XnView as a photo organizer?

[kefir_sub]

Hi Pierre,

Can I ask here as in which strategic direction you want XnView to develop?

As it is now, for me XnView is a market leading advanced photo viewer. Over the last years it has left the competition (especially venerable Irfan View) in the dust, et least in the freeware/shareware category.

It has a number of advanced photo manipulation features, but it is not truly a photo organized/photo management package. A photo organizer would require some kind of a database, or at the very least additional text files to keep extra data.

I have worked with a number of photo organizers: Picasa, Adobe Photo Album and IMatch, and none of them truly matched my needs. They have extra features, but they do not have the XnView elegance and flexibility.

I think that with relatively few new features, XnView could rival these packages and offer their most useful management capalibilies without compromising the no-nonse design of XnView.

The top three featues for me: 1: ability to rearange thumbnails in a folder to keep a manual sort order, 2: multilevel, IPTC based tags/labels to describe photos, 3:timeline for all photos in a collection.

Before going into details, Pierre, are you considering expanding XnView abilities in the photo management area? You may be able to match Google's Picasa funds, but who said you cannot beat them?!

Cheers,
Kefir

[Mike S]

A photo organizer would require some kind of a database, or at the very least additional text files to keep extra data.

normally I prefer databases to store some datas, but for picture I want to have all metadata in the picture.
If you copy some pictures in a new directory, or change the operating system and so...all informations you have stored in comment, EXIF, IPTC are still alive.

2: multilevel, IPTC based tags/labels to describe photos,

yes XNView need some little improvements for working with comments, EXIF and IPTC. But in the newest version there are many new features.

3:timeline for all photos in a collection.

I'm not sure what you mean.

[xnview]

Hi Pierre,

Can I ask here as in which strategic direction you want XnView to develop?

As it is now, for me XnView is a market leading advanced photo viewer. Over the last years it has left the competition (especially venerable Irfan View) in the dust, et least in the freeware/shareware category.

It has a number of advanced photo manipulation features, but it is not truly a photo organized/photo management package. A photo organizer would require some kind of a database, or at the very least additional text files to keep extra data.

I have worked with a number of photo organizers: Picasa, Adobe Photo Album and IMatch, and none of them truly matched my needs. They have extra features, but they do not have the XnView elegance and flexibility.

I think that with relatively few new features, XnView could rival these packages and offer their most useful management capalibilies without compromising the no-nonse design of XnView.

The top three featues for me: 1: ability to rearange thumbnails in a folder to keep a manual sort order, 2: multilevel, IPTC based tags/labels to describe photos, 3:timeline for all photos in a collection.

Before going into details, Pierre, are you considering expanding XnView abilities in the photo management area? You may be able to match Google's Picasa funds, but who said you cannot beat them?!

Cheers,
Kefir

Yes, perhaps not in XnView but in a special new application

[kefir_sub]

That is good to hear. I would be willing to pay for such an application.
Do you have any concrete release plans yet?

Kefir

[JohnL]

as a newbie that is very good to hear because once viewer/browsers such as this one develope away from the core function they get bogged down and lose the plot.

Kiss is a very relevant expression

regards JohnL

[xnview]

That is good to hear. I would be willing to pay for such an application.
Do you have any concrete release plans yet?

Not yet, i'm thinking, because i would like to make the same application for windows/linux & MacOS

[jaqian]

Hi Pierre,

Can I ask here as in which strategic direction you want XnView to develop? [...]

The top three featues for me: 1: ability to rearange thumbnails in a folder to keep a manual sort order, 2: multilevel, IPTC based tags/labels to describe photos, 3:timeline for all photos in a collection.

Before going into details, Pierre, are you considering expanding XnView abilities in the photo management area? You may be able to match Google's Picasa funds, but who said you cannot beat them?!

Cheers,
Kefir

Yes, perhaps not in XnView but in a special new application

Interesting. Are you talking about MP or a different program altogether?

[JohnFredC]

My observation would be that any "separate" XnV applications for photo organization (such as a timeline viewer) should integrate with XnView seamlessly... that is, the user should not perceive a shift between programs when moving back and forth between XnView and this hypothetical organizer.

But then, I don't see the need for a separate program, per se, either.

