	A multi-user, network-based, image database system typically used by small to medium size companies. Runs on an internal network with a proprietary internet sharing option. A personal version is available.
digiKam	KDE (Linux, macOS, Windows)		GPL	Yes IPTC Exif XMP	Yes	Yes	Yes 23hq, Facebook, Flickr, Gallery2, Piwigo, SmugMug.	Image management application database, deals with collections of 100,000's of photos
FastStone Image Viewer	Windows		Freeware	Yes Exif
Fotostation	Windows, macOS		Proprietary	Yes	No
F-Spot	Unix		GPL	Yes
Geeqie	Unix		GPL	Yes		No	No
Google Photos	iOS, Android and Web		Freeware	Yes IPTC	Yes	Yes	Yes	Integrated with Google online tool suite.
gThumb	Unix		GPL	Yes
iPhoto	macOS	local database	Proprietary	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	As of April 2015, this product has been discontinued. Superseded by Photos (Apple).
JBrout	Windows, Linux		GPL	Yes IPTC
KPhotoAlbum	Unix		GPL
Lightroom CC	Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Web	cloud-based database	Proprietary	Yes	No	No	Yes	not compatible with Lightroom Classic CC^[13]
Lightroom Classic CC (LR 7)	Windows and macOS	catalogue-managed local folders	Proprietary	Yes IPTC Exif XMP	Yes	Yes	Yes PicasaWeb, Flickr, 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
Phase One Media Pro	Windows and macOS		Proprietary	Yes IPTC Exif XMP	No	No	No	Phase One Media Pro is a professional photo manager that makes it easy to manage both photo and video assets. Supports over 100 file formats. Asynchronously manage, add keywords and ratings to catalog with up to 500.000 photos.
Photos (Apple)	macOS, iOS and Web	cloud-based database	Proprietary	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Default photo manager for macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS. Supports editing, iCloud, printing, sharing, searching.
Microsoft Photos	Windows 8 and later		Freeware					Default photo manager for Windows 8 and later.
Picasa/PicasaWeb	Windows, macOS and Linux		Freeware	Yes IPTC	Yes	Yes	Yes (PicasaWeb only)	1 GB free online storage, integrated with Google online tool suite. Discontinued March 2016.
PicaJet	Windows		Proprietary	Yes Exif IPTC XMP			Yes Flickr, Fotki.com	Multi-user database access, unlimited category-nesting levels, hiding private images, supports for more than 60 image file formats
ResourceSpace	Cross-platform (web application)		BSD license	Yes IPTC XMP Exif				Open source Digital Asset Management solution. Has commercial options.
Shotwell	Linux		LGPL	Yes Exif IPTC XMP	No	No	Yes Facebook, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Piwigo	non-destructive editing, one-click autoenhance
Shutterfly Studio	Windows		Freeware	Yes
ViewMinder	Windows XP and 2000		Proprietary					Discontinued in 2007
Windows Photo Gallery	Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2		Proprietary	Yes IPTC Exif XMP	Yes	Yes	Yes OneDrive, Facebook, Flickr, Inkubook plus more with plugins	OneDrive offers 15 GB of free online storage (and extra 15 GB if automatic photo upload from smartphone is enabled). The latest version of the suite drops the Windows Live portion of the name and is no longer compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista. Discontinued in 2017.
XnView	Windows and Unix-like		Freeware	Yes IPTC Exif
Zoner Photo Studio	Windows		Proprietary	Yes Exif IPTC XMP	Yes	No	Using HTML templates
Digital Photo Professional	Windows		Proprietary

References

^ Cynthia Baron and Daniel Peck, The Little Digital Camera Book, July 1, 2002 pp:93
^ Julie Adair King, Shoot Like a Pro! Digital Photography July 28, 2003 pp:21-23
^ "Who’s got the tag? Database truth versus file truth" by Jon Udell 2007
^ http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/03/lightroom_and_the_future_of_or.html Lightroom and the future of organizing photos
^ http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/~jrsmith/html/pubs/PAMI/pami_final_1.html Automated Image Retrieval Using Color and Texture (1995)
^ http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1232330.1232374&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE Content-based object organization for efficient image retrieval in image databases (2006)
^ http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2004-15/2004-15.pdf Semi-Automatic Image Annotation Using Event and Torso Identification
^ http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw62/wilcox.html Managing Digital Photo Collections
^ http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=957093 Temporal event clustering for digital photo collections
^ k3b (24 May 2017). ""A Photo Manager" with "A Photo Map", AndroFotoFinder". GitHub.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ "A Photo Manager (dev)". F-Droid. 24 May 2017.
^ k3b (24 May 2017). "pc android meta sync". GitHub.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ "Migrate photos and videos from Lightroom Classic CC to Lightroom CC". helpx.adobe.com. Retrieved 2017-11-30.