Software to manage photo library

[armstrda]

Ok, hopefully someone here can help out with what I need. Here's the setup I have:

1 Canon 40D
1 Canon SD790

I use my desktop as my main photo library, but my wife has a laptop where she wants access to the pictures as well. However, we're over 100G of pictures/videos and I would rather not have her laptop HDD full of the pics as well. So here's what I currently do:

Windows Live Photo - I use this on my computer to import pictures (I like the auto folder naming of the data the pictures were taken).
Home Server - I use this as a backup for my full res pics.
Irfan Viewer - I use this to then resize the pictures to a smaller res (short side of 1200 pixels).
Beyond Compare - I use this to sync pictures between my computer and the WHS as well as from the WHS to my wife's laptop.

Here's what I want to happen (ideally) - I want to as I download from my camera for the magic software to automatically create a copy of those pictures at a scaled resolution, but also keep the full size images as well.

Does anyone know of anything that does this (preferrably free?)?

 

[Dark Penguin]

I would check this ...

http://www.ddisoftware.com/flashpipe/

... and see if it does what you want.

 

[armstrda]

Looks promising - any other solutions people use?

 

[Dark Penguin]

Also google ImageIngester.

 

[soydios]

I import my RAW photos to my desktop and process in Lightroom, then I have an Export preset to "My Pictures\Exported Photos" for high-quality JPEGs. I echo that folder via Microsoft SyncToy v2.0 to my laptop.

 

[armstrda]

Ok, so I just tried both apps, and unfortunately neither of them will do exactly what I want. FlashPipe is promising, but I can't figure out how to make it only resize on one of the copies, and not both (don't need the resized in the 2 locations, just want it in the backup that gets mirrored to the laptop).

 

[armstrda]

Oh and Lightroom is out of the question as it's $300

 

[randay]

picasa?

 

[armstrda]

Can you tell me how Picasa does any of the stuff I asked for? I have yet to be able to do it with Picasa.

 

[randay]

file>export can export pics to a certain location and it also scales them. also if you use picasa to upload to the online albums your wife can download them thus maybe saving some laptop harddrive space?

its also free. um... i guess it wont do it magically but its just a couple clicks to get it done. it automagically scans for your new pics, so i guess all you would have to do is download from camera to a folder, then select those pics/folder in picasa and go file>export.

one down side is that the free web album space is limited.

 

[armstrda]

Hmmm, well that was a little more than I wanted to do. I've put in a request to the author of the FlashPipe software to see if he could enhance the scaling ability of the software. Other than that, his software looks like the best import tool for what I want.

 

[Cattykit]

Though Picasa won't do what you've asked for, I highly recommand it.

In my case, if I want to look at specific pictures or folder, I use Faststone Image Viwer;
if I want to look at thousands and thousands of images, Picasa simply is the best deal.

 

[armstrda]

Sorry, let me also say that I do use Picassa as my library viewer, but the import options are not enough for what I need/want.

 

[soydios]

Oh and Lightroom is out of the question as it's $300

really? wow. I'll keep that in mind next time I recommend it.

hooray for student upgrade prices!

 

[armstrda]

OK, so looks like I could get Lightroom for $100 if my brother buys it with a teacher discount. You say that you import RAW then output high quality JPEGs to another folder. What if I am inputting JPEGs and I was to then output a lower scaled JPEG to another area. Doable?

 

[magomago]

Yeah its doable.

You can try SilkyPix as well. Its pretty well regarded, although I have Lightroom at the moment. I've been reading that SilkyPix seems to handle .PEFs better and output higher quality (From what I know, Pentax bundled software is just an older, crappier version of silkypix with a lot more slowdown lol), so I've been thinking about switching instead of buying the next Lightroom upgrade. I think its overkill for my uses since I'm not really taking advantage of the wonderful organization system, so why waste more money.

 

[armstrda]

So with Lightroom I can't seem to figure out how to import and create the scaled backup in teh same step. Also, with the export to scaled JPEG, it doesn't seem to allow you to keep the folder structure (year/yy_mm_dd/pictures)

 

[Cienja]

photoshop.com maybe? I'm using it, but haven't taken the time to go through all of the benefits.