The Best Photo Organizing Software

[qcom]

Although this is probably in the wrong forum category, I couldn't find anywhere else to go so here's my problem:

I would imagine this has been posted many times, so if anyone knows a link to a previous forum that would be great as well.

Otherwise, I am looking for a really good photo organizing software. The problem is, that it needs to do a few things:

1. It has to be Mac AND pc compatible so that my entire family will be able use it.
2. The main factor is that it needs to organize my photos. I have them strewn across multiple computers and different folders and subfolders and need to organize them into one place.
3. Preferably it needs to be able to access an external hard drive over a LAN network.
4. I need some help here as well. What do most people do to their photos when the organize them. I suppose they add keywords, descriptions, location, the people in the photo etc. If you anything else I'm missing that would be awesome. The organizer needs to be able to this as well. And preferably, that this stuff is universal across platforms and operating systems.
5. Now this isn't 100% necessary, but it would be nice if it had the feature to search across the entire computer for photos stored wherever they may be.


I know its a lot of stuff but if anyone knows of one, that would be great!

 

[Shake 'n' Bake]

Sounds like Finder/Windows Explorer can do that. If you don't like that solution, try Picasa.

 

[qcom]

I was hoping for a program.. I've tried picasa but it seems a little buggy and it doesn't pick up the photos on my external hard drive connected to my airport extreme...

 

[maflynn]

I think what your asking doesn't really exist. You want an application that runs on both macs and pcs be able to catalog images across disparate computers and hard drives

personally I'd constrain your requirements to function on one computer and start your search from there. You can look at aprture (mac only). It's strength is it's organization or adobe's Lightroom. It's strength is in it's editting capability but it also has strong organiztion abilities as well. Another plus fir lightroom is that it will run on a mac or a pc. I just don't think you can have images from one computer can be cataloged on another computer

 

[qcom]

Well, ok, my main request is a program almost exactly like picasa that can pick up images on an external hard drive connected to my airport extreme. The only problem with picasa (besides the network drive capabilities) is that it seems to be a little buggy for me probably because its free.