Photo Organising Software

Photo organising software allows us to manage and organise our photos. These applications can help us categorise our collection for quick and easy access. We no longer need to search through folders looking for a specific photo. Providing automated sorting and tagging, making it easier to add images to a collection or album for sharing or photobooks.

The more advanced applications offer the ability to edit, backup and share our photos.

Here’s some important features to consider when looking into a photo organising software application.

1. Searching or sorting our photos, file naming or keywording.

2. Organising your photos using Folders, Collections or Albums.

3. Ability to change and embed metadata such as Keyword, Date Created and Captions.

4. Editing our photos providing basic or advanced tools with non-destructive edits

Note that the features you use will depend on your desired level of organisation. For a busy family, some will only want to cull out the poor, unwanted photos, setup a structured folder hierarchy and perhaps rename the files within their folders. A next step is the ability to create albums of their best photos or special events. An easy way to compile an album is by tagging or rating your photos and then filtering on these to create an album.

Features of Photo Organising Software

Ease of use

In selecting software for photo organization, the ease of use is crucial and varies according to one's experience level and needs. A cluttered or confusing interface can deter users from utilising the software effectively. For personal photo organization, a simple app may be sufficient, while professionals may require more advanced tools to meet their diverse requirements.

Albums and Collections

We often group our photos together to either share, create photo-books or slideshows. This feature also allows for organisational grouping such as our favourites or events. The professional photo organiser will utilise more advanced tools such as target collections which can auto-collect by custom fields such as flags, ratings, create date or camera model. 

Tagging, Keywords and Face Recognition

Managing our photos includes sorting through them and making them easier to find. Tagging makes it quick to organise photos before deleting them. It's smart to tag unwanted ones for quick deletion. We can also rate photos to highlight our favourites. To locate pictures of our daughter, we can use keywords like her name or utilise face recognition. Custom searches help refine results based on specific details.

Adjust Date Created

When cameras or mobile devices take photos they attach metadata containing standardised information. This information can be Device/Camera settings, Date Created, Location and owner/copyright information. 

Photo management software uses this information to organise photos. Most photo applications view photos by Date Created ( aka Capture Date/Date Taken ) sorting photos usually by year. Sometimes this date may be incorrect.

• older devices don’t support this field in their metadata capture

• camera date and time may be incorrectly set

• the photo file may be a scanned image which sets the date created when the image was scanned. 

A good photo management application will allow the Date Created value to be adjusted/corrected and written back to metadata.  

Metadata

A photo organisation application should be capable of applying the organisational work to metadata which should be embedded within the file. This allows the file to be searchable in any system not restricted to the current application.

Sorting Images

You can filter by Creation Time, Edit Time, Flag, File Name, File Type or File Size.

Advanced users and professional organisers may also look for the following features.

Automated Tasks

AI-powered processes providing automation of tedious tasks such as identifying people, tagging, searching and retrieving specific images quickly. AI is increasingly being used to remove backgrounds or unwanted objects, assisting in fixing red-eye or exposure problems.

Batch processing capabilities

Working with a high volume of photos requires photo management software that offers a range of batch processing options in order to optimise their workflow. This allows users to manage multiple photos quickly and easily, assigning tags and processing images in large numbers at the touch of a button to improve productivity.

File Handling and Renaming

Organizing photos in folders by event and date is common for easy searching. Most use a structure like Event, Date, Person, and Location in their file names. Date and event together are popular as it's easier to recall events than dates.

Renaming a photo from IMG00123.jpg to Mary’s 5th Birthday-123.jpg provides information about the photo without having to view it. Different sources and devices often use unique naming schemes. Having the ability to rename and reorder files allows for structured hierarchy. 

File Conversion

Photos collected from various devices may be in different formats such as JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF or RAW. We often need to convert files such as uploading to social media sites and to save space. Photo management apps should be able to convert ( export ) photos in different formats and dimensions.

Multi-platform support

Your photo management software will depend on the operating system and devices you’re intending to use for managing and editing your photos. If you’re using exclusively Apple or Windows-based platforms, you’ll need to make sure the software you choose is compatible with your devices.

Conversely, if you have multiple devices using various operating systems, make sure you choose a photo organiser application that allows you to import your photos from all of the devices you have.

Photo editing tools 

Photo management software often includes a photo editing capability ranging from basic cropping and resizing, to more complex tools for adjusting colours, saturation, and other image elements. If you’re only interested in editing family photos and holiday snaps, the basic tools will suffice, but if you want more control over the final look of the image, it’s worth investing in a more professional suite.

RAW support 

Most of our personal photos are shot in JPG format to save space however professional photographers utilise the RAW format to provide the best post-processing support. Photo editing software that offers RAW file format support is essential if you’re intending to perform post-processing on your photos. With RAW support, users can work with the images with more degree of control as there is more information to work with compared to smaller JPG image files.