Image Management Software For Business

Many businesses today use their own digital asset management software and why not? These tools help any company be more organized and improve digital collaboration. But if you’re looking to buy an image management system, how do you know what features to look for and which vendor offers the best solution?

Our image management software reviews can help. We review all the top products and give you unbiased feedback to make sure your business finds the right product.

 Adobe Lightroom.

Best for cloud storage ($9.99 per month).

Adobe Lightroom - cloud-based photo management

Adobe Lightroom is a cloud-based photo management software that lets you edit, organize, store, and share your photos across any device.

It comes with AI-technology to automatically manage numerous pictures at once and save all the edits done on your smartphone. Moreover, it provides a machine learning feature that recognizes people and themes and creates albums on its own.

Initially, you get 1 terabyte of cloud storage for free, which is enough for most graphic designers and mid-sized businesses. However, you can buy more storage whenever required.

It also leverages non-destructive edits to eliminate the requirement of keeping multiple copies of a photo. This means you can save editing adjustments while preserving the original images and changes in the same picture.

Key Features:

  • Image Labels – Leverage organizational tools, including ratings and flags, pictures marks, and instantly create albums with a single click.
  • Adobe Sensei – Its machine learning automatically recognizes the faces, locations, objects, themes, and colors in your images. This feature helps you find the photos you are looking for – whether you added the relevant keywords or not.
  • Photoshop on the iPad Integration – Directly send your images from the Lightroom library to Adobe Photoshop on your iPad and vice-versa.

Pros:

  • Auto-tagging of images for easier searchability.
  • Easily add photos from desktop, mobile, or web.
  • Upload images from messages and email attachments directly.
  • Organize images through ratings, flags, and albums.
  • It takes an automatic backup of your images.
  • Lightroom also helps you manage the image library from any mobile device or computer.
  • It offers access to all the files that you want to share from any device.
  • Lightroom comes with step-by-step how-to guides and tutorials to help you get started.

Pricing:

You can get Adobe Lightroom as part of Adobe Creative Cloud for $9.99 per month.Try Adobe Lightroom

 Adobe Bridge.

Best overall photo management software ($20.99 per month).

Adobe Bridge: digital asset management app

Adobe Bridge is a digital asset management app that enables you to preview, edit, organize, and publish multiple photographs quickly. It also allows you to edit metadata and add labels, keywords, or ratings to organize your images.

  • Free Plan: ✅
  • Priced from: $0 (Bridge is included in the Adobe Cloud, starting at $9.99 per month, or as a standalone app for free).
  • Exporting options: Batch exports, scaling options, multiple formats.
  • Image editing: Resizing, scaling, and linking to more advanced editing tools like Photoshop.
  • Tools for image visualization: Thumbnails and rich previews.
  • Organization options: Filters, labels, ratings, metadata, keywords, searching, and collections.
  • Publishing tools: Exporting to editing tools and to local hard drives in DNG, TIFF, and PNG formats.
  • RAW image support? ✅

Adobe Bridge has a wonderful workflow and interface, yet it’s not that popular with users outside of the Adobe community. Having said that, it’s actually completely free to use if you sign up for an Adobe account or log in with your Facebook profile.

The point of Adobe Bridge is to centralize your photos to link with all other Adobe software, like InDesign and Photoshop. So, there’s the added benefit of that, but you can still utilize the organizational tools if you’re not paying for other Adobe products.

The interface has a learning curve, like all Adobe software, but a few hours inside Bridge reveals the advantages that professional photographers enjoy with filters, libraries, and publishing.

I particularly like that you can see your photo thumbnails and locate them within seconds if you tag them with labels or place them in folders. Pair that with bulk imports and exports and we have one of the best image management software options to choose from.

You may also be interested in:

 Bynder

Bynder image management software
  • Free Plan: ❌ – a free 30-day trial is available.
  • Priced from: Pricing requires you to book a demo. Custom plans are based on storage usage, users, and the number of modules you need.
  • Exporting options: There’s a download button with options for quick cropping, multiple formats, and sizes. It also has channel-specific exporting.
  • Image editing: Cropping, bulk editing, an inline editor, template builder with drag-and-drop, layers, and filters
  • Tools for image visualization: Collections with thumbnails, a template designer, and visual editors. The file previews show images, PDFs, and videos in high-resolution.
  • Organization options: Tags, filters, collections, asset metadata, and a Google-style search for locating items.
  • Publishing tools: File embed codes for placing images online, sharing with specific users, and publication links to distribute the media.
  • RAW image support? ✅

Bynder sells as separate product suites including the digital asset manager (for image management), a creative workflow tool, video brand studio, analytics, and more. Each module is sold on its own but you can speak to a sales representative to either sign up for the digital asset manager by itself or pair it with one of the other tools. As for image management, Bynder offers a compelling interface for organizing files and editing everything from photos to videos and presentations. The inline editor provides drag-and-drop elements for making full marketing materials or fun presentations with overlaying text, video, and images.

