windows live photo gallery and other organizers vs. XnView

[kefir_sub]

Hello,

I have played recently with the windows live photo gallery and I must say I am quite impressed. It is really not bad, I expected a revamped photo viewer but it is actually a very capable photo organizer as well. In many instances better than Picasa: for example it has explicit tags, and they can be hierarchical (how many years have we waited for that in Picasa?)

What impressed me most, is how Microsoft embraced IPTC and XMP. By default the stars (rating), tags (categories) and captions are written as IPTC / XMP Core: Rating, Keywords and Titles.

That is a crucial requirement for a photo organizer/DAM: it guarantees portability between photo applications. Internal databases are good to speed up operations, but they should not lock you in proprietary metadata (as is the case with Adobe Elements for example).

I still prefer XnView for quick viewing, editing, batch operations and overall flexibility, but as photo organizer/albums, several applications have an edge over XnView: ms live photo gallery, Picasa, iMatch and IdImager (which probably is the best overall affordable DAM on the market now, at least until/or rather if iMatch New Generation makes an appearance).

It may be not fair to compare directly XnView to those apps, they have a bit different purpose, iMatch and IdImager cost money (MS and Google have enough money to make their apps free and polished). But for a while now XnView has been growing in capabilities as a photo organizer as well. I think it is very close, open standards such as XMP/IPTC are the key, they truly level the playing field.

It was discussed before in many posts, but I would like to reinforce it. The single area where XnView lags as a photo organizer is the XMP support, which clearly is the future metadata standard.

XnView is still the ultimate viewer/editor/swiss knife of photo management. By embracing XMP, specifically allowing synchronizing of internal categories, ratings and colors to XMP tags, it could become the ultimate photo album as well, and therefore a single tool for many of us.

I hope that this will happen some day. Pierre, keep up the good work, you can beat them all!

Cheers,
Kefir

[JohnFredC]

Very nice, constructive post. I agree.

[xnview]

By embracing XMP, specifically allowing synchronizing of internal categories, ratings and colors to XMP tags, it could become the ultimate photo album as well, and therefore a single tool for many of us.

I hope that this will happen some day. Pierre, keep up the good work, you can beat them all!

Yes, i must to work on XMP very soon!!