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I shoot in raw+jpeg mode. Mainly because I like to do post processing, but my wife doesn't wan't to be bothered with that. She likes to be able to take the photo and upload it to facebook without any other steps.

After a session out with the family, I can easily come home with 300+ photos. Most are good, but some are not even worth keeping. They may be blurry, over exposed, etc...

Right now I go through the files and delete any jpeg/raw combo that I don't want. Is there any (preferably free) software that will help manage them? It would be nice if it would link the two together so when I rename/delete/move one it does it with the other as well.

ps.
If you have any tips on how you manage your files, I am all ears.

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If you are looking for a free option Picasa is probably your best bet. You can match it up with Gimp to do some more advanced editing. The preferred solution by many is Adobe Lightroom, which you can find on sale for around $130USD right now I believe.

Depending on the camera that you bought, you likely received a disc of software with it that may even include some pretty good digital asset management software of its own.

Resources

This question that has many answers might help you, although it does cover paid as well as free options: What software is focused on reviewing and organizing images?

A great group of articles can be found at this link: http://www.neocamera.com/article.php?id=dam-software It explains in more detail about how using digital asset management software can benefit the photographer, as well as going into detail about the paid options available.

A blog post at this very site may help you out as well, it specifically outlines the options available in Adobe Lightroom, but the same basic feature set exists in any digital asset management software such as Picasa or Apple Aperture. Here is the blog post: http://photo.blogoverflow.com/2011/10/lightroom-fundamentals/

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Possible update given that Google has since killed Picasa? \$\endgroup\$
    – inkista
    May 22, 2016 at 17:37
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As the JPG images can easily and accurately be recreated from the RAW files, once your wife has finished the upload of images to Facebook then delete the JPG images. It may seem a good idea to keep both now, but you will quickly either run out of storage or realise the cost of constantly expanding it.

Keeping just the RAW files does not loose you any data but certainly does simplify your file management and save considerable space in your storage medium of choice.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Unfortunately that is not true. Many people have trouble getting images from RAW files that match the quality of JPEG images. There are a number of related questions on this forum and that is mostly because the in-camera conversion is not always doable exactly as is by RAW conversion software. \$\endgroup\$
    – Itai
    Oct 25, 2011 at 3:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ Itai - If the correct software is used then it certainly IS possible to get good results. You said yourself, "is not always doable" and this is not the same as "is impossible". Personally I shoot only RAW, as do many professionals, and the results in to JPG are not compromised due to this process due to utilization of the correct software/process. \$\endgroup\$
    – Barry Semple
    Oct 25, 2011 at 4:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Itai depends on the software doing the conversion; Photoshop saves its answers in the XMP, so could be reproduced simply and you would expect the manufacturers software to reproduce the same or very similar results (Canon's DPP even let's you store your tweaks to settings, so that you could even reproduce your later versions) \$\endgroup\$
    – Rowland Shaw
    Oct 25, 2011 at 7:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ At least with Olympus Software, the raw file keeps all the settings used in camera, so you can "develop" the jpg axactly as if it would have been produced entirely on-camera, so I like the option of keeping just the raw. Actually my current workflow is entirely in raw, I filter the pictures in raw an then just use bulk develop. I suppose Nikon, Canon and others would work similarly. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jahaziel
    Oct 25, 2011 at 16:37
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    \$\begingroup\$ A number of you got confused by my answer :) I did not say that one cannot get good results but that one cannot easily get the same results which is what throwing out the JPEGs cause one to lose. Photoshop and the like do their own transformation, not the same one as the camera either. If one spends time working on it, you may even get better results. \$\endgroup\$
    – Itai
    Oct 26, 2011 at 0:14
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Lightroom is worth its price for this part of the workflow alone. Lightroom will associate jpeg images with RAW, and can stack the jpeg behind the RAW, so that you do not mistakenly edit it.

In Lightroom, you simply begin viewing images in the "Library" module. I use the 'P' key to 'pick' the images that are good. You can also tag really bad images for deletion with the 'X' key. This just tags the images. When you are sure you are ready to delete, then you tell Lightroom to delete tagged photos. This will delete the RAW+jpeg.

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You could checkout Mylio for managing you photo library. They have a free tier that's limited in functionality. You need the paid plan (10 USD per month) for "raw support", but if I'm correct that only applies to raw processing. It should still handle all the images as a pair in the free version.

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