Please Make This: Photo Cleanup App

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I’m somewhat ashamed to say that I have nearly a terabyte of photos stored on my Time Capsule. They’re all incredibly organized and I can usually find what I need pretty quickly, but the thing is, I know there are photos on there that I probably just don’t want anymore. And those are the ones that are tough to find.

It gets really daunting when you open up your photo manager (Photo Mechanic is my manager of choice) and you’re presented with thousands upon thousands of photos to sift through. When you’re looking for something specific it’s easy: just type in a tag and search. But when you’re looking for things to delete, there’s no way to search for that. If I were better at culling my photos before I archived them this probably wouldn’t be as much of an issue, but unfortunately, it’s not that black and white.

What I want is a little app that I can fire up when I’m sitting on the computer looking for things to do. It’ll connect to my external HD (or another specified location), select maybe 10 photos at a time (that number could be adjustable in Preferences) and present them at a pretty decent, but zoomable size.

Below each photo you’d be presented with 3 options:
KEEP – puts a flag on the photo so it doesn’t show up in the app for at least another year
TRASH – obvious, right?
HOLD – puts a flag on the photo to show it again in another 90 days or so. Maybe you’re not ready to trash it just yet.

The only other option would be a “Show Surrounding Photos” toggle, because it might be a photo that you know you have multiple versions of and you want to make sure you’re deleting the right one.

It’s that easy. I’m pretty sure it could be done with something as simple as an Apple Script, but an app would be prettier.

Just an idea. I know a whole lot of people who would love something like this, but unfortunately I’m not ninja enough to code it up. Bored? Well now you have something to work on!

  • http://elbelbelb2000.blogtog.com Eugene

    I’ve heard good things about using Photo Mechanic to organize photos.

    That said, are you using Photo Mechanic because you’ve always used it, or because you prefer it over other programs? In particular, I’m curious if you’ve ever used Adobe Lightroom, and if so, how you think it fares in comparison to Photo Mechanic in terms of organizing your photos?

  • http://jennthegeek.com Jenn Vargas

    Hey Eugene,

    I use Photo Mechanic because a) I’m used to it and b) I have a license. It’s not necessarily better than Lightroom, but because I used it on a daily basis when I was the photo editor of my school paper, it’s just sort of become second nature and I’ve managed to work around any of its inadequacies.
    I’ve considered switching to Lightroom or Aperture a lot, actually, but I’d rather not shell out $300 if what I’m using already is doing just fine.
    For JUST organizing photos, Photo Mechanic is top notch. I love it. As far as integration with Photoshop or being able to edit RAW right in the app, it’s not really the way to go. If you’re trying to decide whether to take the leap, I’d say it depends on what your focus is. Mine was being able to pull up any given photo with a few keystrokes. The editing was secondary.

    Hope that helps!

  • http://elbelbelb2000.blogtog.com Eugene

    Hi Jenn,

    Thanks for the reply. I actually use Adobe Lightroom to organize my photos (I am good with remembering the dates of when pictures were taken, so my photos are organized by capture date of the images). I also use keywords to tag images so I may find them easily in the future. When I want to edit the photos in Photoshop, I export them as a .PSD file directly from Lightroom.

    >I’ve considered switching to Lightroom or Aperture a lot, >actually, but I’d rather not shell out $300 if what I’m >using already is doing just fine.

    I see. So it sounds like you’re using Photo Mechanic because you’re already used to it, which is what I was thinking initially. By the way, if you still have a student email address, you can get a Lightroom license for around $100 (so it’s not a bad deal at all).

    Thanks,

    ~Eugene