Dave's Favorites: Get Better Organized With PixVue

PixVue is a different sort of photo organizer. With PixVue, you extend the capabilities of Windows itself. That's pretty clever, and it's worth checking out if you're looking for a better way to manage your digital photos.

After installing PixVue, you'll find that not a lot has changed. There's no app to start, and no obvious additions to your PC. But launch Windows Explorer (or open My Pictures and choose View, Explorer Bar, Folders) and you'll see an entry called My Galleries listed under My Computer. That's a virtual location where you can create photo collections. You can make any number of individual galleries to organize your photos by topic, event, or any other scheme you can imagine.

PixVue also supercharges the Properties dialog box. When you right-click a photo and choose Properties, you'll see an enhanced zone for adding keywords and other metadata. You can also view all the exposure data associated with your images.

While PixVue is not the best image organizer around, it's handy for folks looking to add features to Windows without mastering a whole new program. And even better, it's totally free, a labor of love from developer Eamonn Coleman. To read more or download the program, visit the PixVue site.