Category: Science/Tech | Posted by laraib 1516 days ago

On Wednesday we asked you to tell us your favorite digital photo organizing software, and hundreds of you answered with passionate testimonies extolling the virtues of your application of choice. Today, we're taking a closer look at the top five vote-getters, then facing them off in one final showdown to find out which is the ultimate favorite. Hit the jump for a look at the top five photo organizers as chosen by your fellow readers, then vote for your favorite of the bunch.


Picasa (Windows/Linux)
Readers love this cross-platform photo management software from Google for its ease-of-use and impressive feature set—particularly for free software. Gmail integration, simple editing tools, and Picasa Web Albums has also helped users quickly tweak share their photo libraries with friends and family online. See more on how to organize your digital photos with Picasa.
Manually Managed Folder Structure (All Platforms)
Despite (or perhaps because of) the menagerie of available photo managers out there, many readers find it more intuitive to keep their pics application-independent, opting instead to save their photos in a folder structures of their own devising or just in date-based folders. It's completely free, and it's the photo organization system that's been around since the very beginning.
Flickr (Web)
Beloved for its tagging, sharing, and off-site backup features, Flickr is the standout for users looking to share and organize their photos online. Most die-hard Flickr users opt to pony up the $25 for a Flickr Pro account to upgrade their storage limits, but you can still enjoy Flickr's best features for free, including their new web-based editing tools, which make it easy to get rid of the red-eye even after your photos hit the web.
iPhoto (Mac OS X)
Bundled with the iLife suite of applications that comes with every new Mac, many Mac users find all the photo organization tools they'll ever need in iPhoto. Much like Picasa for the Mac, iPhoto provides amateur users with a dead simple way to take control of their photos. iPhoto can also do simple photo editing, and the recently added .Mac Web Gallery makes publishing and sharing photos online a breeze (though web galleries do require the $100/year .Mac subscription).
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Windows/Mac)
Hardcore photogs looking to take control of their photo collection—including their massive library of RAW images—and who aren't afraid of spending a few bucks on software (*ahem*, $299) turn to Adobe's Lightroom. Aside from its seamless integration with the premiere photo-editing software, Photoshop, Lightroom has its own set of imaging editing tools that boast non-destructive editing, impressive support for very large libraries, and an all-around feature set anyone from a weekend photographer to a professional would love.
Now it's time to crown the winner:


Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Honorable mention goes to Adobe Elements, Aperture, and ACDSee, all of which are advanced shareware photo management applications that just missed the cut.
If your application of choice didn't make the cut but you still want to give other Lifehacker readers the chance to hear about it, tell us about it in the comments.
11 Comments   Add this link to...  Tell a friend  Bury

Preview



Comments Who Voted Related Links


 
Site Links
RSS Feeds
Register
All About Tagza
About Tagza
Report a Website Bug
Contact
Top Stories
Today
Yesterday
Weekly
Monthly | Yearly