PhotoTagger wasn't initially designed for a wide audience, it was just meant to help arrange a large collection of the developer's family photos. However, after a few other people, who also started to use the program, gave a highly positive feedback, we decided to make it available to everyone for free. At the same time, we started to design a brand-new version of the program, which we aim to release in the early Autumn. So what does PhotoTagger do?
As you know, photos are normally saved on phones or cameras under filenames that look like this: IMG_1546.JPG. At best, your phone may rename the file with the name of the location where the picture was taken. Then we copy or sync the files with our computer, and thusly our photo library quickly grows. After a while, we struggle to find the photos we need, as the only thing we can do is to search for them by date or location.
Some of us allocate photo files into different folders named by date or event (e.g. ‘Husband's birthday’). And that works to a degree. But what if you want to see all the photos of your son, from the day he was born, through to his wedding day? You may have already copied all the photos of him into one folder. However, this method means that you have to make separate folders for each event, person, location etc. and you end up duplicating your photos many times. This doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? What's more, most people don't organise their folders and rarely get to revisit their old memories.
PhotoTagger 1.0 allows you to add a description of every photo (like, ‘Daniel in a weird hat’). More importantly, it enables you to add multiple tags to any photo (such as ‘journey’, ‘France’, ‘autumn’, ‘family’, or ‘son’). Which means next time you're searching for your photos from France, you only need to type or select the 'France' tag. And if you wish to browse all your son's photos from the different countries he's travelled to, you choose a few select tags such as 'journey' and 'son'. Easy!
What distinguishes PhotoTagger 1.0 from other programs
PhotoTagger was created for a handful of people who were fed up with trying to find their photos. Happily, this led to the creation of one of the most efficient file storage programs ever. PhotoTagger wasn't meant to be used by anyone, but it became suitable to most users.
Tag tree
Unlike most programs, PhotoTagger allows you to assign tags to photos by choosing them from the tag tree that you create and manage yourself. If you assign a tag to a photo, all its parent tags will be included as well. For example, if you select the ‘son’ or ‘daughter’ tags the photo will immediately be assigned the ‘family’ tag. The tag tree allows you to be flexible with tags without duplicating files. Using the tag tree also enables you to quickly find the tags you need.
Saving tags in filenames rather than in meta data or databases
While all other programs only allow the user to keep tag data inside a file's so-called 'meta data' (which is only applicable for a small number of files and systems), we simply rename your file from something useless to something meaningful. This gives you lots of advantages:
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You can copy files from any operating or file system without losing your tag data.
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The filename itself always tells you what it contains.
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You can find your photos using the standard file search of any operating system without even installing or opening PhotoTagger.
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PhotoTagger is not limited to photos, you can use it for any files.
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You won’t need to keep additional database files.
Processing multiple files
You can organise multiple images without assigning tags or descriptions to each one of them. Instead, you can select multiple files and add any tags to them all in one go.
Improve your tag list
You don’t have to create a comprehensive tag tree straight away, you simply create tags as and when you need them. You can remove the tags or descriptions at any time, and you can add them at any time, even if the images already have tags.
Define any filename template
The program suggest the file name template using which your files will be renamed to store tags list in them. However, you can easily change the default templte to decide how the filename looks like upon the assigning tags.
No installation required
If you need to organise your photos from different devices, you can copy the program to an external disk drive and launch it from any computer without the need to install it first. Your program settings and the tag tree will always be with you.
Arrange any files, not just photos
Since the program only modifies the file name and not its content, you can use PhotoTagger to organise any type of file.