Best family-photos-and-video-managing software

Since I got married and had kids, I've been using iPhoto to manage family photos and videos (just short videos with our digital camera). Touching up photos too (red-eye correction, blemish removal, and cropping. Sorting photos. Flipping through them. Nothing intense, but something I spend a decent amount of time doing.

But this December, I'll be switching over to a Windows machine, and I'm a bit lost as to which program would fit my needs best. I'd love feedback people have.

 

The above two (Windows Live Photo Gallery / Picasa) is worth giving a try..

You could also check out IrfanView, and there is IrfanView Thumbnails as well, which is quiet helpful in sorting / renaming / organizing etc.

 

I've seen you are planning to buy a VAIO F series so you could give it a try to Sony Media Gallery it's very easy to use and has a awesome interface

 

Downloaded Picasa on my MBP and gave it a try...really liked it. Superior to iPhoto, I think. Plus, now that I'm using it, I can just back up Picasa to an external drive and then restore the backup with Picasa on the new machine, making the transfer of everything easy.

Anyone else have any thoughts on why I should use Photoshop Elements, Windows Live Photo Gallery, or Sony's Media Gallery instead of Picasa? Or is Picasa the clear winner here?

 

I am quite in to photography myself and do use Photoshop for editing and so on. Nevertheless, the second program I use on regular basis is Picasa!
It allows me to quickly and easily perform basic operations like crop, organize, review and so on! I highly recommend it as it is really simple and light!
Give it a try

 

Personally, I think Windows Live Photo gallery is the winner here. It hooks straight into Facebook and does a much better job of face recognition.

 

Picasa is nice. Espec compared to the 'hassles' WinTel users have with Apple software in general, iTunes/iPhoto in particular.

But just because I've got the whole Master Suite for other needs, I tend to use Adobe Lightroom alongside of my Kodak ProPass accounts.....

AdobeWhatever is not a solution for everyone through. Those products can be pretty complex and a lot of people don't or can't put in the time needed to become proficient.

For making distributable cd/dvds, etc, I use WnSoft Pic2Exe. There is quite literally nothing better at the task than that little gem.

 

So Picasa is a landslide winner, BUT in using it, I've run into a bug where I can't change the preferences for what to do with the pictures after importing. I have to manually delete the photos. Searching online, this is a VERY common bug, and Google seems to be doing nothing about this. I have the most recent version.

There's also no direct-to-facebook upload option. You can upload directly to YouTube or Picasa web albums, but not facebook. That seems like a glaring oversight (or deliberate slighting of FB in an attempt to promote Google+ ).

These two problems seem pretty huge to me. Are they not problems for all the people who recommended it?

I'm now leaning toward using Windows Live Photo Gallery, but are there any big problems with that program that I should be aware of? And how easy is it to import an iPhoto library to WLPG?

Thanks all.

 

I haven't used either. Is google piscasa only to be used online? If so, then it is not secure, is it?

 

No it is not! It's a normal software you install. You do have the option to upload your pictures to your google account (if you have such) and sync albums, but this is entirely up to you.

I do not do that and have blocked the access of Picasa to the Internet just to make it more secure, but it seems to only check for updates every now and then (like pretty much any other software nowadays).

 

No, Picasa (an iPhoto equivalent) and Picasa Web Albums (an online hosting service), and Picasa uploader (a program that takes photos and puts them in your Picasa web album) are all separate things. It's easy to take photos from Picasa and put them in your Picasa web album, but it's not automatic.

 

December's just a step away from Ivy tbh.

I'm usually not a fan of waiting.

 

Windows Live Photo Gallery would work well, it's free

 

(1) Ivy is going to be an incremental change, not a major one. I'm sure Sandy Bridge will still be just fine after Ivy comes out.

(2) I'd rather have a tried-and-true setup than a brand-new one. Sandy Bridge had issues when it was brand new. I also don't buy cars in the firs model year for the same reason.

(3) I won't have the money until December (I'm going to use an end-of-the-year bonus to buy the machine, not my bimonthly paycheck).

 

Here's a plug-in that allows you to upload pictures to facebook directly from Picasa.

https://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/

It has worked fine for me.

 

I haven't had any issues with WLPG, I have no experience with itunes import.

 

i use windows live photo gallery myself. used picasa for a while, never got to like it.