Photo Storage Program

So, I need to build a program to help me with my day job, and honestly, I have no idea where to start... Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Here is a description of what I need the program to do:

I need a program that will store all of the portfolio pictures from my work.

Flow/Functions:
After the completion of each job, our Production Department would photograph the final product for our records (used for various reasons: website, ads, sales meetings/proposals, etc).
It would then be uploaded to this program for our future use.

The main function comes in how photos are stored.
I need to find a way to "tag" the photos with specific information when being uploaded (customer name, invoice number, product type/category, and any other keyword we feel we would like to add to it).
These photos would then be stored (along with their associated tags) onto a predefined harddrive that will only house this information.
I need to be able to run the program, and search for these various photos by the tags I defined above.
Once I have found the photo, I need to be able to view it, save a copy of it to another location, print it out (and if possible...) have the ability to email a copy of the photo along with some unique text.

Each image will be the same file type from start to finish (jpeg/jpg) - the only differences between the files would be the file size, and file dimensions (but that shouldn't matter).
For now, the program will be housed on a single machine, and will store the photos to a local harddrive.
If possible, I would love to setup the program on multiple machines, and have them all access a drive on our network (or maybe even remotely run that program off the network?).
A ++ would be to be able to plug in a digital camera via usb or plug in the memory card (non usb hub, the card slot is on the computer itself), and be able to recognize those connections with the program, and upload from there.

This is my first huge project... And from what it sounds like - this is going to be a huge project.

If any of you have a free moment, I would really love some guidance on a good place to start.

I greatly appreciate your time and help!
Thank you!

Hi,
Just as a thought, it may or may not be of benifit to store the images into the database itself as binary data, this way you dont need to know where to save/look for them (ie a network drive somewhere) instead you look for the database, this is also where you would store your tags and any other info.

adding a save button or email button can be done easily once you get to that stage of actually making the project.

For now, thats my 2 cents :)

Thank you for your input!

How would I compress and image and tag information into a binary file?
Sorry for the noob questions, I am new to vb, so I really have no idea as to how to go about this.


Does anyone else have any input on this project?
Where would be the best place to start?
How could I go about saving tags w/ photos, and searching photos based on those tags?
How can I import/view/save photos through this program?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Hi
With the input view save question it can all be answered by looking how to store image to a database. There is heaps of examples in the codebank. As for the tags I would store them in another column of the database perhaps even same table.
Cheers

If you're using Access then forget about storing the images in the database (no, honestly, really not worth the effort!) For now it might be better to simply record filepaths for the images so that you can concentrate on the functional aspects of the program anyway.

Honestly, I was hoping that I wouldnt have to use databases like Access - I really just wanted to make something from scratch, as this program has such specific needs.

What exactly do you mean about recording file paths?

I'm really not sure what 'specific' needs have to do with this. At the heart of the project is data storage. That's what databases do. The use you put to the data to is completely irrelevant. I suppose you could use resource files to store images and work from there but the need for multiple files would quickly make this impractical especially if you want to associate tags, descriptions and so on with the files.

In an SQL database you could literally store the image complete but whilst you're developing it might make more sense to keep the filepath of the image as the primary record instead. If this was a dedicated folder then only the filename would be necessary in storage and you can construct the full path in program.

Thank you for your input!

Again, totally new to Visual Basic - so please excuse my ignorance.


I assume that Access and SQL Databases are libraries for vb...?
Do they come with vb, or are these extensions that I will need to download separately?

I've done some google/youtube searches on tutorials, but didnt really find much.
There were some youtube videos, however the persons accent was very difficult to understand.

If you can point me in the direction of some good tutorials, or maybe give me a little jump start, it would be greatly appreciated.

a good place to start would be
http://www.homeandlearn.co.uk/net/vbnet.html

they cover access databases as well :)