Image Sorter, Freeware to Sort Your Photos

The freeware Image Sorter has been around for quite some time. I first reviewed the application back in 2007, and the changes and improvements since then justify a new review of the program. Image Sorter received a full recommendation back in 2007, can it get the same recommendation in 2011 as well? Lets find out.

Image Sorter needs to be installed before it can be used. The program interface looks nearly identical to the one back in 2007, that’s however not a problem considering that it worked well in 2007. One new feature is the ability to load images and photos not only from the computer’s hard drive or a connected storage device, but also from Flickr or Yahoo.

This is done by entering a keyword, title or tag in the search form on the right side after selecting Yahoo or Flickr as the source. Image Sorter will then pull data from the online services and display them in its interface.

If you select hard drive as the source you can use the Explorer module on the left to pick a root folder to display its photos directly in the interface. You need to enable Subdirectories under Options if you want them to be included in the search. Multiple root folders can be selected by holding down Shift or Ctrl.

Images are displayed and sorted based on the selected sorting options and filters. All photos are sorted by color by default, which can be changed to name, size, date or similarity instead. The latter are only available for local images, and not for images that are found at Flickr or Yahoo.

Controls are available to zoom in and out, to display the sorted images in fullscreen mode or to change the background color of the display. Fullscreen reduces the width of the left and right column to give more room for the column displaying the sorted photos. The program window itself retains its size.


File filters and visual filters are listed on the right side. These need to be configured before a folder is selected on the computer’s hard drive.

File Filters:
- Filename – Only display images that contain the characters entered into this form.
- Filetype – Only include photos of a specific type, for instance png, jpg or tif
- File Size – Sort by file size, low, medium and large file filters are available.
- Colors – Filter by colored or black and white photos.
- Orientation – Filter landscape or portraits.

Visual Filters:
- Example Images – Pick images by dragging and dropping them from the image area to the example images module. Image Sorter will only display images that look similar to the selected images.
- Sketch – You can draw in this module to only include images that include a similar pattern.
- Color – Pick up to four colors that should be included in the images.

Images can be selected with the left mouse button. A thumbnail preview is displayed in the interface along with information like the file name, size and dimensions.

A double-click opens the selected image in the default photo viewer. The mouse wheel offers to zoom in and out of the image preview area to take a closer look at multiple images at once.


Left-clicks on images select all of them which is handy as it is possible to copy, move or delete selected images with a right-click and a selection of the desired action in the context menu.


The Options menu at the top contains several interesting preference. It is possible to increase or decrease the amount of images pulled from the Internet (default 150), configure previews on mouse over instead of mouse click or change the spacing between images in the image area.

So what can you use Image Sorter for?
- Find all photos showing a specific person, building or landmark.
- Find themed images, for instance based on color.
- Find photos and images that look similar to a sample image.
- Make pre-selections by loading all photos into the program and using the copy or move option.

Image Sorter offers many different possibilities. The processing speed depends mostly on the performance of the computer, the selected images and filters.

Are there any negative aspects? It would be great if the application would support additional image formats, RAW image formats for instance or Adobe Photoshop PSD files come to mind. It could use a few improvements usability wise as well, for instance by adding an option to apply filters directly to the already sorted images.

All in all however, it is one of the best programs of its kind. Image Sorter worked fine on a 64-bit Windows 7 Pro test system. It is compatible with most versions and editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Interested users can download the application from the developer website.