I decided to look for some software to organize the thousands of digital photos that we’ve taken since we got the digital camera. Anyway, I started with the usual suspects, Jasc and their Paintshop Photo Album, and Adobe and their Photoshop Album. Photoshop Album came close to doing what I wanted, but I needed more control. Jasc’s product was far too flaky on my system to consider using it.

After that, I searched online, both via google and by reading Amazon reviews of Photoshop Album (a great way to find alternative products is to read negative reviews - quite often people point you in the right direction.) Anyway, after trying about a billion of them, from CyPics (interface too complicated) to Picasa (too limited,) I finally found what I was looking for.

IMatch does the job. We wound up buying it yesterday, and categorizing a bunch of pictures. I can now find all pictures where Bryan is playing crokinole if I so desire. I may have gone a little overboard on the categories (around 100 at last check) but it makes it so easy to find pictures.

As an example, we had a picture of two people at a birthday party in Calgary. That picture got categorized under each person, as well as under birthday parties, and the location (not just Calgary, but the actual location in Calgary.) This picture can be found so many different ways, it’s not even funny. It was really easy to categorize a whole bunch too. I think I got around 500 done last night, and it wasn’t that much work at all. It helps that Erin had them somewhat organized on the hard drive already. Still, to be able to quickly find all pictures with Steve and Bryan in them at the touch of a button - it’s somewhat amazing. If Lois Lane had her photos indexed like this, she might have noticed that Superman and Clark Kent were never photographed together ;-)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I hope you enjoyed my one-man pie fight, kids!” - Krusty the Clown