Managing Millions of Files!

[maderemark]

Does anyone know of a good "asset manager" program to keep track of millions of photo files?

Thanks,

Mark Madere

[David_Buzzard]

A good cataloging program is Microsoft Expression Media, which is really just the old iView Media. I think it's only good for a few hundred thousand shots, so you might be out of luck if you need to catalog millions of photos.

What I do is use Filemaker Pro to catalog the jobs, and then store them on DVD disks in a filing cabinet. I can lay my hands on all of my jobs easily, and all I keep on hard drives is the web sized versions for reference.

David buzzard's technical blog

[BobSmith]

Expression Media starts to have issues when the catalog size gets near 2GB. How many images that is depends on the size of previews that you store in the catalog. The previews are used for viewing offline images... or for faster browsing using larger image views. It's easy to rebuild previews at any time on some or all images to save space. For instance you can have small or no previews on low rated images and large good previews on high rated images. Still the max number of images is going to be in the tens of thousands... nowhere near a million in one catalog. Expression Media also allows searches to take place across multiple catalogs at once so that minimizes the downside to the catalog size limits. I keep all work for a given calendar year in one catalog. I can then search across multiple years if I need to. So far that's working fine for my shooting volume.

Bob Smith

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Originally Posted by maderemark

Does anyone know of a good "asset manager" program to keep track of millions of photo files?

Millions? If you literally need to manage millions of photo files, then you probably need professional IT consultants. It can be done, but even if there is an off-the-shelf database to place at the core, it still needs to be integrated into a comprehensively thought-through system of organizational discipline and storage, otherwise it will not actually be managed or manageable.

[Pro Photo Store]

Visit the B&H Pro Photo Store for the best Gear Prices and regular specials!

Brilliant Color for any Digital SLR
White Balance Cap
The Pros Agree on ColorRight
What People Are Saying