Yet another question about which DAM tool to pick

[dkperez]

I"m a photographer with around 50,000 images.  Shooting a very few jpegs, and Fuji S2 and Nikon D2x RAW.  Running on PC with XP64.

I've been looking at cataloging tools (or DAM tools) I reckon and I'm not finding what I think I want:

1.  Automatic creation of keywords or catalog groups, or whatever itis that you search by.  But NOT just automatic creation, INTELLIGENT automatic.  I want each directory in the path made a keyword, AND the various pieces of the filename.  For example:

p:\photo\mammal\deer\whitetail\buck in velvet, sibley sp, sunset DSCF1234.NEF

SHOULD become the hierarchical keywords

photo, mammal, deer, whitetail, buck in velvet, sibley sp, sunset, and DSCF1234.

automatically.  I shouldn't have to do all this by hand.

2.  Searching - hierarchical - So, if I put in "deer" for a search I should get all the deer in the system.
BUT, if I then put in "sibley" I should ONLY get those deer that also have "sibley" as a keyword - this should be
whether its sibley, sibley twshp, sibley sp, etc......  But, if I also put a keyword on the above image "vacation 2005"
and I put in vacation 2005 I want to see everything from vacation 2005.  If I then put in deer I ONLY want to see
the deer from vacation 2005 - whether from sibley or colorado or wherever.

3.  Completely compatible with all the standard file formats - NEF files should pick up the rotation information and display
correctly.  JPEGS, likewise.  DNG likewise.  AND .psd files SHOULD NOT require that ridiculous "maximize compatibility" that inflates the
file size 50% or more to display correctly.  I've got images that are over 220MB and when saved with maximize compatibility
they'll go 390MB...

4.  FAST, FAST, FAST.  At LEAST as fast as Bridge.  I should not have wait 20 seconds for every image to display when I go
from a thumbnail to an image.  ESPECIALLY in the slideshow.

5.  Good integration with Photoshop.  Whatever I select in the tool should be able to be opened, edited, and saved in Photoshop, with
the changes immediately reflected in the catalog...

6.  Which takes me to having the catalog display the images and their thumbnails as they actually are - by which I mean if I use ACR to
adjust a RAW file, the catalog should show the thumbnail and image as changed...

7.  Offline storage - whether CD or DVD, the catalog should carry the name of the storage media and make it very obvious which one needs
to be loaded.  BUT, I shouldn't HAVE to load it to look at thumbnails, do searches, or examine images.  Only when I want to actually edit
images from the medium...  And it should support the Joliet?  naming so I can have a useful name for the medium.

8.  Ability to handle lots of images without bogging down.  I've got 50K.  I'll have more.  I don't want to have 10 catalogs.  And when I put
in a DVD with 500 or so RAW files on it, I need it to process into the catalog fast.  Not hang up or bog down and take all night.

I'm sure there are other nice-to-haves, but these seem like the bigger things that should be available.

So, am I in search of the holy grail or is there anything out there that comes really close to the above?

[peterkrogh]

Well, dkperez (if that *is* your real name),

What you ask for does not exist.  Some of it is in iView, some in Portfolio, some in Bridge.  Some can be added via scripting, and some would only happen by  total reorientation of a product (hooking a database on to Bridge, or creating a code-level integration of Photoshop and other DAM software.)  Some will only be possible with new OS, and some will require new hardware capabilities.

I agree that all of these would be useful.   So would a 10mm-300mm f/1.4 zoom with no barrel distortion, image softness or chromatic abberration, that weighs under 1 pound and costs less than $1000.

Peter

[David Arnold]

Re #1, it is available. It's called a highly trained assistant: M.A. in library science, experienced in keywording, knowledgeable about photography. However it costs about $60,000 a year.

David

[dkperez]

Yup, I'm actually me (the d is for David)...  Just a boring old guy looking for a good tool that apparently doesn't exist...  Peter,
you and the folks in here seem to have a really good grasp of where DAM is and is going, which is why I asked the question
here.

I don't have your book yet but I've read the chapter on the website and looked at some of the other stuff...  And I've put
off and put off getting things organized...  I've got to start getting my act together.

Since all this doesn't exist in a single tool, can we take out what Bridge does since I can use that with Photoshop...

I've played with iView and done a LITTLE scripting - I'm far from an expert.  But, in iIview I keep running into major roadblocks
like performance degradation and having to turn on maximize compatibility and the tool (if I understand correctly) not using the sidecar
files to obtain the current ACR settings...  Not to mention the ridiculous new price...

So, I'm now looking at Portfolio, but although it does some keywording it doesn't seem as flexible as iView.

Its a serious question, not a troll...  So, how do you feel the current tools measure against what I've listed?  Is there one that
comes closest, and has the likelihood of providing the most capability?  Is there a way to overcome the performance problems and
limitations with iView?

[peterkrogh]

David,
I think the closest this to what you listed is what I outline in the book.  And as I look at the current landscape, I don't actually see that changing anytime terribly soon (except that I'll replace ACR3 with either Bridge2/ACR4 or Lightroom.) The iView parts will stay the same for me.

I do agree that what you list is desired.  Much of it can be done now manually, (or with a bit more waiting than you want, or other workarounds, like using maximize compatibility.)

Peter

[David Anderson]

David,
As Peter has already indicated, we are all in search of the Holy Grail of Digital Asset Management but it doesn’t exist. We have to make the best of what tools are available...

Let me try to address your first two points.

Extensis Portfolio offers some automatic keyword creation options that go part way towards your requirement. One of the advanced cataloging options within Extensis Portfolio is ‘Create Keywords from Path’. This offers four sub-options, i.e. ‘File Name’, ‘File and Folder Name’, ‘Path Name’ and ‘Path Name with Volume’.

