working with my entire photo collection on a PC

[HB]

I work in the events business and have a lot of photos to deal with, so I downloaded a trial version of PM at the suggestion of a contact who is a photo editor. I'd been using a freebie Adobe product, Photohop Album, and found it limited. One thing I got it to do very easily, however, was search my entire collection of photos for tags I'd added. In PM, I'd like to do the same using keywords within the captions field. Short of storing all my photos in a single folder, how can I do this? I use a PC.

HB

[Kirk Baker]

HB,

I work in the events business and have a lot of photos to deal with, so I downloaded a trial version of PM at the suggestion of a contact who is a photo editor. I'd been using a freebie Adobe product, Photohop Album, and found it limited. One thing I got it to do very easily, however, was search my entire collection of photos for tags I'd added. In PM, I'd like to do the same using keywords within the captions field. Short of storing all my photos in a single folder, how can I do this? I use a PC.

Short of doing that, there is no solution I can offer since Photo Mechanic is not a cataloging application and does not maintain a centralized database that it can search.  Photo Mechanic's focus is for downloading, captioning, culling and uploading photos in the fastest way possible.

We plan to add cataloging capabilities as an additional product closely tied into Photo Mechanic, but I have no timetable for its release.

Currently most folks use an additional application to catalog their photos like iView Media Pro or Extensis Portfolio.  They use Photo Mechanic in conjunction with the cataloging application of their choice.  You could continue to use Photoshop Album for that, I suppose.

-Kirk

[HB]

Drat, I was hoping for something like the Mac Spotlight search I read about in the PM manual. As far as I can tell, Photoshop Album does not use the IPTC tags, so all the keywords I add in PM don't do me any good there. Maybe I'll look into Picasa.

Thanks for your prompt reply.

HB

[JAS Photo]

HB - I use PM with the free add on Picasa (From Google) to do the searches it's amazing and if it dosn't work up to your expectations you didn't loose anything. but I love it and they - like PM keep improving it and take suggestions. If you need more info I be happy to talk to you about it.

Joe

[thermarest]

Sounds like you need iView Media Pro.

[Ed Wolfstein]

I've recently added a Microsoft add-on called "Windows Desktop Search" to my Windows machine - which is pretty much like Spotlight or Google Desktop Search. It will search your IPTC/EXIF information, which is great. It's a free tool for Windows XP users - download and info at - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

Another cool option, is a beta release of FolderShare, which can expand your desktop searching to multiple computers - even over the 'net. I can find images taken back in 2002, stored on my server, from my laptop, anywhere I have Internet access. You can sync folder as well - even Mac Folders with Windows Folders. Pretty slick. The beta is free - no idea what the cost will be once it's released.

I'd assume that Windows Desktop Search will be an integral part of Vista.

Check it out.

Cheers!

- Ed.

[denisbalibouse]

you can do a search in the caption field only.
That's what i do. It works slower than Spotlight but is fine