Enhancement of the current feature set is all that is needed, IMO. Indeed, I suggest that an expansion of the XnView plug-in architecture would be a better advised effort, one with more long term "pay back" for XnView.

Perhaps exposing methods to "plug-in" to the browser, or to the preview panel, or to the viewer, or slideshow, etc., would be a good start.

[kefir_sub]

Hello,

For photo management I have been using for the last year Adobe Bridge. It is perfect, XMP compliant, powerful features, and free (just download and do not use a trial version of any of the Adobe packages, such as Photoshop or InDesign).
I keep using XnView as a quick, lightweight viewer and for editing.

[jaqian]

@JohnFredC

Yes a plugin could be a good idea but one that is automatically installed with XnView maybe. I understand that Pierre is working on standardising the code so that it will have a common look and feel across all version and I presume easier to upgrade as well.

I hope that any future work on making XnView a better organiser will be included in MP and not a separate program. There are some other things that I think need improving like Media Detector (detect cards, usb drives on start-up, apply IPTC tags to photos as they are imported), simplyfy search like Picassa (search box that will search all criteria for you search term but retain advanced search if required).

Rob

[oops66]

...
The top three featues for me: 1: ability to rearange thumbnails in a folder to keep a manual sort order, 2: multilevel, IPTC based tags/labels to describe photos, 3:timeline for all photos in a collection...
Kefir

Hello,
I fully agree with or suggestions, and I support, but the priority for me is:
1-) A better ergonomic (more intuitive) for the capture and handling of metadata, keywords assignment, IPTC, XMP,... search or manipulation ( for the embedded data inside the photos, but also into the database).
2-) Timeline for all photo in a collection ( ... like Pacasa and Digikam)
a plugin could be a good idea ...
3-) ability to rearange thumbnails in a folder to keep a manual sort order.

[silmaril]

Yes! I'd love to use XnView to organize my fotos!

In fact there is "only" one feature I am really missing: XMP support.
I agree 100% with Mike S that all the metadata should be stored inside the picture files.
It's great to see that XnView is already capable of reading the XMP data inside an image and display it as XML.
Now if XnView could read and write some of those fields directly instead of using it's own database it would immediately become a great tool for organizing fotos.

At the moment I am using DigiKam for Windows to do this. It's not very stable and I'm quite shure I don't want to use it forever (even if it should become stable in the future), but it's the only free application I could find that has a 5-level-rating which is written into XMP.

It seems to me that XnView MP is the way to go: it's already missing the database, which is a good start from my point of view.

Are there plans to improve XnView's XMP capabilities in the near future?

[JohnFredC]

The centralized database vs. distributed database vs. image file discussion has a long history in the forum.

There are advantages to each approach. For instance, the centralized database can provide the best performance but the least portability, whereas XMP et al provide the most portability but the worst performance.

The design of an XnView photo organizer function should support all three approaches to image data management, including all three simultaneously, if the user desires.

[XnTriq]

The centralized database vs. distributed database vs. image file discussion has a long history in the forum.

• m3u file list support
• IPTC/XMP for hierarchical categories + internal DB
• Thoughts about Categories Management
• Various alpha-related concerns
• Alternate Approach to Folders, Favorites, and Categories
• external HD archive (multiple PCs)
• XnView Data base storage
• Store Thumbnails database in photos folder
• Database management
• Core functionality, formats, and usability
• Use XnView with several users on different computers
• XnView vs. ACDSee: Slow..? (Part 2)
• Assign Category to Multiple Images
• Portable XnView.db

[dcakovan]

Hi Pierre,
I have worked with a number of photo organizers: Picasa, Adobe Photo Album and IMatch, and none of them truly matched my needs. They have extra features, but they do not have the XnView elegance and flexibility.

You should try fotoalbum pro. It is cheap too at $40. In my opinion it is one of the best photo organizers out there (that suits my needs) so far. Lightroom, IMatch, bridge, picasa and others I tried do not come close in my opinion. Foto album is missing certain things others have but from all features I need it has the most from all the others. I do not use it as a viewer but asan organizer, keyworder, etc. It has smart folders and searches, etc...
Took me awhile to warm up to it but once I knew how and what it does I could not go back to any other fancy looking and expensive software.

http://www.fototime.com/fotoalbum