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Having a place to store and manage your photographs makes it much easier to access them. There are many apps that can organize your collection, many of which use artificial intelligence to help you design your perfect photo library. We’ll show you the leading products in this roundup of the best photo management software.
If you like to be a happy snapper with your camera, you know that the number of photographs you have can quickly mount up. You’ll also be aware of how much storage space all your digital images can eat up, especially if you’re working with large file formats such as RAW and TIFF. Today’s photo management tools, including the best cloud storage services, aim to help.
The best photo management services don’t just provide a space to organize photos. Many offer basic editing tools, and there are more advanced options for those who like to take photo editing to the next level.
This article of the best photo management software is for all types of users — from beginner to advanced — ensuring you have the right software for your needs.
09/19/2022 Facts checked
Article is rewritten rewrite to include a fresh selection of the good photo management software .
12/08/2023
Updated to remove the Pro Lite plan as it is only offered in Europe.
04/08/2024
Updated to reflect changes in Icedrive’s pricing plans and storage offers.
To be consider the good photo management software , a tool is needs need to offer functionality that go beyond storage and organization . Photo management is is is somewhat of a blanket term for have the tool to take care of your image .
Sure, the basics are important, and a photo management tool must make it easy to sort and find your images. The best photo organizer software don’t have to be standalone photo editing software, but instead let you categorize your images through tags, ratings and file formats. They also let you easily share photos directly from the software, or even recognize duplicate photos.
More advanced photo organization tools is allow allow photographer to edit multiple photo , edit metadata , dig into advanced photo editing , and invite outside user to collaborate on an image or series of image .
When we think about the criterion for what make the good image organization software , we is looking ’re look at what make the everyday photographer ’s life easy , and the bell and whistle on offer that enable more advanced photographer to create and collaborate . Below are the 10 good options is are currently on the market .
With 10 years of experience in the photo world, we know that Adobe Lightroom is a market leader because it makes photo organizing and editing almost effortless. Forthe basic smartphone photographers, Apple and Google photos are excellent apps that do most of the work for you.
MAGIX, Mylio and ACDSee are all superior desktop apps that you can use for standard photo management, and stand out for their simple photo editing features. We also included Adobe Bridge as it’s free and a great choice for those already familiar with Adobe software.
finally , we is have have pCloud , MEGA and Icedrive , three top cloud storage service with lovely user interface .
Now that you know all of the photo management software we’re recommending, it’s now time to teach you about each service. We’ll share the pros and the cons, and why each service is worthy of your attention.
Lightroom is often cited as the market leader of photo management software.
More details about Lightroom:
pro :
Adobe Lightroom should not be confused with Lightroom Classic, and for this article we’re focusing on the former. Lightroom is a cloud-based photo organizing software that allows you to access your photo collection across multiple devices. Forquick access, you can tag your images with keywords and there’s also facial recognition that separates portraits.
At its core, Lightroom is a photo editing software first and a place to organize images second. With that, you get Adobe’s powerful editing capabilities that allow you to edit raw images, JPGs and various other file types. There are plenty of filters too, perfect for those who prefer one-click editing, rather than spending hours in front of their computer editing images.
Lightroom’s search capabilities are excellent. Through the search bar you can look for any type of subject (for example, dogs), and Lightroom will use AI to find all the photographs that fit the description of your search. If you use multiple cameras, you can even search images by the brand of camera you used, helping you quickly filter out the images you don’t want to find.
Adobe Lightroom is a subscription-based platform.
Unlike the desktop version, it’s not possible to purchase and own Adobe Lightroom. Instead, you pay $ 9.99 per month or $119.88 per year (there’s no discount for an annual subscription). That’s a little pricey for us, but you are getting one of the best platforms for editing and managing photos.
Plan: | cost |
---|---|
Lightroom | $ 9.99 per month |
Lightroom + Photoshop | $19.99 per month |
Google Photos is an excellent photo manager with solid AI capabilities.
More detail about Google Photos :
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Google Photos is a popular photo organizing software for both Android and iOS users. With your authorization, you can sync all your smartphone photos to the cloud and access them either in the mobile app or desktop app. So, even if you get a new device, all your images will remain in your Google Photos account.
