Hi,

I have a mess on my computer, images in different directories, some
business, some private and nothing to catelogue them or protect them
from being viewed if you have admin access to the machine which is due
to the machine being connected occassionally to many corporate
networks as I work as a consultant that moves around frequently.

Would like something which would:

1. Scan the can extract/move images into its own protected area/database.
2. Show them in thumbnail form and allow me to possibly shrink them for emailing.
3. Password protect access to the images or the program/viewer.
4. Allow me to export back to the outside world if need be.

Shareware is my usual target for a license type.

-Mao

I don't know of one tool that can do ALL of it.  But here's what I'd do...

1. Scan the can extract/move images into its own protected area/database.
===========================================================================
I'd create a shared folder (I'm assuming you're using Windows).  This
can be on your hard drive or on a remote server.  Then you can
restrict access to whomever you like.  Then, do a search on your hard
drive for all picture files (e.g. right click your hard drive and pick
search [or find] and put *.jpg for the file name).  This will create a
listing of all the picture files.  (perhaps in XP, you can view them
as thumbnails [view->thumbnails]...but I can't do it in 2000 which I
have here)  You can then highlight the desired pictures (ctrl + a if
you want to select them all) and...

a) cut and paste the files into the shared folder (moves the files)
b) copy and paste the files into the shared folder (copies the files)
c) drag the files to the shared folder (the behavior of this will
depend on whether the shared folder is on the same drive as the
original folder...this may be easier on some level...but more
confusing on another.)

2. Show them in thumbnail form and allow me to possibly shrink them for emailing.
===========================================================================
You can view folders in 2000 and XP as thumbnails in the Windows
Explorer.  I'm fairly certain you can also do it in 98 and ME too.  I
suggest that you use irfanview (freeware from www.irfanview.com). 
Here, you can also view picture files as thumbnails.  But you can also
resize pictures with this tool.  And as an additional bonus, you can
resize a large number of files using its batch processing feature. 
And yet again as another bonus, you can do a batch renaming of picture
files (which is a nice way to organize tons of pictures).  This may
help with your step one since you can rename a file, keep the original
in its place, and put a copy in a new location.

3. Password protect access to the images or the program/viewer.
===========================================================================
Password protecting the program/viewer can be a little tough since a
user could just run a different viewer to see the files.  It's easier
to just restrict access using the folder security of the shared folder
(in step 1).  There are other tools out there that can restrict
access, but I'd just settle with the OS security features.

4. Allow me to export back to the outside world if need be.
===========================================================================
I think it would be easist to just have multiple shared directories
with different security settings and then move files between the
directories.  Be careful when moving/copying the files between folders
with different secutity settings because files sometimes inherit the
new folder's security settings, and sometimes they do not.  If you do
end up using this method, you can determine the exact behavior from
Microsoft's website.

Well, I'm a bit frustrated that Google is not accepting additional
researchers, but I think this will do the trick:
http://www.xequte.com/smartpix/