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Kirkman

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 27, 2002
60
0
I've been searching for reviews of Shoebox, the iPhoto alternative from Kavasoft... Haven't found a whole lot out there. It's been out for nearly 2 years now. Anybody here use it?

I am really attracted by the keyword organization and the fact it leaves photo files where you put them on a drive. But it doesn't integrate into the OS the same way iPhoto does...

Just wanted to get other people's thoughts.

--Josh
 

glennp

macrumors regular
Aug 7, 2006
101
3
Washington, DC
I never used Shoebox so I can't comment on the keyword organization differences but with regards to the file organization, in iPhoto 6 (maybe 5 also?), you can choose leave the files where they are on the drive. In the iPhoto advanced preference pane, deselect "Copy files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library." Any edits you make will be stored in the iPhoto library, but the originals will stay untouched where you put them.

Just an fyi...
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,541
1,653
Redondo Beach, California
Kirkman said:
I've been searching for reviews of Shoebox, the iPhoto alternative from Kavasoft... Haven't found a whole lot out there. It's been out for nearly 2 years now. Anybody here use it?

I am really attracted by the keyword organization and the fact it leaves photo files where you put them on a drive. But it doesn't integrate into the OS the same way iPhoto does...

Just wanted to get other people's thoughts.

--Josh

I'm prety sure Shoebox has a free trial that you can download and use. I remember trying it out and didn't see any reason to prefer it over iPhoto. My plan is to move from iPhoto to Aperture in early 2007

If you use iPhoto 6 it will leave the photos where you want them on the drive (still trying to figure out why people care about this) and you make your own keywords so you can make up any system you want using iPhoto. My iPhoto keyword system tags every shot with type of photo (landscape, portrait, underwater, ..) location and subject. Then I rate the image one to five star. The camera already tags them by date.

I've heard that some people like to put their files in folders with a folder for each date. "So they can find the image later" Right. Can I really remember the date that I was in Tokyo three years ago and took that picture o the dog with the hat? In a few years I will have forgotten what year it was, let alone the month and if I do want them sorted by date iPhoto will ort them that way
 

Kirkman

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 27, 2002
60
0
ChrisA said:
If you use iPhoto 6 it will leave the photos where you want them on the drive (still trying to figure out why people care about this) and you make your own keywords so you can make up any system you want using iPhoto. My iPhoto keyword system tags every shot with type of photo (landscape, portrait, underwater, ..) location and subject. Then I rate the image one to five star. The camera already tags them by date.

Yes, but the iPhoto interface for adding tags is extremely clunky. I did just stumble upon something called "Keyword Assistant" that looks like it might make up for iPhoto's deficient interface, though.

Among the interesting keyword functionality in Shoebox is that it can nest keywords... So you might have a keyword category called Texas and within it put a bunch of cities like Dallas or Austin. In this way, if you search for "Texas" all the photos you have tagged with either city will come up.

--Josh
 
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