I've been using XnView MP for a couple weeks now, and I have no real complaints. After researching options. I decided to give XnView a try and I'm pretty happy. I have a fairly small collection (~1000 images), but it's still at the point that I was having trouble managing it. The app helped me find duplicates (I love the % setting!) and I am about to make use of the tag feature and probably do some bulk renaming, which brings me to a question about how to proceed (not the literal steps, I know the guide is available):
Before XnView, I was grouping images into folders based on shared themes. But of course, some images could go in multiple folders. Tags will solve this for me, but now I am worried that using tags will mean if I ever lose access to this program, I will have images all over. Is there some organizing principle other users have for how to use tags with folders and file names? What I want is to be able to make sense of the image organization if I am just looking at the files\folders in the system explorer window, but I want to utilize tags to do so ... maybe bulk rename the files using tags, or maybe generate a report that can be grouped by tag, in alphabetical order, and that way I have at least a reference to use should I need it. Maybe my ideas don't make sense and someone here has a better idea, so I am here to discuss!
or maybe