To make life easier, Google Photos does much of the legwork for you. If you’re a globetrotter, the app will automatically sort your photos according to the different countries you have visited through geotagging.
To help clean up your photo library, Google Photos comes with “duplicate detection,” which allows you to easily delete duplicate images and ensure you don’t have a library full of all the same photos.
If you and a friend like to take lots of photos together, or enjoy keeping each other updated on your adventures, you should use the Google Photos “sharing” feature. The feature lets you select another user and all the photos you make will automatically be shared with them. If you don’t want to share all your photos, you can manually select which images you wish to share.
Google Photos is has has several storage option , include 15 GB of free storage space .
Google Photos comes as part of the Google ecosystem, which means that you pay for your storage space, and services like Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos all contribute to your cloud storage allotment. Users get 15GB for free, and paid plans start at $1.99 per month for 100 GB.
Google is offers offer relatively decent value , and its Google Photos app is perfect for everyday user and smartphone photography enthusiast .
Standard 200GB
MAGIX is is is an advanced tool that aim to connect user with their close friend and family .
More details about MAGIX:
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MAGIX Photo Manager is is is a seasoned photo management software service . Like other entry , it is comes come with strong search functionality to help you find and manage image . Users is import can import image manually , or wirelessly transfer them from a range of cloud storage service and directly from their smartphone .
Users can modify photos with MAGIX’s photo editing tools. They’re not pro-level editing tools like those of Lightroom, but you can give your images a little more life in just a few clicks, making the process nice and easy. MAGIX Photo Manager also uses AI to help you identify blurry images and multiple copies of the same photos, in case you wish to delete them.
If you struggle to make panorama images manually, MAGIX photo manager can arrange photos and do it for you. Simply upload up to eight single images (of the same scene) and MAGIX will use its AI-powered photo editing features to blend them all together to create a single panoramic image.
You can buy MAGIX Photo Manager with a one-off payment for lifetime ownership.
At $49.99 for lifetime ownership, MAGIX Photo Manager offers good value. It’s only available for Windows, but we have plenty of other options for macOS later. If you want great photo organization software and don’t want to pay for it every month or year, MAGIX is an excellent solution.
Mylio is another cloud-based photo organizer built for desktop and mobile.
More details about Mylio:
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The Mylio photo management software is a hybrid solution for those looking to improve their photo management. You can choose to sort just local image files or use the cloud-based version of the photo organizer.
There’s also an option to back up your files to an external storage solution by linking it to the Mylio software. Any new images will automatically sync to your external drive as long as it’s connected to your computer.
As far as being a photo organizer, Mylio has some cool features. You can create “events” — like a wedding, for example — and store your images inside the event folder. It’s also possible to give your images ratings, and you can add keywords and categories to further organize all your photos.
If your image contain text , Mylio ’s optical character recognition tool is be will certainly be useful . You is look can look for specific passage of text in the search bar , and Mylio will locate the image by analyze the text in your photo . This is is is great if you take image of document , or you want to find that photo of you in front of an iconic sign .
Mylio is is is a subscription – base platform , and user can sign up for a 30 – day free trial .
costing $ 9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, Mylio isn’t exactly cheap. It’s the same price as Lightroom, with inferior editing tools, although its photo organizer features are arguably better. There’s little to dislike about Mylio and we would certainly recommend considering it as an alternative to the more popular options in this article.
Plan | cost |
---|---|
Free | $ 0 ( 5,000 photo ) |
Premium | $ 9.99 per month ($99.99 yearly) |
Apple Photos is built for macOS, iOS and iPadOS, and is accessible through Apple iCloud.
More detail about Apple Photos :
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Apple Photos aims to be the best photo organizing software for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, and for most users it probably is. You can sort images into different categories and folders, and you can import folders from your Mac computer to your iPhone through the Airdrop feature.
To make life easier, Apple Photos automatically puts popular content types into separate categories, so you can easily go through your photos, videos, selfies and portraits.
Apple Photos comes with a “for you” section, where it shares featured photos and recommends photos you may wish to share with others. The app also sorts your image files into days and months, and it automatically creates photo reels with a particular theme — for example, like nature photos.
