I’m looking for suggestions for a photo/image editing program but you’re probably thinking I want to crop or resize photos or otherwise “edit” them and that’s not what I want. I’m looking for a program that will quickly let me view dozens or hundreds of images and “edit” out (i.e.: delete) the ones I don’t like. So maybe “edit” is the wrong word, because when I search for this all I get are programs like Photoshop and Ifranview, which really don’t do what I’d like. If anyone can suggest a better word than “edit”, let me know!
This is for those sponsors that provide zip photo downloads that contain a ton of images. I only need a dozen or so for my blog and using Windows or a photo editing program to view the image thumbs to choose my favorite 12 has always been time consuming.
The perfect solution for me would be a program that let me view images full size and then “check” with one keystroke the ones I like, then I could go back and just view the checked pics to weed out even more pics to get down to my favorite dozen.
Remember the days before digital photos when you could take a stack of prints in your hand and put the shots you like in one pile and the ones that were no good in another? Or the days of contact sheets when you could mark your favorite pics with a pencil? I’m looking for the digital equivalent of that, if it exists.
Another way I might describe this is remember the old “Hot Or Not” website, where a photo would pop up and you’d click “hot” or “not”, then the next pic would pop up. I’d love something like that for editing/viewing sponsor images, where all the pics I like go into a folder and the ones I don’t like are deleted.
Re: Suggestions for photo/image editing program… but not what you think
If I understand well what you’re referring to, you need a program that will display the thumbnails of all the images in a selected folder so you can select those that you don’t like and delete them?
If that’s what you need, try Fast Stone (a free software), or if you have money to spend try ACDsee. I use Faststone and I’m quite happy with it. It can also be used for batch renaming, resizing, cropping etc. It has a much better user interface than Irfanview.
As for the “ticking pics” you can do that in Fast stone in the Viewer mode. You keep the CTRL key pressed and click with the mouse the pics that you want to select, then you can either copy/move them to some other folder or delete them.
Sadly there’s no magic software for those horrible zips from sponsors that contain 150+ pics/screencaps that are almost identical. There has to be a human to select and sort them out, one way or another
Re: Suggestions for photo/image editing program… but not what you think
[QUOTE=Adult SiteRunner Teddy;148459]What you are asking for is a rating system. 2 programs do this. Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture.
They let you rate an image from “reject” or 1-5 stars. You can then sort or view by these ratings.[/QUOTE]
Hear, hear. I’m totally 100% for Aperture. You can import your entire photo set and flag or rate them quickly, then select just that group based on their rating, and “edit” (retouch) them from there. It’s non-destructive, as well, so if you regret any retouching, it’s a click of a button to make it go away and try again. Took me a minute to get the learning curve, but I’m sold on it. Saved me oooooodles of time.
Re: Suggestions for photo/image editing program… but not what you think
I forgot to mention that I am a PC person so I assume Aperture is only for Macs? Is there a PC equivalent?
And Ben thank you for the Faststone suggestion. I think I used that many years ago but as I recall, doesn’t it create its own thumbnail versions of images? I’d rather use a program that lets me view and select images without creating yet another file to store on my drive. But I will take another look at this program and also Lightroom.
On a related note I happen to belong to the OKCupid dating site and their phone app lets you check out member photos and easily swipe the ones you like to the right and the ones you don’t like to the left. If only someone created this type of interface for regular photo selection!
Re: Suggestions for photo/image editing program… but not what you think
Fasstone does create thumbnails but not as individual files. They are all lumped together in one big file (FSViewer.db). So, no you don’t get many new little thumbnail files.
I am not a programmer, but I suppose this is just in order to speed up the viewing time. You can manage the size of this “master thumbnail file” or optimize it by selecting Thumbnails Database Manager from the Settings Menu.
Re: Suggestions for photo/image editing program… but not what you think
I downloaded both the 30 day trial of Lightroom and FastStone to see which I liked. They both do what I wanted more or less, but FastStone is much faster and easier to use with their “tagging” option. I can quickly use my arrow keys to look at images full screen and then hit one keystroke to tag the ones I like, then delete all the rest.
Lightroom is nice but I don’t see any real advantage to using (and paying) for it over FastStone. I think Lightoom is best for content producers who need a fast way to go through their images and possibly apply color correction. For just viewing the hundreds of photos some sponsors provide, FastStone is better I think.
