Photo Organizing Software

Homebrewale

Old Mossy Horns
I've got thousands of photos on my old desktop computer running Windows 7. That computer is dying so I'm moving all my photos over to my laptop running Windows 10. A very old program used for organizing the photos is being replaced since it's probably over 8 years old and outdated. I'm looking for a photo organizing program. A couple of programs that I'm looking at are Adobe Lightroom, Cyberlink PhotoDirector 8 Ultra, and Corel Paintshop Pro X9. They're listed by descending price.

The most important feature is ease of use. My wife will be using it the most and she doesn't like complicated software. She doesn't want to read the manual to use the program.
 

Wildlifer

Old Mossy Horns
Lightroom is a pretty good one. I am mac based so iphoto does a good enough job for me. Are you looking at just organization or editing as well?
 

roundball

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
FWIW, just for another viewpoint…I don’t like the idea of placing a major dependency on any 3rd party piece of software.
I view 3rd party pieces of photo editing software only as a ‘tool’ external to MS Windows.

I keep everything in the MY PICTURES file structure of Microsoft Office as MS will basically be around forever.
That way I won’t end up with a bunch of photos stuck in a 3rd party tool if & when I decide I want to switch and start using a different editor, etc…or a 3rd party editor discontinues support, or some compatibility issue surfaces…leaving me in a bad situation.

I simply bring up a photo editor…any one of 3 or 4 I might try…import a copy from MS Office into the tool, do whatever, then instead of leaving it in the tool…I simply use the tool’s export feature to send it right back into the same folder in MS Office…right alongside the original with the title modified with abbreviations of what tweaks I made…my 3rd party software editor tool stays empty.
( And when I upgraded from Win7 to Win10, wasn't anything to worry about ).

As an example, here are a few photos showing my structure that’s grown over time.
MS Office file structure works great for me but your mileage may vary…














 
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Homebrewale

Old Mossy Horns
Lightroom is a pretty good one. I am mac based so iphoto does a good enough job for me. Are you looking at just organization or editing as well?

Organizing is the main goal. My wife may do simple editing like eliminating red-eye or brightening the background. She isn't into heavy editing.
 

roundball

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
Organizing is the main goal. My wife may do simple editing like eliminating red-eye or brightening the background. She isn't into heavy editing.

FYI...there are several simple basic features like that already built right into MS Office.
And there are many powerful, free, very easy to use PC based editors you can download that do those basics and more.
I bought Lightroom myself a couple years ago, tried it a few months and abandoned it.
Because I shoot normal JPEGs instead of RAW...and I found Lightroom offered no value for JPEGs over simple, much easier to use, free editors.
 

Wildlifer

Old Mossy Horns
If that's the case I really like roundballs method. I mainly deal with videos and most of my photos are from my phone. Sometime I can bring a DSLR with me but for the most part its gopro videos. My Video library is broken down into activities like Diving, fishing, duck hunting ect. In each folder I have sub-folders for each trip along with the date. I dump all of the photos and videos for that trip into one folder to be edited and combined into a video later. Like I said earlier iphoto does a good enough job breaking pictures down by date and location since most are from my phone but for full control over the organization I prefer hard drive based methods.
 
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roundball

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
Here are some examples of editing features built into MS Office...I’m still using old MS Office 2010 and these basic controls were in it way back then.

One of the drop downs across the top shows several basic photo editing controls…B&C…Crop…Red Eye, etc….Photo #1
Then when you click the “Brightness & Contrast” feature, Photo #2 pops up, showing simple sliders to make those adjustments.





 
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nccatfisher

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
I loved the old "Picture It" windows had over the current software they have now. I have gotten used to what they have now and can do ok with it, but loved to old stuff much better.
 
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