Using XP to Organize Photos

[Schade]

I have a couple of questions regarding organization of photos in Windows XP I'd appreciate any advice on.

1. My digital photo collection has grown quite rapidly since we had our first child almost a year ago. I've diligently created photo albums in Windows XP by customizing each folder of 50-100 photos to use the Photo Album template and manually picked a photo to display in thumbnail view. I love this setup, it's fun to look at the albums and it's easy for my wife to sift through and find what she wants. The problem ocurred when I copied all of these photo albums to another drive and lost the customized pictures on the icons, they all went back to the 4-pictures-per-folder icon.

I looked at the sytem files to see if there was something similar to folder.jpg like in a music folder but only found the thumbs.db file, which I don't know how to decipher.

Is there a way to copy these customized folders to another disk and maintain the selected photo album photo?

2. I know Picasa is a favorite viewer for photos with many people here. Is it correct that it uses its own database for album management, etc., sort of like a playlist? There's no way I can assign keywords and manage albums through Picasa (other than going straight to Windows explorer) and have the changes show up on all computers using Picasa on the network?

I'm assuming that I'll need to maintain photo albums on a network drive straight through Windows and then use Picasa as an enhanced viewer, utilizing the name of the folders to name (and possibly date) the photo albums.


Any words of advice and especially an answer to the first question would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

[Suhit Gupta]

I looked at the sytem files to see if there was something similar to folder.jpg like in a music folder but only found the thumbs.db file, which I don't know how to decipher.

Is there a way to copy these customized folders to another disk and maintain the selected photo album photo?
I had this exact same problem some time ago and a quick google search, plus messing with settings myself did not seem to produce anything useful. However, I was copying over a relatively small number of folders so the overhead of doing it over was small; therefore, I didn't bother searching too hard. I would however be interested in a solution like this as well.

Suhit

[Schade]

I had this exact same problem some time ago and a quick google search, plus messing with settings myself did not seem to produce anything useful. However, I was copying over a relatively small number of folders so the overhead of doing it over was small; therefore, I didn't bother searching too hard. I would however be interested in a solution like this as well.

Suhit

I also did a search before I posted here. I found plenty of articles along the lines of 'windows secrets and tips' that explained HOW to choose the picture, but not the actual mechanics of how it works.

And never mind my second question, after sifting through the topics here again, it looks like I'm simply looking for an image viewer that allows mass editing of EXIF information, that's all.

Anybody know how to outsmart XP's photo album feature?

[Schade]

I had this exact same problem some time ago and a quick google search, plus messing with settings myself did not seem to produce anything useful. However, I was copying over a relatively small number of folders so the overhead of doing it over was small; therefore, I didn't bother searching too hard. I would however be interested in a solution like this as well.

Suhit

Suhit,

After playing around some and asking on another forum (this doesn't seem to be a concern to anyone else) the only thing I can come up with is a bit of kluge, to say the least. Probably not worth the effort for most people...

If you want the thumbnails to persist after moving to another disk, don't use the Windows XP "Choose Picture" customization option. Rather, copy the picture you want to use and rename it folder.jpg. Note, this is simply mimicing what Windows does for music albums. (If anyone is reading this, you may also wish to resize to 200x200 to save space and make the file hidden.) The main difference of course is that windows can create system files name folder.jpg, while the user will create hidden files. (Only bugs me because I hide sytem files and show hidden files.)

Maybe someone could create a right-click utility for .jpgs that copies a file, resizes it to 200x200, renames it folder.jpg and makes it a system file? That'd be cool...

[Suhit Gupta]

Maybe someone could create a right-click utility for .jpgs that copies a file, resizes it to 200x200, renames it folder.jpg and makes it a system file? That'd be cool...
That would really be better, although the copy operation in Windows should also copy over some folder properties. Anyways, thanks for the information.

Suhit