Organizing Digital Photos
 

Hi All,
I am going to take on a HUGE project...and I could really use your help!!

The goal is to organize all of our photos from the last few DECADES! Can anyone recommend a great software tool that can do the following:
* Tag 1 photo (or select a group of photos) with several categories (Grandkids, RV Trips, Birthdays, etc)
* Store all photos in the cloud or accessible from different devices (laptop, iPhone, iPad, Android, etc)
* Easy to upload to a commercial printer (Walgreens) or allows Walgreens to get photos from that program's stored photos.
* Editing is not a necessity. However, Red-Eye correction would be nice.

At this point if I want to find a specific picture I have to look in folders with the approximate year and each photo's name is a long series of characters!!! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!! I don't mind making the time to categorize each & every photo as long as I can find it later with a quick key-word search.

Thanks for any and all input!

Here is what I do:

Images aare stored by date in yyyy-mm-dd format
One folder per year
All images imported into Adobe Lightroom (not this does NOT move images on disc)
Individual date folders may renamed to have a description after them - example: 2020-09-15-PaysonAZ
Images get keywords as desired or needed

Lightroom incorporates Adobe Camera Raw so it covers about 95% of the editing I need (including HDR and panoramic merges.) Editing is non-destructive.

I use the disc based version although Adobe is pushing its web based version hard.

Lightroom can also organize in what it calls collections. Basically, they are links to the original images. For example, suppose you have images for 10 family reunions spanning 20 years. If you store your images by year, a collection would allow you to see all family reunion pics in one spot without having too move anything.

Adobe LightRoom
 

Thanks for the info! I checked into it a bit and it looks like the only option is subscription based. I'm a little timid of that because then I am tied to them forever or I will have to repeat categorizing all pics again if I decide to quit buying the monthly subscription. But Thank You! I may reconsider this after a bit more research!

At the risk of being slammed by Google haters, Google photos has unlimited storage if you pick their high quality option ( Original quality charges after 15 GB.)
They have one of the best facial recognition applications that I've used and can organize the photos into albums based on who or what you want to recognize. That gives you online storage accessible from anywhere, but I don't know if it has redeye reduction.
Unfortunately, you may give up rights to your photos.

Microsoft photos also has facial recognition software, and that's included in later versions of Microsoft. That will organize the photos on your computer without online storage. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...hotos-by-faces

Amazon Prime members get free unlimited online storage, but I haven't explored those options.

Have you really scanned in all those photos? :eek:

Check into Photoshop Elements. Comes in a box and has editing and organizing features.

I also have DxO which I like but that has only minimal keywording for organization.

What you want is a PhotoBase and there ain't no such that I know of. I suppose you could build your own with a spreadsheet but that would be tedious and then you still need an editor, view, abd print programs.

I use PSE for this too; however, I'm on an older version (PSE 15). I don't know if you can use their cloud for storage, as I don't like the idea of storing my files anywhere other than on my own device(s). I do have a personal cloud (My Cloud) that is on my home network.

PROS: tags are good, searching by tag works well.

CONS: Moving pictures to another device is a PITA. If you don't do it within the program, it loses track of the picture, then you must "find" and reconnect it.

Another option I used a long time ago, when I scanned-in and digitized old photographs was iTag for Photographs . That program added the tags directly to the pictures, in the metadata - as opposed to a database. That way, the tags stayed with the pictures no matter where you sent them.