Bynder serves as more of a business asset manager, but it’s possible that personal users find value in the rapid-fire designer for changing elements and scaling images in an instant. The Bynder image manager also provides strong sharing and collaboration elements such as real-time edits and sharing with specified users. You receive an email when someone makes a change, and you can organize designs and images for campaigns and send them to the right channel for publishing.

2. Google Photos + Backup and Sync

Google Photos image management software
  • Free Plan: ✅ (up to 15GB of storage).
  • Priced from: $1.99 per month for 100GB.
  • Exporting options: Quick Download button to export the original file to a hard drive.
  • Image editing: Quick lighting fixes, filters, rotating, cropping, aspect ratio changes, color adjustments.
  • Tools for image visualization: Thumbnails based on date and suggestions for albums.
  • Organization options: Albums, archives, dates, times, location tagging, and favorites. There’s also a search bar.
  • Publishing tools: Send to a shared album, order custom prints, create a shared link, and send it to Facebook or Twitter.
  • RAW image support? Sometimes. There’s a file size limit that severely restricts RAW files.

Google Photos boasts a sleek and simple organization area for your photos, including a free plan that supports the saving of up to 15GB of data. You can also opt for unlimited storage if you’re okay with Google Photos optimizing your media as smaller file sizes. This isn’t great for professionals or users who want to maintain the original file quality, but it’s nice for personal use.

Other than that, Google Photos is the ideal cloud storage for automated backups from your phone, computer, and other devices. You gain access to your photos on any of these devices, and you can even see the images when you’re offline.

Organization is done manually or automatically. Essentially, every item you upload is categorized in some way, whether it’s from the location or the time you took the photo. Also, Google Photos offers slideshow creation and plenty of folders and archiving tools.

The search module uses Google technology to deliver rapid results and accurate images. It’s also worth mentioning that all files you save are shareable to your friends via services on your phone, like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Bluetooth.

4. Magix Photo Manager Deluxe

Magix Photo Manager Deluxe
  • Free Plan: ❌ – a free trial is available.
  • Priced from: $49.99 (one-time payment). Upgrades are $29.99.
  • Exporting options: Bulk and individual exports, with common file types.
  • Image editing: Sharpening, photo filters, effects, cropping, and level horizon.
  • Tools for image visualization: Thumbnails and automated collection highlights.
  • Organization options: Metadata, filters, names, events, and location tags.
  • Publishing tools: Export to all conventional file formats. Send to other Magix products like the Slideshow Maker.
  • RAW image support? ✅

The Magix Photo Manager Deluxe software is a popular choice of image manager with a one-time payment and constant feature updates. You’re able to upload, browse, and organize your image collections without much hassle and watch as the automated photo organizer suggests interesting edits for you.

The tool has an option to instantly improve the look of your panoramic shots. It’s also nice to see that you can import media from the cloud, your camera, or a scanner you have in your office.

What’s more, is that the Magix Photo Manager Deluxe software includes automated features for improving and filtering out images that are blurry or not up to professional standards.

You’ll even find several privacy protection elements such as backup copies and a system restore. The password protection is ideal for keeping out intruders, and you can even burn your image files to a CD or DVD. Along with an impressive set of editing tools, Magix Photo Manager Deluxe looks like a wonderful image management solution.

5. StudioLine Photo Basic

StudioLine Photo Basic
  • Free Plan: ✅
  • Priced from: Free for the Basic version and $70 for the Classic version.
  • Exporting options: Send to editing software and as XML or plain text files to import into just about any software. Send to email, printers, web galleries, or cloud CD burning programs.
  • Image editing: Sharpening, smoothing, white balance, hue correction, cropping, scaling, and more.
  • Tools for image visualization: Thumbnail images, location-based suggestions, and time-based thumbnail slideshows.
  • Organization options: Filters, tagging, folders, geotagging, keywords, categories, and default descriptors based on automated tools. Ratings are available as well.
  • Publishing tools: Send to Flickr for immediate publication.
  • RAW image support? ✅

StudioLine Photo Basic stands strong next to the competition because of its powerful free version and comprehensive built-in editing tools. Security and privacy are touched on with watermarking and backups. You can link the software to other StudioLine products for extensive editing, or consider taking advantage of the Photo Basic editing by using the histogram and color profiles.

A unique part of the StudioLine Photo Basic software is its ability to support audio clips. For instance, you may have a slideshow with music that you can enhance in the software or even associate the music with certain photos in your collections.

StudioLine Photo Basic also supports video clips without any problems. There aren’t many editing features for videos, but you can still store and organize them with your photos.

I’d like to see additional exporting options, but the Flickr publication tool works wonders for those with Flickr profiles.

Conclusion

For businesses with large digital asset collections, managing them efficiently can be tricky. The sheer volume of data should not discourage you from organizing it effectively. Good image management practices can help you get better search results, eliminate the possibility of legal issues, create more compelling content and improve employee collaboration.

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