Microsoft AutoAlbum

from MSFT Research bq. It is getting increasingly popular for consumers to buy a digital camera and take thousands of photos of daily life. Most consumers simply dump these photos into one directory, analogous to dumping developed prints into a shoebox. A typical user generates thousands of photos a year. Finding a photo in this shoebox directory is difficult. bq. AutoAlbum and PhotoTOC are browsing user interfaces that help solve this problem. AutoAlbum was the original UI, while PhotoTOC is a new, updated UI. PhotoTOC consists of two panes. Thumbnails of all images in the shoebox directory is shown on the right pane, as a big contact sheet. PhotoTOC automatically clusters these images. One representative photograph from every cluster is shown on the left pane. When the user clicks on a representative photograph, the right pane scrolls to show that same photograph in the center of the window. The user can then find his/her photograph with minimal scrolling on the right-hand pane. There is an online demo that looks pretty neat. You will want to have more features (ability to add EXIF data, comments, searchable database keys) but for a 1.0 release, this is not too shabby... My personal favorite for photo album and database software is PhotoDex CompuPic Pro, nice and fast and only $80