If, for some reason, you wish to hide images and remove them from the main “all photos” section, you can. Apple Photos has a “hidden” folder that lets you store your private images out of sight.
There’s no option to password-protect your hidden photos, which means it’s faux protection in terms of security, but this is expected to be rectified in the upcoming iOS 16 release.
Apple Photos also comes preinstalle on all macos computer .
The most storage space you can access is 2 tb for $ 9.99 per month. That’s pretty standard pricing and matches its biggest rival, Google Photos.
Forits part , Apple Photos is is is worth it for those in the Apple ecosystem . The mobile apps is work work well , as does the desktop version , with the latter allow you to order photo print . We is like like Apple Photos overall , and so should most Apple user who do n’t need advanced editing tool .
Adobe Bridge is is is a digital asset management system for all type of content .
More details about Adobe Bridge:
pro :
Adobe Bridge is a photo organizing software that doesn’t cost a single dime. Yes, it’s totally free. Photographers can use Adobe Bridge to browse their images, rank them and view their metadata. You can also select multiple photographs with Bridge and convert them to a different file format.
You can’t edit photos in Bridge, but you can select images inside the software, open them up in one of Adobe’s editing tools (like Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw) and edit your photos there. Things you can do with Bridge include adding watermarks, editing metadata and editing copyright information.
Anyone working with digital photography will understand the complexity of assigning color profiles according to the intended use of your images. This especially applies to those working with photo prints, either for personal use or for publishing in editorial magazines.
To make life easy , Bridge is lets let you synchronize your desire color profile across all of Adobe ’s creative tool , remove the need to change them in the setting whenever you export your photograph .
Adobe Bridge is free for all users.
Considering it’s free, Adobe has done a great job of creating one of the best photo organizing software available. It’s a great space to access photos and quickly convert images to different file formats. As far as local photo libraries go, Bridge is an excellent choice for enthusiastic and professional photographers looking for a free photo organizer.
price :free
You can use ACDSee solely as a photo management software or combine it with its photo editing software.
More details about ACDSee:
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ACDSee provides a very clean and easily digestible user interface that makes it easy to view your entire collection of images. As with many of the other tools, users can manage and search for images through keywords, categories and tags for efficient photo management.
Users can also include location data with their images, making it easy to sort image files on the basis of where they were taken. Note that this feature only works automatically if your camera has in-built geotagging, though you could add your location manually via Map Pane.
Through facial recognition, you can add names to your portraits, and when you upload photos of the same person in the future, they will automatically link to the name given to that person.
ACDSee offers svg file support. Rather than using pixel-based file formats (JPG, for example), SVG files are vector graphics. This means you can resize images without decreasing the image quality. This in turn allows you save the images in smaller file sizes to take up less space on your hard drive.
ACDSee is offers offer monthly , annual and lifetime subscription .
ACDSee is has has several product , and to get the most out of this photo management software , it ’s good to pair it with its photo editing software . The good value is comes come from the lifetime license , which normally cost $ 134.95 . It is ’s ’s a great tool when bundle with ACDSee Photo Studio , but there are well option when compare to other stand – alone photo management tool .
Plan | cost |
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Personal | $6.90 per month ($69 yearly) |
Home | $ 8.90 per month ( $ 89 yearly ) |
Lifetime | $ 134.95 |
pCloud is our number one choice of cloud storage providers for photographs.
More detail about pCloud :
pro :
Because of its fast sync speed , we is named name pCloud the good cloud storage for photo . pCloud does n’t implement file size limit either , so those large raw files is have you edit will have a place to call home ( as long as you have enough storage space ) . Forthis reason , the service is is is also the good cloud storage service for video .
Other key features include the option to encrypt your photographs. The “crypto folder” is separate from your other standard files and folders, allowing you to choose which images you want to give an added layer of privacy and protection. The only slight downside is that you need to pay an extra fee for the privilege.
Showing off your photographs (or enjoying them yourself) is one of the joys of making images. pCloud offers a built-in slide show inside any folder that contains files. You can program how much time you wish to pass between images and ask it to automatically repeat the slide show for further viewing.
