Hello,

Recently I have upgraded my computing environment from XP to Windows7 64-bit.

After moving my ExpressionMedia2 catalogs to new disks (with a new volume labels and different drive letters), I observed that the catalog can be read properly, but when updating a folder of that same catalog that folder is recreated on the very top of the exisitng listing of catalog folders.

To prevent this from happening one has to use the functions 'reset folder path' and 'rebuild item'.
Doing this works fine - but for the current session only.

Upon restarting EM2 and reopening that catalog (it has been saved before exiting the previous session) again and updating a folder in that catalog the selected folder is recreated on the very top (as mentioned in the beginning).

I found this rather strange and my investigation revealed that EM2 writes disk specific information like the name of volume label plus its drive letter plus some number of that disk into the catalog. For example like this: I 2023414452 CT-2008
(I = drive letter, some number, the volume label)

For some reason the function 'reset folder path' does not update this information with information from the new disk which is on drive K, with some other number and volume name 'LL-2008'.

How can this be corrected?

I cannot believe that that catalogs and/or images cannot be moved to other disks - that owuld not make any sense.
So the problem must be somewhere else, but where?
Possibly some permissions, even though the user-account has administrator privileges.

Your feedback is highly appreciated, thanks.
Hans.

Peter, thanks for your reply.

Well, I thought Lightroom to be a real DAM providing search and sort capabilites to all fields.
Apparently this is not the case.
From my point of view a real good DAM must provide proper search and sort functions, else the word 'management' in this acronym is missleading.
But then having both (Management- and Editing-) Functions in one app is probably not so good either, because both areas require specialty expertese - most likely, one area will allways be second (at least that is the reality today).

So for now it's better to keep EM2 as a DAM and LR2 as a really great and simple image editing tool.
Bummer though that many fields differ from these 2 apps.
Hope PhaseOne will take care of that drawback by making EM2 to fully comply to XMP and by bringing out a iv-catalog conversion tool.

Or is there something similar available already?
Thanks for your attention.
Cheers, Hans.

Massimo,

have you found a workaround or even a solution to the NEF rendering problem in EM2 as you have described it?
I've got the same problem (actually its an EM2 problem). so far I lived with it, but I begin to find it confusing and hope for an answer.

Thanks, Hans.

Hello,
I am trying to sort some images on any IPTC or EXIF data, but for some reason don't get it.
There is probably an easy intuitive solution (like in iView or EM2) but I was not able to figure out how to sort images say on 'Location' or 'Exposure-time' in LR2?

Background:
I have some 500 NEF-images taken of an opera during several performances. They are stored in a folder for each performance. The best shots are rated with 3 and more stars. Now I want to bring  all the rated images together in a catalog set, sort them manually and then KEEP that new manual order for additional rating to 4 and 5 stars - eventually to output on the WEB or a slide show. Also I'd like that iView EM2 (which still is my actual DAM) can recognize that sort order as well. That would be really nice.
Sorting can take place in LR or in EM2, the important thing is to keep work applied in one application to be recognized by the other (by rebuilding the metadata for each image).

For example in iView I simply sorted the images by placing them according to my liking, then I used a script to number them in sequence. Voila here is the sorted listing of image files.
This time around working with NEF and XMP files this doesn't seem to be so easy anymore.
So far I have abused the field IPTC-Field 'Status' for this purpose of exchange.

Any ideas and suggestions are most welcome.

Thanks, Hans.

Hello Yvonne,
I came across this thread. There are great replies to your memory RAM question, but there are a few more aspects to take into account because memory issues are omnipresent, be that within the camera, the memory card, the RAM etc.
So I figured I might as well provide my experience as a travelling landscape photographer.

Basically I have two setups. One mobile Studio while travelling and one home base.

My travelling Studio consits of the following:
Cameras and lenses (of course)
Plenty of Memory cards and batteries and chargers. This depends on the lenght of the trips (half or full day, several days)
A TopNotch Laptop with a large screen (16:9). In my case a SAMSUNG M40plus (really a great machine I can highly recommend).
I prefer a large screen as there is plenty of space to view/edit images and still have enough room for the toolbars from Photoshop.
Get lots of RAM for it, as this allows to use several applications at once (eg. PS CS2, Bridge, iVMP)
Also I highly recommend to get a fast CPU, though this becomes more important for the Home base setup.
Most important is to make sure to possibly double up all data (images) while travelling.
As a first instance a Laptop Disk is fine, but you shoud also get an external harddisk connected to your Laptop using the fast connection USB v2.x.
Some people suggest burning DVDs that of course is fine. But over time the price-value ratio is better for a external harddisk (that I can easily connect anywhere, especially at the home base.)
For that I am using a Western Digital Media Center as it has 3-4 memory card readers built in.
My Laptop has that too and this feature is convenient when there is no power in sight and I still need to free my memory cards to continue shooting.

My Home base Studio consists of LAN (local area network) a fast PC (this of course can be an Apple machine or a Windows XP machine).
Important is to get a very fast CPU, lots of RAM, fast disks and the capability to connect 2 screens.
One screen, the working screen should be one of high quality, possibly properly calibrated and very large.
The other screen can be any type of monitor and serves only to avoid a cluttered working screen. I use it to place the toolsbars and also to display IVMP.

The core of all this is to keep the data in a safe place. There are several options the way this can be achieved, the DAM Book decribes these options very professionally. I personally chose the following:
I bought a so called NAS-Device (Network Attached Storage) with 1.6 TB Diskspace. This NAS serves as my BigBucket. It connects to the LAN and I can easily access it from any PC (depending on LAN-configuration it could be accessed even from remote, but this implies some additional efforts to keep your data for yourself). The NAS is setup with RAID-5 (redundant array of independent disks, 5 stands for highest saftey lavel against disk failure).
To be specific it is a Irfant ReadyNAS, there are others form Snazzio, Thecus, the Cube, etc. but Irfants Device seems to be the best (http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/08/19/h_2_h_infrant/) and it does serve me very well.

The rough outline of my workflow starts with shooting images, transferring them onto my Laptop AND external disk (one may fail while under way). On the Laptop I can do sorting with IVMP and already some editing with PS CS2.
Once at home I transfer the gathered data to my NAS-Device and use IVMP to import my works from my Laptop version of IVMP to my main IVMP catalogue.
Now the hard work can begin.
But before doing so I do allways free my external disk, memory cards and my Laptop, also I get all the camera gear ready for immediate departure.

Hope this helps a little while making your choices.
You may wonder why I write such a long post. Well it simple, I learned by try and error and simply felt like condensing my experience and hence to share it with others.
Good luck and great light while shooting.