please recomend me a portable photo catalog program

I'm after a PORTABLE catalog program for my photo's. I usually use picasa as it fits my needs apart from you cannot put it on a portable drive and take it to a family members house so they can see/select what photo's they want me to print. I have tried the portable version of picasa but as soon as you run it on another PC it wipes my photo's and starts cataloging the other persons photo's. This does this even if I turn ALL the drives off in the folder manager. I thought I would stick portable picasa on an SD drive then slide the lock protection across to stop the disk being written to but it still removes my database from showing. So I'm in need of a cataloger that will save thumbnails and will NOT remove them as soon as the program is run on another PC. Also if this program didn't cost alot of money that would be even better.

Thanks

 

You might want to take a look at XnView Portable.

More information on this program here.

 

I use XNView as my main viewer and as far as I'm aware there is NO option to save catalogs. but please correct me if I'm wrong. It can create contact sheets but I doubt that anybody would want to sift through loads of contact sheets.

 

"Contact sheets" means what, email addresses, names, etc.? If that's what you mean, that seems like an odd requirement regarding photo software. If you want to save contacts, use your email client's contacts feature.

I believe thumbnails displayed by photo editing programs are usually temporary files; they are generated when the photo editing program is opened but disappear when the program is closed, and this would be repeated each time the program is opened. So, I doubt you're going to find what you want.

 

No contact sheets are rows and columns of photos, google is a powerfull thing. As I see NOwhere that anybody discussed emails, or is that a how you bump your post's upto over 2500 ?
And in my FIRST post I'me asking if anybody knows of a program that will catalog my pictures with thumbnails so I can show family members.

 

IrfanViewer may be? Seems like you may of tried a few already - Picasa, Xn, you tried Picasa from http://portableapps.com/node/18122, or was it an app someone else made portable?
You can try to make your own portable apps via Cameyo (google it)
Here is a few..
http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?sc=24

 

Here is another freeware program. Not sure if it will suit your needs but it does look like a type of photo catalog program with search.

http://www.sunlitgreen.com/photo-manager.html

 

That's why I told Stewie he can make his own portable apps using cameyo. Usually a portable app created with a virtualaztion program (ThinApp, Boxed App Packer, and Cameyo) sandboxes all the setting & files to the local drive / folder where they are excuted. A much "larger" option would be to try portable VBox, load an OS and whatever apps he needs - that would surely work, but that may be considered using an A-bomb to kill an ant.
But it would get the job done.

 

I did find a portable version of lightroom but am unhappy using it, especially on family members PC as it's illegal and that makes me very un easy. i have a portable version of picasa and that does indeed save the database onto the external drive but as soon as you run it on another PC it deletes that database GGRRRrr.