Also, under Catalog Administration options you have a checkbox called ‘When Adding Keywords, Separate Phrases into Distinct Keywords’.

For example, if you ticked the above checkbox, set the option to create keywords from the Path Name and then catalogued your sample file (p:\photo\mammal\deer\whitetail\buck in velvet, sibley sp, sunset DSCF1234.NEF) the result would be the automatic creation of the following 12 keywords.

photo
mammal
deer
whitetail
buck in velvet, sibley sp, sunset DSCF1234.jpg
buck
in
velvet,
sibley
sp,
sunset
DSCF1234.jpg

Note the inclusion of the final comma in two of these keywords. That is an unfortunate side effect of your file naming format. Obviously these results are not exactly what you require but if you were to find a way to modify your filenames so that multiword descriptions were connected by underscores rather than spaces (e.g. buck_in_velvet) then the automatic keywording process would work more effectively. Various batch file naming utilities could easily replace all spaces embedded in a filename with underscores. A second pass of batch renaming could then replace all instances of ',_' with a space. BreezeBrowser Pro could handle this task.

Cataloging after such filename changes would then create the following keywords. It's still not quite there but it's getting much closer.

photo
mammal
deer
whitetail
buck_in_velvet sibley_ sp sunset_DSCF1234.jpg
buck_in_velvet
sibley_sp
sunset_DSCF1234.jpg

As far as your second question is concerned, your detailed search requirements are fully handled by Portfolio and you can even save such searches in a Smart Gallery that will automatically keep itself up to date as more images are added to the catalogue.

Hope this helps.

David

[roberte]

Hi David,

Have you looked at DigitalPro for Windows?

www.proshooters.com

-- Robert.

[dkperez]

Yeah, I was pretty sure my desired list was going to be beyond our tools at this time... 

I've been able to write scripts in iView that do the catalog sets for path and filename components...  So, there
my problem is more one of performance.  I'll have to look more closely at Portfolio and seehow well it handles
offline media...

And, I'm going to go get DigitalPro and give it a look starting now.......

AND, Peter, I'm gonna get a copy of the DAM book this week (I'd have gotten it last week when I heard
about it but I had a little problem and I'm still emailing from the hospital...)

Thanks for the info guys, I'll just have to keep playing with tools for the time being!

[Chris Bishop]

Hope the hospitalisation isn't serious-BUT recouperation may well be the time to get started on sorting!
The trainnig CD's in my opinion are every bit as good-if not better than the book. I learnt more from the CD's- but I had read the book so I had a grounding?
Chris Bishop

[johnbeardy]

David

You'll find Portfolio has the advantage when dealing with offline images. While iView stores previews in its catalogue file, pushing it faster towards its 2Gb limit, Portfolio stores larger ones as jpegs in a separate folder. So you can work with more records. However, its import and export tools are more limited - it can't read xmp files, or write them, and can only embed metadata into jpeg and tif.

John

[dkperez]

Pulled down DigitalPro last night and attempted to install it.......  I'm running SQL Server 2005 on this box so it has docnetfx version 2....... 

Yup, Digitalpro went out and tried to download the old version of dotnetfx....  Uh Uh...  How 'bout a version that'll work with the current
version of dotnet...


As far as the hospitalization - no biggie, just calibrating some meds.  I've got the laptop and the 400GB external that has all the images on it. 
So, I've been working on cleaning up stuff all week -should be done somewhere around the summer of 2009!  Which led me to a renewed
interest in a DAM tool 'cause its clear I've got to find a better solution for finding images..... 

So far its really interesting.  I'd have trouble quantifying them, but Portfolio and iView each have their strengths and weaknesses, and the
weaknesses seem quite different...  I think its just a matter of figuring out which is least problematic...

[David Anderson]

I'd have trouble quantifying them, but Portfolio and iView each have their strengths and weaknesses, and the
weaknesses seem quite different...  I think its just a matter of figuring out which is least problematic...

David,
If the budget isn't too tight, then you could consider buying both Portfolio and MediaPro. I bought Portfolio first, before I had ever heard of MediaPro, but eventually realised that its lack of ability to embed metadata in DNG files was a significant limitation. I then bought MediaPro, and in due course found that it too had key features missing, e.g. lack of a Smart Gallery facility. I recently decided to maintain my 17,000 item image catalogue in both products. MediaPro is my primary tool (and where any additional new metadata is entered) but I switch to Portfolio on a regular basis. This approach does require embedding any new metadata back into my DNG, TIFF and JPEG files to enable Portfolio to keep up to date. However, the majority of my metadata is added on initial ingestion, via Adobe Bridge, so resyncing metadata is not a significant issue for me.

I due course I hope to be able to drop one or other of these DAM products, but in the meantime running both of them in parallel appears to be quite a practical proposition.

David  

[johnbeardy]

Another issue to add is what you said about wanting to see your raw adjustments, so look at Lightroom when it's out, or consider using the DNG format since its previews are visible in iView or Portfolio.

John

[Chris Bishop]

Do you have many duplicates?
ACDSee Pro, which is available as a trial download has a neat feature, that I haven't found elswhere. It can search within a folder/sub folder structure or between two structures for duplicates. It then lists them and lets you decide what to do with them. It'll only be needed the once.
My DAM s/ware doesn't import duplicates, but doesn't let me choose which one to import. First time I ran it it found nearly 1000 duplicates. I deleted-sorted in batches. I had to re-run ACDSee Pro each time but it got quicker as there where fewer duplicates each time. Well worth doing at the start of any tidy up process. I actually have a copy as I thought it a good catalogue program until I came across Peter on the web. I went downhill fast, but am now clambering back up. Slowly.
Chris Bishop