#Python photo manager#
##Introducition## There are two general approaches for managing a large photo collection:
- Use an ordered folder structure
- Use a dedicated photo management program, like Picasa or one of many others.
However, chosing between these options is not easy as it poses a dilemma: folder structure is 'future-proof', but is very difficult to maintain by hand in a coherent manner. Dedicated photo management applications tend to lock the user into a single piece of software, with the certainity that the application and its database will be outdated some time in the future. This has recieved some attention on ask slashdot with a lively discussion.
In my personal experience I have tried different photo management tools in the past (ACDsee, Picasa, XnView etc), but what I really needed was a well-organized folder structure. In the meantime my photo collection has grown to ~22000 photos, all with very generic names like IMG_1180.JPG . They sit in an organic folder structure with no coherent naming. After I started sorting the collection by hand, I quickly realized that it would take me days if not weeks, involve multiple tools for photo renaming. Even worse, with a big risk of making a mistake and loosing precious photos.
So I decided to invest some time into developing a photo mangagement toolset to accomplish this task and make it easy in the future.
the code is very much work in progress and is not fully functional yet. It can be however used as a starting point for tinkering. Updates will follow along the way.