Files – Single-file photo gallery and file manager
I used to really like Google Picasa, but then it stopped working on Linux, and then at all [1]. It was fantastic and fit all of my ideas on how photo organization was supposed to work.<p>I got fantastic feedback when I recently asked about a personal wiki that would fit my criteria [2], so I figure I&#x27;ll ask here for a photo library management app.<p>My use case isn&#x27;t just personal photos, but also concept art. I would love to replace the scourge that is Pinterest (which I shamefully admit I use). I used Picasa for this use case before it died.<p>Here are the features I would like in a photo management system:<p>- Importing photos should be as easy as drag and drop or &quot;add directory&quot;.<p>- Images in the library should be mirrored to an internal store independent of the greater filesystem.<p>- It needs to support rich tagging. Images should be easily enumerable by tag.<p>- It needs to store all metadata in a central database or file that I can easily distribute and back up. (As opposed to writing the data into the images directly.) It would be nice if the primary keys to image were signature-based rather than filename (and especially not full file path) as it could live on different systems.<p>- Group by GPS coordinates would be nice. Even better if it can pull the location name.<p>- Group by date taken.<p>- Find or automatically ignore&#x2F;remove duplicates.<p>- Support for a NAS or cloud backup would be fantastic. Especially if it also backs up the database.<p>- It should generate pre-computed thumbnails so scrolling a large library doesn&#x27;t show blank images, but keep them off to the side so it doesn&#x27;t impact backup.<p>- It should have RAW support, but doesn&#x27;t need editing&#x2F;adjustment capabilities. (If not available, I suppose I could pre-process the RAWs.)<p>- Video support would be extremely nice too, but it doesn&#x27;t need to have any editing or miscellaneous features.<p>- It would be nice to keep galleries separate, or at least in different namespaces so I can reuse tags. Family, real estate, conceptual&#x2F;renders, etc.<p>- Replication across multiple devices would be a nice to have, especially if it can update tags and metadata across machines.<p>- Open source would be nice, but I&#x27;d be happy with paid&#x2F;commercial software if it did what I wanted.<p>- Multiplatform support (Linux, Windows, Mac) would be extremely nice. Even nicer if it supports mobile too.<p>- It should be snappier than a web-based gallery.<p>- That said, internet web access (like photos.google.com) would be killer.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30089858" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30089858</a>