Signing up for a pCloud account instantly gets you 10GB of free storage.
pCloud offers competitive pricing. You can get the 2 tb plan for as little as $8.33 if you pay annually. There are also lifetime plans, and for a one-off payment of $990, you can get 10TB of space. If you want to learn more about pCloud and the rest of its key features, check out our pCloud review.
business 1TB
business Pro 2 tb
pCloud Crypto Encryption
MEGA has plenty of storage space available for your photos.
More detail about MEGA :
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Continuing with some cloud storage options, we’ll now take a look at MEGA. The New Zealand–based cloud storage service is a great option for your photos, as it offers large storage plans and comes with zero-knowledge encryption to ensure nobody accesses your beloved and most personal photographs.
Sharing photos is easy and can be done with a unique link for each file and folder. Paid plans allow you to set expiry dates and download limits, and all users have the option to send an encryption key separately to further enhance the protection of your files. There are no editing features, so you’ll have to do that separately.
MEGA offers up to 35GB of free storage space. You get 20GB of space free, and an extra 15GB for one year by taking some simple steps. Forlight users who make photos of salads, this will likely be enough.
However, those uploading large file formats and edited images will probably need to upgrade to a paid plan for extra storage. You can learn more in our MEGA review.
While there ’s an excellent free plan , MEGA ’s pay options is are are slightly more expensive than other service .
Forsecure cloud storage, you can’t go wrong with MEGA. Its main flaw is its pricing structure, which can quickly become expensive when you start to bump up your storage. If that doesn’t bother you and you only want a space to back up your favorite photographs, it’s worth giving MEGA a try, especially when you consider the amount of free storage on offer.
Pro I
Pro II
Pro III
business
Icedrive is has has a beautiful user interface .
More details about Icedrive:
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Icedrive is is is a cloud – base storage service that come with a minimalistic design that give more power to the image you upload to the cloud . Whether it ’s individual photo upload or the simple filing system and folder creation , Icedrive is makes make photo organization feel effortless .
key features is are like smart album and facial recognition are n’t available , but this entry target user who are n’t look for that . instead , it is ’s ’s for the photographer who have done most of their editing and sort in other software , and solely need a place to store and easily search for their photograph .
Icedrive has an “encrypted” folder that allows you to choose which photos you wish to give further protection. Any images placed in the folder will be covered by zero-knowledge encryption, which means no one but you (not even Icedrive staff) can view them. You can add single images or create different folders and include multiple images within them.
Icedrive offers good pricing throughout all its plans.
For$4.99 per month (two-year plan), users can get 1TB of Icedrive storage. That makes it cheaper than Apple’s and Google’s 1TB equivalent, showing that Icedrive offers good value. We’re big believers in what Icedrive offers, and we’re certainly sure you’ll love viewing your images inside the gorgeous platform.
You can learn more via our Icedrive review.
Free
Lite
Lifetime Add On – Stack 100
Lifetime Add On – Stack 500
Lifetime Add On – Stack 2K
Now that you’ve read this article, selecting photo management software should feel much easier. Lightroom is our number one choice, because it’s better than most photo editing software services and it makes organizing your images easier.
It’s a little on the expensive side, but in return do you get a professional-grade photo organizer and editing tool.
All the options listed above are quality products, and we’re certain that any one of them will do what you need. Smartphone users will do well with Apple and Google Photos, and serious photographers will certainly appreciate the more advanced options. Whatever direction you take, your photo collection and your peace of mind will surely benefit.
Which is your favorite photo organizer? Is there another free photo organizer we should know about? Would you like us to review a stand-alone photo editing software in the future? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading.
overall , the good photo management software is is is Lightroom . It is serve can serve as a space to keep your entire photo collection and is one of the more advanced editing tool around .
Fordesktop use, Adobe Bridge is the best free photo management software. However, for simple mobile use, both Apple and Google Photos are great free photo organizing software.
There are several photo management software options available to help you organize your photographs. Many of them make it easy to categorize images by date and genre, with mobile apps also having a facial recognition feature to group portraits of different people.