I'm new, looking to catalog pictures easy and quick

[jwb]

I am thinking of purchasing Photo Mechanic and will try the demo before I do, but I was wondering if someone can tell me....

I take soccer team photos and I would like to quickly tag pictures with the 'player's number' that is in each photo.

For exampe, "2,12,5" continuing this for each photo so that at the end I could sort and view or copy all the photos that had "12" in them or all that had "7" and "12"

Is that possible / easy with this program.  Is there a better way / program to do that?

THanks,

JWB

[Kirk Baker]

I am thinking of purchasing Photo Mechanic and will try the demo before I do, but I was wondering if someone can tell me....

I take soccer team photos and I would like to quickly tag pictures with the 'player's number' that is in each photo.

For exampe, "2,12,5" continuing this for each photo so that at the end I could sort and view or copy all the photos that had "12" in them or all that had "7" and "12"

Is that possible / easy with this program.  Is there a better way / program to do that?

Yes, you can do that with the IPTC Info dialog on your pictures, and then the numbers you enter will be written into the images themselves.  Doing a Find on the photos will select images that have the matching numbers.

Please note however that Photo Mechanic is not a cataloging application and will not search your entire archive for your search criteria.  It operates on the photos contained in the current contact sheet window which means that you would have to have a general idea what folder contained the desired images.

If you want to search for meta data at a later date, an application that catalogs your images would be a better choice.

-Kirk

[jwb]

Thanks Kirk, that was a good answer, but leads to another.  Do you know a better application that will do what I am trying to do.  I put each game in a folder, but at the end of the season there will be LOTS of folders that I would like to easily be able to sort out all the photos with a particular player in it.

Any ideas?

-Jim

[Kirk Baker]

Jim,

Thanks Kirk, that was a good answer, but leads to another.  Do you know a better application that will do what I am trying to do.  I put each game in a folder, but at the end of the season there will be LOTS of folders that I would like to easily be able to sort out all the photos with a particular player in it.

There are many of them out there.  What OS are you running?

-Kirk

[jwb]

Kirk  - thanks.

I use both a Mac with Leopard and a PC with XP, so which ever software is the best / economical I could use that machine.  The pictures are accessable via either machine.

[Kirk Baker]

Jim,

I use both a Mac with Leopard and a PC with XP, so which ever software is the best / economical I could use that machine.  The pictures are accessable via either machine.

As long as all of the files you want to search for are on local hard drives and you have Mac OS X 10.4 or higher then you can use Photo Mechanic's integrated Spotlight search capability to find your photos.

Give it a try on your Mac.  The Windows version does not have the search feature.

HTH,

-Kirk

[jwb]

Thanks, I'll give it a try in the next few days.

-JWB

[John OHara]

JWB,
I have been doing what you are asking about for many years now. I input , an Entry Number, Horse Name, Rider Name and Owner Name for each photo. It can be done quickly. There is a very neat feature called ".IPT file" that will allow you to attach a considerable amount of information on each photo. I start with an excel file and work from there. If you want to know the entire process, get back to me. I will tell you, the time and expense of adding data, and providing hard copy proofs will increase your long term sales considerably. John O'Hara

[Ed Zirkle]

Greetings...

For what it is worth...  PC based...

Windows Live Photo Gallery...  free... just updated...  can search by date, names, tags, etc...  very fast...

I ingest everything in PM and lay in my data...  I can find most anything within a minute on XP or Vista...

Oh, make sure you have the latest indexing update installed...

When are we going to get that web based, searchable catalog from PM?  :~]

[JAS Photo]

I use Picasa 3 on a PC & love it.
A recommendation if you put in 5 for # five then search for 5 you will also find 15, 25, 35 you get the idea. so use 05 you might even be better off using #5 because 5 show up in so many other searches.