
Ask HN: Recommendations for a Photo Management Tool? - BerislavLopac
Like probably most of us, I have accumulated gigabytes of digital photos over the last 20-odd years. Over the years I have occasionally tried to organise them into folders, either by subject matter, or by timestamps, or both -- but each time I have given up, and now I have a mess of folders, some photos being duplicated and scattered without any real order.<p>Can someone recommend a good software tool to automate the task of photo management? Ideally it would be able to dig through multiple levels of nested directories, recognise photographs and identify duplicates, and then automatically group them at the very list based on years&#x2F;months, and possibly on geolocation (assuming it is stored in the metadata). A next level would be the ability to somehow label and&#x2F;or group the photos by recognising certain items in them, although that would just be a nice extra.<p>A nice UI is a welcome bonus, but by no means a requirement. I would be happy if it worked on Linux, but Windows would also be fine, as long as the end result is a directory structure containing photos.<p>Any ideas?
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mceachen
I'm in exactly your situation (possibly worse), so I quit my office job to
build PhotoStructure. [https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-
photostructure/](https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/)

I've been letting people use PhotoStructure for free during the beta in
exchange for their feedback. Know that this next release will be the last beta
release before general availability. There will be free and paid subscription
tiers (with discounts given for feedback, and when your friends and family
also become subscribers). If you sign up for the beta, I'll be sending out
installation instructions when I release the next version, which I expect to
be within the next week. Here's what's coming soon:
[https://photostructure.com/about/release-
notes/](https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/)

~~~
BerislavLopac
Yes, I've seen and tried it, but it is not very user-friendly. The first time
I installed it (on MacOS) I have told it to import all media, but this is not
what I wanted; however I can't find a way to reset the preferences and define
the import directories again. Each time it just informs me that it will update
the libraries and gives me an option to quit but not to change. It's very
frustrating for a piece of software that is supposed to be "simple to use".

~~~
mceachen
Please send me an email if you've got any issues: support@photostructure.com
(this sort of feedback is exactly what I'm looking for from my beta users!)

The system settings on Mac are here: [https://photostructure.com/getting-
started/advanced-settings...](https://photostructure.com/getting-
started/advanced-settings/#system-settings)

Shut down PhotoStructure, delete that directory, and if you want to reset your
library, delete the `.photostructure` directory in your library (everything in
there is reproduced during the import), and restart PhotoStructure to start
from scratch.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Thank you, I figured it out now.

I still think it would be useful to have an option to open the app without
completing the indexing, or maybe having the indexing running in the
background, or at the very least resetting the preferences at startup.

~~~
mceachen
Indexing and version migrations happen in the background already, and progress
is shown on the home page. You can pause indexing via the system tray menu,
and there's an advanced system setting to prevent sync runs from starting at
launch. Please email me if you have any other issues or feedback!

~~~
BerislavLopac
Will do, thank you!

