I’ve been using ACDSee forever to vaguely organize my files, but I’ve been looking at tools on the Mac to do the same. The nice things about both these tools I’m looking at is they allow saving of catalogues (in my case, I’m interested in being able to use a single catalog across multiple systems)

QPict ($35)

• cheap
• very fast intial importing (instant access, backgrounds processing)
• keyboard everything, some customizable
• – keywording is funky (doesn’t parse commas, can’t add multiple keywords at a time?
• – no paned/organization view?

iView Media Pro ($199)

• cross-platform
• free catalog reader for redistribution of your categories
• Folder watching automatically imports files, but not subfolders? (I still like how ACDSee does things)
• As of 2.6.4, supports Spotlight
• Nice organization and info panes
  • – only one or the other can be active at a time
• – can’t click in and add metadata by typing
• – crappy keyboard commands

iView is pretty close to what I need, marred primarily by interface issues. Here’s my ideal list of things that a photo management app could do:

• easy-click editable fields
• Fully reassignable keyboard command
• PathFinder like ‘Drop Stacks’, and a toolbar to manipulate (tag, organize, etc) stacks
• Easy dynamic filtering (say in a bar at top — even more powerful when combined w/ drop stacks)
• Smart sets (creation of dynamic sets based on combination of metadata)
• Better views (like MSR Media Browser)
• Web accessible/programmable backend