Photo organizing technique or software?

[Dieter Mayr]

Maciej,

The limitations of the free version are shown here:
http://free.zoner.com/comparison.asp
The develop module for RAW is disabled in the free version, but everything else (searching, catalogue, metadata).
Metadata for RAWs are stored in XMP sidecar files, in JPEGs they are stored directly, so the information is directly in the files.
The catalogue is a SQL Database, one can select the folders that go into or should be excluded from the catalogue, it's just one calaogue possible.
Folders that are not in the catalogue can be searched and filters can be uses on a per folder base, slower then with catalogue as it has to go through the files, of course.
I don't think it's portable, did not find anything about it in the documantatio, and a quick check with regedit shows that it stores it's settings in the registry.
There is a 30 day trial version with all functionality avaialble, if you want test it yourself if it fits your needs.
http://www.zoner.com/

[JvdW]

I use ACDSee Pro (http://www.acdsee.com) as image database manager.
The program has a lot of features (and some quirks) so it takes some time to get it right.
Biggest issue with ACDSee is the fact that it uses custom XMP EXIF fields that are often lost when files are edited in other software like PWP (the data can be stored in IPTC fields and recovered later, at the cost of extra steps to the workflow)
The main reason that I stick to it is the RAW converter that has a great function to control local contrast.
I have been looking at Zoner each time they came with a new release. I have not compared their cataloging system with ACDSee Pro, but their editor is definitely better. I still prefer PWP as my editor so I keep using ACDSee for image database and RAW conversion.

John

[davidh]

ViewNX 2, but only for viewing new images or rather for deleting most of them before processing the remaining few in PWP. Occasionally I use it to display and check the focus point(s) selected by the camera.

David

[tomczak]

mjdl mentioned Diffractor and then XNView. Would you be able to point me out to their limitations? e.g. what EXIF fields are/are not editable? searchable? in either one of them? Where are the comments kept (EXIF? proprietary DB?)? Are they both portable?

I don't know about XNView, but Diffractor seems to write (same) metadata to XMP sidecar files for .CR2 images (and probably all other RAW formats). What does it mean practically? PWP, as I understand it, doesn't read XMP. What does? Would I be limited to Diffractor to read them (or search them)? If I use e.g. EXIFToolGUI to copy the content of XMP to EXIF/IPTC within the actual RAW files, would that be readable/searchable by the Diffractor again?

The whole reason for this line of questions is that I'm on a verge of re-organizing/tagging the collection. Nothing fancy, but a big job nevertheless. I'm trying to decide what could work and then go ahead with it. Ideally, I'd like to keep the metadata within the files, be able to search by keywords/other EXIF fields, and do it all with something that is no-nonsense and fairly portable (Diffractor seems to be quite nimble and small, I don't know about XNView yet).

PWP is actually quite close to what I think I need with it's User's Comments. The only thing that I don't know how to do is how to speed commenting up (e.g. next button) or how to search within the comments.

[ksinkel]

In PWP, a convenient time to comment raw files is in the raw converter during raw conversion. To do so, select the Properties tab and click the Add User Comments button. The comments you add will be stored with the output image.

Perhaps this raises the question of which file format one should use for archiving images. We have all witnessed how rapidly old file formats fade away, so If longevity is an issue for you in this decision, I would suggest archiving in one of the most popular formats. These are the most likely to be supported in the future. Practically speaking, I think that means choosing either tiff or jpeg. IMO, it precludes the camera raw format since it is specific to each camera model.

Kiril

[tomczak]

Several people mentioned iMatch, in this and other threads. Could someone offer a short explanation as to the following:

1) iMatch uses an external DB to which the image metadate can be imported, I gather. Are the two (i.e. DB and EXIF/IPTC) synced somehow? If I edit metadata the DB changes, but can I also update the within-file metadata? Conversely, if I edit EXIF of images (outside of iMatch), does the iMatch DB rescan them and pick up the changes? Even if any of it is possible, is it messy?

2) If I rearrange images by hand (e.g. move, rename, delete), how does it confuse the iMatch? Or in other words: if I start using iMatch to try to organize images, do I become married to it?

Cheers and thanks!

[alain]

Hi

I still use IDImager. Since last year this is replaced with photo supreme.

[Winfried]

Several people mentioned iMatch, in this and other threads. Could someone offer a short explanation as to the following:

1) iMatch uses an external DB to which the image metadate can be imported, I gather. Are the two (i.e. DB and EXIF/IPTC) synced somehow? If I edit metadata the DB changes, but can I also update the within-file metadata? Conversely, if I edit EXIF of images (outside of iMatch), does the iMatch DB rescan them and pick up the changes? Even if any of it is possible, is it messy?

2) If I rearrange images by hand (e.g. move, rename, delete), how does it confuse the iMatch? Or in other words: if I start using iMatch to try to organize images, do I become married to it?

Cheers and thanks!

I am an user of IMatch for nearly 10 years now. Nearly as long as I am a Picture Window Pro user. :-)
I talk about the beta of version 5.
IMatch tries to do the handling of the metadata according to the specification of Metadata Working Group (http://www.metadataworkinggroup.com/). And there are quite a lot more of metadata besides exif and iptc, for instance .xmp. And of cause there are many versions of exif and iptc. In short: metadata are a mess.

1) I just did a short test. With drag and drop I opened a jpg from IMatch in PWP, added/changed some data in the exif and the iptc data and saved the jpg again. The changed value have been shown up in IMatch. But : the original jpg contained ratings (****) and labels (green, red, yellow, ..). Since PWP does not support these (xmp-)metadata, so these information was lost. Here is PWP to blame. IMatch rereads the metadata. If there are no longer this specific metadata than the information is lost.

2) If you use any database-product forget the windows file explorer or any other tool outside the database for all kind of file operations. This is not specific to IMatch.
Organizing images consists allways of two parts: the physical structure (directory structure, i.e. year\month\day ) and a logical structure, i.e. by assigning keywords to the images. If the keywords are part of the metadata you should be able to switch to another product, that support these metadata.