Excire Foto for Organizing Files?

Sony Corleone

Sony Corleone

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Do any of you have opinions on Excire Foto? I'm wondering if I should use it for organization or give up and try Lightroom.

I resisted getting Photoshop and Lightroom because I find Adobe annoying, and I don't want to pay $240 this year, get addicted to the programs, and then be trapped, paying whatever increases they think are appropriate for the rest of my life. Maybe this was a bad decision. I am using Photolab 9, and I really like it.

Because I don't have Lightroom, I don't have its organizational tools, and thousands of pictures have piled up. I'm not a professional, so I suppose I will never have the kind of huge library pros who use Lightroom have, but I have enough photos to make organization and finding things a problem. I am doing a trial of Excire Foto, which has no subscription, and it seems like an incredible program.
 
This software uses AI to keyword and tag images, and uses AI to automatically cull images, so there is no personal control of that; it is not free - no subs yes, but $199 so LR is actually cheaper over a two year plus period using Amazon deals.
Besides which there are other DAM tools out there as has been discussed a number of times on TP, not to mention simply using a date based folder system or location based, etc.
 
Thanks for the help.

Here in the US, Lightroom would be ~$144 for the next 12 months, direct from Adobe. I just looked at Amazon, and they have it for $118 per year, so $236 for two years. After that, who knows? It's not a prohibitive expense in a world where people commonly lay out $1200 for one lens, but I don't want to put myself at Adobe's mercy unless I'm sure it's the best choice.

I checked into the culling thing, and what I am told, which may be true or false for all I know, is that Excire doesn't delete anything unless you tell it to. It hasn't deleted anything of mine yet.

I just started using it, and it does things like letting you attach names to faces, and then when you want every picture you've taken of Fred Smith or Lulu Jenkins, it will show you all the ones it recognizes. That is pretty neat, and it should be very helpful, but I don't know much about Lightroom, so I wouldn't have any idea whether it does the same thing.

Google AI claims Excire gives free upgrades until the software is changed, and when that happens, you get a big discount, but you still pay. Google thinks $69 is a likely figure. It also thinks Foto 26 is coming out this month, so this is a bad time to buy Foto 25. Google thinks 26 will be discounted $20-$30 during the launch period. I should be able to use Foto for 2-3 years without buying a new version, so it looks like it adds up to maybe $60-$90 per year, if things go as AI expects.

Using labeled folders is not ideal for me. Right now, I use a zillion folders. I have year, month, and day folders, and the day folders are separated by camera. Because I had a son last year, I have separate folders for him. It's a lot of work, and there is no way I'll ever remember whether my son posed for a particular folder I want to see on the 5th of November or the 7th of December, so I have to click on folders and look at icons.
 
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Any system that changes the file structure will leave you "locked in" to it to a degree.

I have a lot of files from the last 27 years, mine are sorted by camera, then by year, not perfect but not too hard to use either
The little effort I have to put in to find things does not justify any expense :)
 
Sony Corleone said:
Do any of you have opinions on Excire Foto? I'm wondering if I should use it for organization or give up and try Lightroom.

I resisted getting Photoshop and Lightroom because I find Adobe annoying, and I don't want to pay $240 this year, get addicted to the programs, and then be trapped, paying whatever increases they think are appropriate for the rest of my life. Maybe this was a bad decision. I am using Photolab 9, and I really like it.

Because I don't have Lightroom, I don't have its organizational tools, and thousands of pictures have piled up. I'm not a professional, so I suppose I will never have the kind of huge library pros who use Lightroom have, but I have enough photos to make organization and finding things a problem. I am doing a trial of Excire Foto, which has no subscription, and it seems like an incredible program.
Click to expand...
Are you on Windows or a Mac?
 
My understanding is that you can use the DAM part of Lightroom, without the ongoing subscription.

Or there is Adobe Bridge, which is similar, but free.
 
There was a free program that "found" all the images on your PC and sorted them into date order (in the programs display) I had it for a while, sadly I cant remember what it was called.
It more or less did what the DAM part of LR does, although I dont use LR for that.
 
swanseamale47 said:
There was a free program that "found" all the images on your PC and sorted them into date order (in the programs display) I had it for a while, sadly I cant remember what it was called.
It more or less did what the DAM part of LR does, although I dont use LR for that.
Click to expand...

It sounds like PhotoMove 2,5 which is what I use. The paid version is less than $10, and gives more sort options
 
Sangoma said:
Any system that changes the file structure will leave you "locked in" to it to a degree.

I have a lot of files from the last 27 years, mine are sorted by camera, then by year, not perfect but not too hard to use either
The little effort I have to put in to find things does not justify any expense :)
Click to expand...
I agree with this advice.

Picture organisers were a good idea when file names were limited to 8 characters or even 30. Now that the typical maximum is 255, a separate programme isn't necessary for organising and finding my images. I can search across my entire photo directory, for any string in a filename and the standard file managers will start returning names (and images, if required) in a few seconds. Given that my current collection is about half a terabyte and resides across the network on another computer, that's good enough for me.
 
In the Apple Mac Photos app, free, I can organise by albums, dates, etc. I can also add keywords, location and do facial recognition to link images of the same person automatically.
Just a thought. I don't know if Windows or Google equivalent free apps do the same?
 
Keywords are a small bit of work if you keep on top of them, maybe a very large bit of work if you have half a terabyte of image files, but they should make it much easier to find specific images.
 
Sony Corleone said:
I'm using Windows.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I had Excire for a couple of years release 23 and 24, but currently use PeakTo (Mac only) which I find to be a more useful tool, mainly because it integrates with catalogues and indexes of multiple programs and brings them all into one big data base.

So you can have Capture One, Lightroom and DXO catalogues/indexes all integrated and managed from within a single program, while still using the separate programs standalone.

It's a bit of an overkill for me (and pricey), but no use to you anyway, as it's Mac only. I don't know if I'll continue using it, but it's an excellent program for the right person.
 
I have 1.5 TB of data on my storage drive, and most of it is images and video. A lot of it is junk I should delete, but I think it would still be over 1 TB.
 
Sangoma said:
It sounds like PhotoMove 2,5 which is what I use. The paid version is less than $10, and gives more sort options
Click to expand...
That name isn't familar, wish I could remember the name of the one I had. It "hunted" down all the pics on a hard drive, even the screensavers with date and location on system. You could rename, tag and rate, all the usual stuff.
 
swanseamale47 said:
That name isn't familar, wish I could remember the name of the one I had. It "hunted" down all the pics on a hard drive, even the screensavers with date and location on system. You could rename, tag and rate, all the usual stuff.
Click to expand...
PhotoMove also finds them all, I set it to store by camera name, then within that by year.
Anything without a date taken gets sent to a "no date" folder, and anything with no camera get sent to a "no manufacturer) folder

When I first got it, I also let it go through lots of old hard drives from long gone computers and storage devices.

I like it as it does the job for me, a job that in real life I would never get finished :)
 
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