Bonsai Album website is where you can buy software. I've used it about two years. It's pretty straight-forward and easy to use, but I've made a few adjustments to the way I use it. You can keep track of data and dates, etc., and load pictures in part of it, but you need a special format in photo names/nomenclature so that you can arrange them in the file from which you load them into the software. It captures the photo easily enough, but they are stored in the individual modules and are not accessible except to view within the software. (It's not a problem).
I made a Link/Icon on my computer to the directory where the program stores the individual modules of all the data you save for a particular tree, or that you save for a few trees of a type, in one module. (It is the default search directory) If you have ten trees you will have ten modules with names you create. I have a "hold" sub-directory in that directory. Different kinds of cameras and cell phones create different format photos with different labels. I download all my photos to that "hold" subdirectory.
I have a WORD file with a list of codes I created that I use as prefixes to the camera file names, and the names of the individual trees that the codes correspond to. Eg: all figs start with a capital F. One 'Green Mound' is coded FGM. One 'Dutch Treat' forest is FDT f. One 'Dutch Treat' literati is FDT L. One 'Dutch Treat' formal upright is FDT fu. I try to keep the codes as close to what I commonly call the plant and I flop back-and-forth between Latin and common names. This is a "whatever works" system. I have 20 figs and a couple hundred trees and accents and things in process and the problem that you have to overcome is how do you find the code for something you don't reference very often, hence the list in a WORD file. You have to have a system that aids that occasional search. So, the genus and species use capital letters and the descriptive names use lower case characters. F is Forsythia, FT is Fukien Tea. No matter how your system is designed, you will have conflicts that you have to ignore. You can only recombobulate just so many times before you give up and accept that it won't be perfect. Anyway, every time I upload photos I add the code as a prefix to whatever kind of numerical nomenclature the cameras use, which is somewhere between 12 and 24 characters. They are usually a date code and a series code. You need that data to keep the photos separate and in order when you load them into the mother file. Do not mess with that series of numbers.
When you have a hundred trees and loads of photos for each tree, you have a file with a billion photos. The Bonsai Album software searches by file name and only sees jpeg files. With each photo having an alpha prefix they all bunch up, separately, by date, and individual series # within that BA directory when you are searching to load photos into the software. Outside of the software, you can see this file the same way you choose to look through any directory: big, medium or small icons, list, detail, etc. I have the directory open as an ordinary directory at the same time that I am looking through the software view of that same directory to add me in choosing what goes in and what I might skip. But they will be bunched the same order, so you can go straight to FGM and see all the Green Mound fig photos with the same coded file name. I also use the "hold" sub-directory to edit the photos and add printed info on them that say the alpha name, repotted, wired, date, etc., any info that identifies something helpful. You
cannot see the file name when you have loaded that photo into the picture section of the software module. If it is undated and unexplained you will find that you have 20 photos of unsure heritage. It becomes just a bunch of pictures of the same tree in the same habitual view.
After I have done all the reformatting, coding the file names, adding provenance, notes and data. I copy the whole lot and paste into the mother directory from which I will search for those that I want to install within the individual modules. Then, I immediately "cut" all those photos in the "hold" directory and paste them into a directory in my cellphone that I can view in the Gallery. All sorted by alpha, date, & series. Very handy without scrambling through a billion photos not in any kind of order, and with the info embossed on the photo in black or white characters. The software is pretty cheap and really useful for collectors of anything who always suffer from the same problem: putting things in some kind of searchable order.
I can't overemphasize the importance of adding the provenance
on the photo. Without information, they all begin to look alike, especially when you have the same view, two or three a year, for years in a row.
(which a lot of people already do, of course)
