I have around 6K++ photos in my iPhoto album, and it's getting to be a headache managing it. iPhoto just seems so disorganized, and the keyword systems is just not intuitive at all.

I also use Lightroom, but it's more of an editing tool than a photo manager.

On my PC before, I found that Picasa was excellent at managing photos; very easy to use and fast. Unfortunately, Picasa is not available for Mac OSX.

I also stumbled on this program called JetPhoto Studio that looks promising, but I have yet to learn how to use it.

How do you guys organize your photos? What software do you use? Any tips you would like to share?

Thanks in advance!!!

-Nick

I use Lightroom for organizing my images. Bridge is too slow for me and even with iPhoto 08, I'd still use Lightroom for its simplicity. I currently at least 50K photos in my library right now including images shot with film.

The key is how you import them into Lightroom and organize them afterwards.
Here are some tips:
1. Import a shoot to a specific folder(e.g. year, date, or shoot)
2. Add keywords to that particular shoot, and other metadata such as copyright info, contact details. You can make this even quicker if you've created a metadata preset. You can also load a Develop Preset or Settings here to make life easier.
3. After importing the images, go to the Library Module and flag selected images by pressing P on the keyboard. You can filter them afterwards by showing only images you flagged with Pick.
4. Add your Picked images to a Collection so you can view them afterwards.

You should also have an organized method of naming your images. You can batch rename in Lightroom but I find Batch Rename in Bridge to be faster and intuitive, then import them in Lightroom.

just started to use aperture for organizing my pics. haven't tried lightroom but i'm very pleased with aperture's photo management. you have so many options during import and their presents just makes life easier. but i guess i've just touched the surface of aperture's potential so i will still keep on exploring it. hehe!