What do you use for an image catalog?

Aug 22, 2011

I've been tasked with copying all of the graphics we've used in past eLearning lessons and categorizing them.  I'm running into issues with Windows 7 not being able to easily display the thumbnails of the images so I can drag them to the folder I want to put them into as we have thousands of them.

Does anyone have an easy, inexpensive solution?

10 Replies
Jeanette Brooks

Tom did a great post not too long ago on using the Microsoft Clip Organizer to manage graphics. This tool can be used for any assets, even the ones you create yourself - you're not limited to just managing/organizing the Microsoft stuff.

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/heres-a-simple-way-to-save-time-when-working-with-graphics-in-powerpoint/

David Anderson

Long time fan of ACDSee but use Bridge mostly. I used to use Extensis Portfolio but that doesn't have good image "browsing" capabilities for previewing folders that haven't already been scanned and logged.

ACDSee and Bridge let you visually browse any folder, even if the folders aren't cataloged. With Portfolio, you need to add the folder before viewing the contents.

ACDSee is around $70 which is more than it was in the early days. Like all those programs, they try to be more than what we want them to be. I've always found ACDSee to be the fastest of the image browsers. Admittedly, I haven't tried Picassa, which I hear is great.

I can't imagine working without an image browser

Lu Post

Hi David, this is an old post but I came across it as I was searching for options to manage a large image library between our developers and I wanted to see if you still recommended ACDsee? It looks good and has a cloud option, so just curious if you still used it or had recommendations for another image/asset management software program?

Our team spends so much time searching for images and purchasing new images when we already have good options available. We could significantly decrease our production time and costs with a good program to catalog images. Bridge is too slow and ideally, I'd like something that could be Internet-based. It would be great to have an online option like Shutterstock/Big Stock, etc. that would allow online searching and downloading (without purchasing).

Thank you,

Lu Post

David Anderson

Hi Lu,

Agreed that Bridge can be slow. I've found it works remarkably well with flash-based drives but that doesn't help you with your online needs.

I've also used Extensis Portfolio for years. I've used the desktop version but recently checked out their online update: http://www.extensis.com/digital-asset-management/portfolio/

It works like a Shutterstock and you can even share individual libraries with external users. The tagging seems to be intuitive and the speeds were impressive.

Granted there's a significant cost to the online version ($2k) but it looks like a really solid product.

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