Canto Cumulus

[brenner]

I manage the digital department of a high volume commercial photo studio. We currently archive our photos to DVD upon completion of a job. Once archived
we then drop that DVD into a program called Canto Cumulus. Cumulus is able
to create thumbnails of every file and allows us to search our entire
database of images in very specific ways and let's us know what CD or DVD the
image being searched is on. However, recently (maybe even longer than I'd like to believe) cumulus is ignoring files... Sometimes entire job folders and even entire DVD's. We have consultants who have been in direct contact with Cumulus in Germany and to make a long story short...after spending tons of $ in consulting we still have no solution and my workflow is being brought to a hault...Cumulus support is worthless and I was hoping someone out there may be able to advise or at least let me know I'm not the only one in the world with this problem.

[Doug Nelson]

Though I didn't have the problem you describe, I was less than impressed with Cumulus. They do have some remarkable features that no one else has, but if you don't need those features they fall behind quickly. If you do need those features, then there's really no alternative.

From your description, it sounds like you're not using any of those features. If you're running Windows, I'd recommend ThumbsPlus. If you're on a Mac their are less choices. Extensis Portfolio would be the primary one, but I had it crash randomly on me (though I was using the Windows version).

Though it's pretty old now, you can read my opinion here.