KavaSoft announces Shoebox 1.6, a professional Mac OS X application for organizing digital photos by content. Shoebox 1.6 features the ability to backup photos to external hard disks, as well as an updated interface.
Shoebox lets you organize your photos into categories according to dates, people, places and things. Looking for that photo of a yellow butterfly you took last year? Just type “Yellow butterfly” and Shoebox finds it for you instantly, and tell you when and where you took it. Looking for photos of insects? Type “insects” and the same yellow butterfly will show up among the results, because Shoebox is intelligent and knows that a butterfly is an insect.

Shoebox makes the digital workflow easier than ever for media professionals, providing a complete solution for cataloging, organizing, storing and archiving. For example, Shoebox can show which photos need to be backed up, and then burn them to a set of CDs or DVDs. Shoebox remembers which photos are on which discs, so they’re easy to find.

Shoebox is available in English, French, German, Dutch and Japanes and runs on Mac OS X Panther, and integrates with Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger. You can try Shoebox for free. Shoebox comes in two versions: Shoebox Pro (US$79.99) for digital media professionals, and Shoebox Express (US$29.99) for home users with up to 10,000 photos. You can purchase Shoebox online using PayPal or Kagi.