Photo tags/metadata. Lossless rotation/crop

[KettyKrueger]

Hi all

I currently keep all my photos (~13k) on a Synology NAS in a folder structure based on dates. I don't edit them in any way but I do want to make it easier to find specific photos. I'm looking for an app that allows me to add tags to photos that:

a) will be embedded into the photos;
b) can be searchable on Mac and PC;
c) allow me to keep a quick list of tags to quickly apply to photos;
d) lossless rotation (as a bonus), and;
e) lossless cropping (as another bonus).

I've tried using Photos, it just doesn't suit me and my workflow, and it doesn't embed tags into the photos.

Free is preferred but happy to pay upto $50 or so.

Thanks in advance.

 

[r.harris1]

The best application I've ever used by far for this purpose is Photo Mechanic but it exceeds your budget. I think it does most of what you're asking (not sure about "d"). If you look around for free Exif editor or something similar, you'll find a bunch of stuff, though I will have only tried something like "exiftool" and you can use that to adjust the metadata associated with an image. Once you use a tool of your choice to add tags, etc, you should be able to search by keywords in the finder of this OS of your choice. It won't be as great an experience as it is with dedicated digital asset management tools Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Capture One, etc but it can be serviceable.

While it's reasonably straight forward to find a free/cheap tool to change the EXIF/IPTC data one image at a time, doing it in bulk will narrow down your range, I expect. You may want to check out RAWPower by gentlemancoders as they add some capabilities on top of Photos which may help. And actually, you may want to check out Adobe Bridge. I'm pretty sure you don't need a subscription to use it and is free, does bulk changes, etc. It doesn't allow you do use the Camera Raw plugin but since you don't edit that may not be a concern. All of the other DAMy stuff is I believe available.

 

[USAntigoon]

I agree with r.harris1.... Photo Mechanic gives you a tremendous amount of tools to manage and change EXIF and IPTC data and other features as well..
Agreed it's not that cheap, but for your management challenges, it might well be a nice "suggestion" for a nice Christmas Present..Photo Mechanic is very powerful, it takes some getting used to but there are a lot of YouTube tutorials..

 

[Ray2]

An issue will be cross platform. You'll probably have stick with established players. Here's a start: https://fixthephoto.com/best-free-photo-organizing-software.html

Mac only: Lyn, Photoscape X. Lyn ran slow and I stopped using it years ago. May be ok now. Photoscape is my default tool when I'm not in Adobe.