I want all my DNG files to have full size previews that I can see in Portfolio or iView, especially the latter's lightbox. It's set me wondering about the best way to get full size previews for DNG's created before Adobe Camera Raw had the option to create them.

The method I've adopted is to use a Bridge find on each "bucket", listing all the items in its subfolders, then opening all of them in ACR, selecting all, and then applying Export Settings. While the find is slowish, I'm finding no problem opening a couple of thousand images at a time, and its main attraction is that it's more "inline" and right in principle, preserving all cataloguing links. An alternative, reprocessing the files with the DNG converter, would force me into duplicating the bucket folder structure, then renaming the large preview and deleting the original structure. While I'm all backed up, I'm always frightened by deleting anything!

So having put these alternatives, I just ask if there's a better way? If not, then hopefully this posting will help oithers. For me, it's almost too late - I'm babysitting a computer (background) processing all my DNG's. April 2004 right now....

John

Tim

Maybe ask in the Portfolio forum re its NetPublish package? There are a number of posters who use/implement it, and you'll soon get an idea on whether it's right for your needs.
http://www.portfoliofaq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8.

You might also look at Thin Client offerings like Citrix and TerminalServer where the cataloguing application
is hosted centrally and users interact with an image of the remote application. Ask the county's IT if they do such stuff.

John

Are you sure about this?
I thought that this undocumented EXIF (I assume the Makernote data) was extracted regardless of whether you embed the original, and that later versions of DNG converter may be able to extract some of this info. So this wouldn't be a reason for embedding.

If you can't see the DNG files' thumbnails in Windows Explorer, it may be because you are using XP Service Pack 2 which does not recognize the DNG files as pictures.

One way to resolve this is to install the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP which you can get from  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/raw.mspx.

A quick alternative is to tell Windows that DNG files are pictures. See http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/nef-windows-xp-sp2.html (near the bottom of the page) for how to do this.

Hi Peter

Being charitable at this time of year, it's certainly curious. At another time I might say it's appallingly short-sighted and has been requested many times by users.

John

Bit unfair to Portfolio, Peter. They give every (informal) indication that they will introduce writeback, just they're very slow improving the software....

With the File Info dialog you can make multiple identical changes (eg description, title, keywords, location etc) to multiple files, and it's only when you press OK that Bridge writes to the files. With the metadata panel, you enter one field value and - if you pause for a second or two - Bridge starts off writing the changes into the files. Depending on the file format, the dialog method can be much faster than using the metadata panel.

Secondly, and less importantly, you can define your own custom panels. This might be just another layout (eg location on the same panel as the keywords) but can also go as far as providing data entry screens with drop down lists and with own values, or even custom XMP data.

Yes, that's what I meant - understood.

John

Certainly. Maybe I'm being thick but can't see what URL would this be.

Good ol' tabbed text. It amazes me, because Extensis have clearly got their head around XMP and there's all sorts of XML stuff behind the app. OTOH Portfolio's VB model is quite a bit slicker than iView's, and I've written my own VB XML/XSL exporter/transformer.

John

PS Ordered the book this morning so you can have a signing session when we have that pint.

Funny how the same names crop up so often! I posted this to Geoff's enquiry at the http://www.portfoliofaq.com/forum/.

John

And he's not very happy at that, but isn't giving up hope.... Take a look at http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/news/index.php?id=P572 where I compare the latest versions of Portfolio and iView. I find it hard to imagine why someone would move from iView unless high volumes and multiuser features were important. To flesh out your comments, Peter:

"No nested Virtual Sets.  This will be a huge problem with large catalogs"
Not sure what you mean but guess it's like Catalog Sets in iView. Well, you can't do it with galleries but there's a feature called categories that is hierarchical. In my experience, people misuse such structures and should use custom fields.

"It could not convert a DNG to a full-size JPEG.  The website says that it can do this, I think, but it did not work for me."
- I confirm this

"There is no Directory view (a graphic representation of where all your images are, that looks like the drive)"
- It does operate slightly differently in that you have to add these yourself

"No indication in Galleries of the number of files included.  This is basic information in iView."
- Yes but there's a count as soon as you open a gallery. The counting in iView is better though.

"Can see and change Bridge Ratings"
- version 7 could see them and (unlike iView) almost any other XMP metadata (except GPS). 8 can see GPS. Writing is restricted to JPG and TIF as before.

"Can see, and properly render DNG files, including the full-size embedded preview."
- seems only to be up to 1024 pixels. Still testing.

"Can create and use private metadata (galleries that are based on internal categories). These virtual sets should be able to be nested."
Private metadata can even include custom XMP.

A little correction - since Portfolio 6 there's been a menu option - File > Export Field Values.

Welcome to the wonderful world of data migration.

John