Most of us have collected hundreds if not thousands of digital photos, whether from a digital camera or mobile phone. Most of us are al
so challenged with where to store our photo collection, and how to organize them. While cloud services such as iCloud are convenient, they have monthly costs, very limited photo management capabilities, performance is limited to your network connection, and usually a limited web based interface.
ImageRanger
ImageRanger is photo sorting software designed to provide a photo management solution for Windows computers, which does not require a cloud nor any monthly cost. It’s narrowly focused to help the average person simply manage their photos, without needing an extremely complex and costly photo editing suite. It’s also designed to handle enormous volumes of photos, which is important in current times where it’s so easy to take large numbers of photos on your phone. Rather than attempt to upload these large numbers of photos to a cloud, many people prefer to download them to their computer. Many add a secondary internal or external hard drive dedicated to storing photos, which can easily be moved to a different computer.
Note that if photo management software is not designed for high volumes of photos like this software is, you will encounter issues as your photo collection grows. It’s important that the software is able to index and cache photos. Why is caching important? It means that after loading a folder the first time, subsequent loads are in memory and much quicker.
Features
ImageRanger is not designed for complex edits to single photos, rather allows you to perform batch changes across many photos. Changes such as cropping, resizing, adjustments, and creation of thumbnails. Being able to create thumbnails is an essenti
al feature for sharing your photos in situations where a small size image is required, such as social media sites, texting, and emailing larger numbers of photos. Please see how to create thumbnail images for more information on this important feature.
Searching is another powerful capability and important as your collection grows. It supports searches on a wide range of elements such as keywords, geotags, rating, face detection, city and file time. A particularly impressive feature is you can run a complex search as as “find all bright, high res images, except those made in New York”.
Viewing your photos is highly flexible and easy, allowing you to view the thumbnails, the full image in a windows, or switch fullscreen and cycle through your photos as a slideshow.
Installation and Support
Installing the software was simple and was up in running in about 10 minutes. The interface was self explanatory and we were able to use various features without consulting the built-in help manual. Accessing the software was also simple, a 10 day trial version is available without any need to register on the website first. So we recommend you try it before deciding to buy it.
Should you need help, they offer an online knowledge base, as well as support via email.
Versions
Should you like the software, they offer two versions. The home version will meet the needs for most. For more serious photographers who deal with RAW format, want to do metadata searching (EXIF, IPTC, XMP), or advanced batch processing, they offer a pro version. The pricing is low and includes permanent rights to use the software, as well as one year of updates and support. Note that it only supports Windows.
Good Photo Management
Be sure to plan how to manage your photos. A tool like this is only as good as the methodology you apply. Keywords can help tremendously, as you can add keywords on different themes such as which vacation it was, where you were, who is in the photo, etc. You may also want to rate your photos so you can find your favorite ones easier. Also be sure your camera is adding geotag data so that you can search by location. Also have a folder structure you stick to, whether by year, trip, location, etc.
Conclusion
ImageRanger is a cost effective software application for managing large collections of photos, without the downsides of using the cloud. There is no risk due to a free trial option, so we recommend you try it out and see if it meets your needs.