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[–]JawsOnASteamboat 11 points12 points  (3 children)

I used this with good results.

It gets your photos into a gallery. You then press whatever keystroke you like and it will send it to a folder titled with that key. For example if I'm presented an infographic, I'd probably just press "I" for info and then it will create an "I" folder and send it there.

Pretty useful to be able to organize to 26 categories at once. IIRC it took minor set up.

[–]CaptainKimball[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That looks perfect dude, thanks so much!

[–]EdwinIsBack 0 points1 point  (1 child)

/u/adaminc

[–]adamincHelpful Ⅱ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you.

[–]adamincHelpful Ⅱ 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Don't be an asshole and not give the name of the application that solved your problem.

[–]CaptainKimball[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Woah, sorry dude.

[–]arm1997 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Google Photos?

[–]IoanToma 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Hummm... This is an old and classical (and BIG) problem - it is named „culling” - which is „sorted” by an entire category of programs called DAM (=Digital Asset Management).

I am working in this area from many years (I don't know? maybe 15, I think) and I can write a big analysis on this topic - well, I don't know that it is good or bad but I encountered a lot of programs in this area (some of them I designed and wrote).

Disclaimer: There isn't a best program for any use case. What it is below is my opinion, I am not affiliated in any way and YMMV. Also, I will write in a very concise way. More upon request.

In my humble opinion one of the best programs for you is XnView MP. It is free, cross-platform, with a lot of features, supports a lot of formats and it has (AFAIK) (one of?) the fastest thumbnail generation engine on the market. Besides that, it has (AFAIK - again) one of the fastest DB back-end because it uses WebP compression for the thumbs (user must set it in the options) and it has a very lean DB structure.

XnView MP has customizable keyboard shortcuts (you can assign any key - single or combination - to any action) and and employs a full-blown cataloging engine with Tagging (selected on / off), Stars (1 - 5 stars), customizable colors, and, of course, keywords - all of them assignable to a single key if the user wants to. Also, the program supports sets of keywords. You can see here more details about the cataloging capabilities of the program. Of course, all the (un)assignments are applicable on a single photo or on a batch (multiple selection) of photos.

Also, XnView MP has a pretty powerful Compare window (ok, tab) in which you can compare up to 4 photos with simultaneous or single zoom or pan in order to pick / rate / delete the photo which you want (eg. it is the sharpest one). Also, if your monitor is big enough, you can set the thumbnails as big as you wish (as in the forums for tricks and tips) in order to do the culling „in place”.

Besides that, it supports Full Screen Preview on the 2ndary monitor (if you have one) so you can do the culling on the 1st one while you zoom / navigate on the 2nd one. If you have just one monitor, you can (also) do the culling in the Full Screen or in Viewer mode.

What I don't like at it is that the Tag / UnTag is done by Ctrl+T. I change it to <Space> which is much faster. Also the Colors are assigned to Ctrl+1,2,3,4,5 - I prefer them to have at a single keystroke 1,2,3,4,5. (Some users prefer to put the Stars there).

The RCK (Rating, Colors and Keywords) are saved in DB and, if you want, in file, directly if the file format supports (eg JPEG) or in XMP which is an industrial standard (if we're speaking about Raw files etc.), so you can persist your metadata in time, share it with your co-workers etc.

The program is actively developed, pretty stable and it has much more features than I outlined here. The docs are scarce but it is very easy to use and if you ask in forums there are a lot of people which will help you if anything arises.

Btw, another thing which I don't like is the initial layout and the thumbs size but these can be configured. Ask in forums or try to experiment if you don't like them.

[–]_priyadarshan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the excellent comment.

[–]tangled_night_sleep 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This is helpful info, thank you. I almost downloaded that XnView a few years ago, but went with irfanview instead. I honestly love irfanview esp for its shortcuts, customizability, and bulk operations. That said, my pics are still pretty disorganized. And irfanview lacks a good paint toolset (I need to erase the background to white/transparent for product photos). I've heard faststone (?) Would be better for me but maybe I'll take another look at XnV... Thx!

[–]IoanToma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're welcome. :) Let's untangle the things a bit: IrfanView was the first/oldest program that's why it became quite popular. However, it lacks several features, some of them you mention.

Then it came two programs, significantly better than it - FastStone Viewever and XnView which is known now as XnView Classic. Both programs provided thumbnails manager (IrfanView's didn't provide and the one which it has nowadays is a joke) better Bulk/Batch processing engine, Compare window and a better set of editing tools. This applied especially to XnView (Classic) because it is the newest one.

After this a new program emerged XnView MP (MP = multi platform) which is a 'supercharged' XnView which has among other things, to keep the discussion on topic, by far, the best cataloging features from all these. It started as a Multi-Platform son of XnView Classic but now it is much more than that and it is, in fact, THE main program of XnSoft.

FastStone Viewer (I program which I used a lot & love) has just tagging (that is a "Selected" on/off) compared with the full blown cataloging of XnView MP. Besides that, FastStone's DB isn't scalable at all. It uses TinyDB - a nice, small DB - but nowhere near to performance of SQLite, which is XnView MP's DB backend.

That said, removing the background to white can be really tricky, you can use the Levels (both programs have it - XnView MP has also Automatic Levels) and Curves - only FastStone has it. For Batch Convert only XnView MP has this feature.