Looking for PC app to edit & search EXIF Metadata tags (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gardiner]

Hello everybody,

I work in a private investigator's office and we have a large archive of photographs taken for various cases over the years. We are looking for a way to archive all our old photos in a searchable archive.

The boss has an Olympus E-10 which records EXIF data and includes a couple blank fields for "Comment" and "Description". We thought that utilizing these fields would be a good way to implement our photo archive.

What we need is a tool that allows us to both EDIT the Exif Metadata tags, and SEARCH upon them as well. We are currently using ACDSee 4.0, which can search Exif tags, but cannot edit them. I have discovered a freeware tool called Exifer which has edit capabilities, but its search capabilities appear to be limited and/or cumbersome.

What do you folks use to edit and search Exif tags? Would the current version of ACDSee fit the bill? Do you have something to recommend besides ACDSee? I eagerly await any and all comments and recommendations.

Many thanks.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Since you're already using a previous version of ACDSee, wouldn't it make sense to at least give the new version a try? Last I checked a month or two ago, I seem to recall that they offer free trial period (via their site) although I could be wrong. And as a one-stop solution, I believe the new version offers archiving to CD also now.

There are probably other software worth trying out (via free trial), including Nero 6, as it seems like many of these small-ish software companies are adding value/features to their original, "specialty" base apps, building them to cover a broader range, one-stop solution like what you probably want for media management. In the old days, Nero was only thought of as a CD burning software, but nowadays, it's trying to be much more than that. There are others like that from different parts of the spectrum, including many of the image editing apps (and some apps that come w/ current crop of cameras). Have no idea how well latest version of Adobe Photoshop Album works, but that's a possibility.

If you were looking for something w/ good image processing capability also (but no archiving feature), I'd throw in possible options from www.breezesys.com www.bibblelabs.com etc. Mind you that I'm not sure any of them will have what you're asking, but they are decent candidates to have such whether now or soon enough.

FWIW, what you're asking is basically something that Sports Illustrated wanted more than a year ago too for their digital workflow. But they couldn't find a good off-the-shelf solution at the time, so they created their own. But since they also need excellent image processing solutions like PhaseOne's Capture, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that PhaseOne would add this kind of minor feature to their solution suite soon enough. I'm not suggesting you spend the $$$ on a PhaseOne solution, but PhaseOne's competition does include other lesser known companies like Bibble, not to mention Adobe. And the lesser known companies are exactly the ones that will rush to provide this kind of feature to help catch up and market to prosumer, semi-pro and others -- and they won't necessarily charge you an arm and a leg for it.

_Man_

PS: I don't do searches on EXIF myself (nor own latest versions of the various software, except Nero), so can't help you w/ personal experience on this. Well, I suppose I can check Nero if I get a chance when I get home. But Nero offers free trial via their site anyway.

Something else to consider -- if you can even find more than one solution for your needs -- is that many such software have switched from being simple OS filesystem based solutions (eg. older versions of ACDSee) that are fast for browsing and accessible via your OS's browser like Explorer to database driven solutions w/ more features, but tend to be slower for browsing and not so accessible outside of the app's dedicated interface.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Thanks, Man, for your many ideas!