Freeware Tools: PhotoGrok 2.41

Creating and managing a photo collection is not as simple as it may seem, especially when large numbers of pictures are involved. Nonetheless, using the right tools, anyone can put together albums and sort images according to various criteria. It’s fairly simple to use the PhotoGrok application. From the Folder Manager you must specify which folders you want to be analyzed. With a mouse click you can launch the analysis process – PhotoGrok will process all the files in the folders you specify and will use metadata to categorize them.

Among the dedicated utilities that can take care of such tasks, PhotoGrok uses a somewhat different approach. More precisely, this particular application organizes the pictures from one or more folders you select in accordance with the metadata contained by each image.

Through a nice and clean interface, this program makes it possible for all users to build a photo collection with a few clicks. The first thing to do is specify the directories that are handled by PhotoGrok and decide whether the subfolders will be included as well in the processing.

When generating the file tree, which is displayed in the left-side panel of the main window, the items in the selected locations are ordered according to their extension and this makes them more easy to identify.

In order to view the details for any item on the list all you have to do is simply click that image and all the available information will be shown inside the left pane. PhotoGrok is able to insert the EXIF data in the user tags you want to create and right-clicking on a row that contains such details to use them.

This software can also be used as a regular viewer and for slideshows as well since it supports this as well. Unfortunately, since it is completely written in Java, PhotoGrok may be a bit heavy on your system resources.

Except for some occasional glitches, this tool can be useful for some users, as long as they are willing to spend some time getting to learn how to fully exploit its features.