An image organizer or image management application is application software for organising digital images. [1] [2] It is a kind of desktop organizer software application.
Image organizer software focuses on handling large numbers of images. In contrast to an image viewer, an image organizer can edit image tags and can often upload files to on-line hosting pages. Enterprises may use Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions to manage larger and broader amounts of digital media.
Some programs that come with desktop environments, such as gThumb (GNOME) and digiKam (KDE) were originally simple image viewers, and have evolved into image organizers.
Many commercial image organizers offer both automatic and manual image organization features. A comparison of image viewers reveals that many free software packages are available that offer most of the organization features available in commercial software.
There are several imminent advances anticipated in the image organization domain which may soon allow widespread automatic assignment of keywords or image clustering based on image content: [4]
In general, these methods either:
Name | OS | Type | License | Metadata | Geotagging | Facial recognition |
Map display | Synchronizes with online library |
Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ACDSee | Windows | Proprietary | Yes IPTC Exif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes ≤ 25 GB to ACDSee online,
flickr,
SmugMug,
and Zenfolio |
Supports: >100 file formats, Unicode, batch processing, viewing contents of archives formats, non-destructive editing, DB export, R/W to CD, VCD, DVD. Contains: SMTP email client, FTP transport, duplicate file finder. | ||
Adobe Photoshop Album | Windows and macOS | Proprietary | Yes | No | No | This product has been discontinued. | |||
Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer | Windows and macOS | Proprietary | Yes Exif IPTC XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Email | Component of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Also supports management and sharing of video clips. | ||
Aperture (Apple) | macOS | local database | Proprietary | Yes Exif IPTC XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes iCloud, Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug | Discontinued, but still working on current OS | |
CodedColor PhotoStudio Pro | Windows | Proprietary | Yes IPTC | No | No | ||||
DBGallery | Windows | Cloud and On-premise | Proprietary | Yes IPTC Exif XMP | Yes | No | Yes | No | Team features such as version control and activity logging. Support for very large collections (millions). Accessed using web browsers. |
digiKam | KDE ( Linux, macOS, Windows) | GPL | Yes IPTC Exif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Image management application database, deals with collections of 100,000's of photos | |
FastStone Image Viewer | Windows | Freeware | Yes Exif | ||||||
Fotostation | Windows, macOS | Proprietary | Yes | No | |||||
F-Spot | Unix | GPL | Yes | discontinued in 2017 | |||||
Geeqie | Unix | GPL | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | ||
Google Photos | iOS, Android and Web | Freeware | Yes IPTC | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Integrated with Google online tool suite. | |
gThumb | Unix | GPL | Yes | No | Yes | ||||
iPhoto | macOS | local database | Proprietary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | As of April 2015, this product has been discontinued. Superseded by Photos (Apple). |
KPhotoAlbum | Unix | GPL | Yes | Yes | No * | Yes | No | * Has an option to tag faces on photo manually | |
Lightroom CC | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Web | cloud-based database | Proprietary | Yes | No | No | Yes | not compatible with Lightroom Classic CC [10] | |
Lightroom Classic CC (LR 7) | Windows and macOS | catalogue-managed local folders | Proprietary | Yes IPTC Exif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes
PicasaWeb,
Flickr,
Piwigo,
SmugMug with
plugins |
Professional image management application database, asynchronously catalog DVD collections of 10,000's of photos. Has built-in RAW Editor that allows to edit RAW images in batch | |
Phase One Media Pro | Windows and macOS | Proprietary | Yes IPTC Exif XMP | No | No | No | Phase One Media Pro (discontinued) was a professional photo manager that makes it easy to manage both photo and video assets. Supports over 100 file formats. Asynchronously manage, add keywords and ratings to catalog with up to 500.000 photos. | ||
Photos (Apple) | macOS, iOS and Web | cloud-based database | Proprietary | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Default photo manager for macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS. Supports editing, iCloud, printing, sharing, searching. |
Microsoft Photos | Windows 8 and later | Freeware | No | Yes | No | No | Default photo manager for Windows 8 and later. | ||
Picasa/ PicasaWeb | Windows, macOS and Linux | Freeware | Yes IPTC | Yes | Yes | Yes (per folder) | Yes ( PicasaWeb only) | 1 GB free online storage, integrated with Google online tool suite. Discontinued March 2016. | |
PicaJet | Windows | Proprietary | Yes Exif IPTC XMP | Yes Flickr, Fotki.com | Multi-user database access, unlimited category-nesting levels, hiding private images, supports for more than 60 image file formats | ||||
Shotwell | Linux | LGPL | Yes Exif IPTC XMP | No | No | No | Yes Facebook, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Piwigo | non-destructive editing, one-click autoenhance | |
Shutterfly Studio | Windows | Freeware | Yes | ||||||
ViewMinder | Windows XP and 2000 | Proprietary | Discontinued in 2007 | ||||||
Windows Photo Gallery | Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 | Proprietary | Yes IPTC Exif XMP | Yes | Yes | Yes OneDrive, Facebook, Flickr, Inkubook plus more with plugins | OneDrive offers 15 GB of free online storage (and extra 15 GB if automatic photo upload from smartphone is enabled). The latest version of the suite drops the Windows Live portion of the name and is no longer compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista. Discontinued in 2017. | ||
XnView | Windows and Unix-like | Freeware | Yes IPTC Exif | ||||||
Zoner Photo Studio | Windows | Proprietary | Yes Exif IPTC XMP | Yes | No | Using HTML templates | |||
Digital Photo Professional | Windows | Proprietary |