Essential Mac/Windows graphics software: Expression Media
People who work with a lot of textures and stock need efficient ways of sorting through that stuff and image metadata is one of the best ways of finding content quickly. I have gigs and gigs of textures and whenever I get a new texture pack, I always run the images through Expression Media to tag images with descriptive keywords. Expression Media (formerly iView Media Pro), is $200, so be warned that this isn't a freebie. Recommending a paid program that does something similar to Adobe's Bridge may seem weird, but this program has a key feature similar to Aperture or Lightroom – two capable RAW image handlers I've reviewed in the past: Expression Media has the ability to sync metadata into the original files for file searches:
That makes finding textures in Maya, Mudbox or Photoshop a breeze, saving the time otherwise spent digging through folders. And, for those on Windows, these metadata searches also work in Windows 7:
So, until I can find a free program capable of cataloging and syncing metadata back into files, Expression Media is easy to recommend. It also does a lot of other handy things like HTML gallery building and JPEG rotation. I tend to use it a lot for building cross-referenced material catalogs since it's not a traditional file browser – it's an asset manager. Try the 30-day demo out. As always, I have no affiliation to any of the software recommended here, unless I've written it myself, and this app is just slightly out of reach of my Shell Scripting For Newbs skills.