Using II.

[Niall Horley]

As dawnne stated they are from rawshooter, they are similar to xmp files except they are not in a open format. So they contain rating information and details on how to develop the photo.

It looks like I will need to find another way to move these files. Although by the sounds of it, if I change the modification date back they would then move into the correct directory. I assume that the 00001,00002 was because the macro needed modifying to use the correct proportion of the file name.

Thanks

Niall

[Dawnne Gee]

of course, if Marc got really bored one day and decided to treat .rws, .bib, and .wthe files special like he does .xmp, he'd probably be an even bigger hero than he already is!


....if that's possible....



....the 'bigger hero' thing, i mean....


{.wthe = what the heck else, as in 'some other proprietary implementation'}

[Niall Horley]

its nice to know he handles xmp, especially as I about to start using lightroom hopefully tomorrow  when it is released.

Niall

[Tom]

Hi,
Well, I have been practicing with II more and have not decided where I am going to put the pictures finally yet but have one question.
I have a copy in Bridge, a copy under pictures on my hard drive and backups to a external hard drive. They are listed as test1 and when I do this several time it just makes _1 _2 copies so they are all organized. However if I would like a different name for the test1 folder say san diego where would I input that information. I have looked but have not found an answer. I have the naming down well and next I am not certain I am going to use the format exactly as I have it but think I might like to name the folders or maybe go to the DAM book numbers system.
I have not decided on LR or iView yet so I am still at the basic level.
I will let you know, you already do, this is not easy for me but I will get it.

external drive breakdown looks like this:Photos is name of external drive.


Photos/pictures/imageingesterbackup/test1/2006/09/2006-10-19/wtm_20061019_3493.dng
I also have a duplicate for post processing currently and this I may end up doing after ranking etc in Bridge or what I decide to use finally.

If you have some suggestions I would be grateful.
Thanks
Tom

[Dawnne Gee]

its nice to know he handles xmp, especially as I about to start using lightroom hopefully tomorrow  when it is released.

i have been very intrigued by lightroom throughout the public beta, and considered its purchase to ultimately be a small amount in business terms, so i happily made an advance purchase on it. i'm looking forward to it, too.

however, throughout the public beta, i found that while its controls are phenomenal, its support of DAM principles is virtually invisible. Peter and others have some very clear thoughts on this side of Lightroom in other boards in this forum. to be honest, with all the work that Peter and others have done with the Bridge Scripts (DAM{n} fine software, if i may be so bold) and the ease of workflow it provides, I don't know that Lightroom will be a real consideration for day-to-day use for me even if future versions incorporate good DAM principles. i see myself using it for tweaking those marginal shots and that's about it. between Bridge and Lightroom, i see Adobe in conflict with itself, and having watched adobe subsume Macromedia, which had previous subsumed Allaire, the understanding that Adobe is in conflict with itself on its own software, not software it inherited through the merger process, is very depressing. what an unfortunate over-expenditure of engineering that could have all gone much farther to support our community if they were truly focused providing a product to the professional photographic community like they claim Lightroom is!

but the software production process is a nefarious one, and this is still a young and growing market that hasn't clearly defined itself. the camera manufacturers treat us with the same basic level of misunderstanding, if you think about it.

but to keep this on track with imageIngester, if i may be so bold, methinks you are putting it into the wrong point of your workflow. ideally, you should be using II or IIP to bring the photos in from your camera or card. while it works just fine for moving files between folders on your own computer, that's an ancillary step that i think is a) potentially wasting your time and b) causing you more heartache than you need. if you're going to start using Lightroom, at least setup a metadata template for yourself (see Marc's user manual) and have XMPs created as you originally bring the photos in to your computer.

also, i tried this the other day, and found it kind of interesting. i opened up a *.bib file (Bibble Pro)  in a text editor and taught myself where generic metadata should live. i tweaked it out with the relevant IIP macros, cleared the image-specific EXIF data, then saved a copy of it into my PhotoShop metadata templates and renamed it to XMP (so that it could seen by IIP). then, i used it on a test ingestion. after the ingestion, it was as simple as going to a DOS prompt, navigating to that directory, and typing "ren *.xmp *.JPG.bib" (without the quotes). worked just fine.

so theoretically, as a workaround, if one is absolutely convinced that one must use something other than Bridge or Lightroom, it's entirely possible to use IIP to generate proprietary metadata the same way it builds XMP. i assume your .rws stuff is also just a text file, so you should be able to do the same thing. it would save you some time in the long run.

lastly, it would cost you very little, and gain you quite a bit, to upgrade to IIP. take some time and go through Marc's user manual. IIP gives you the most potential.

I have a copy in Bridge, a copy under pictures on my hard drive and backups to a external hard drive. They are listed as test1 and when I do this several time it just makes _1 _2 copies so they are all organized. However if I would like a different name for the test1 folder say san diego where would I input that information. I have looked but have not found an answer. I have the naming down well and next I am not certain I am going to use the format exactly as I have it but think I might like to name the folders or maybe go to the DAM book numbers system.

i'm not really sure i understood all that. your 'copy in Bridge' actually resides on a hard drive somewhere, too. II and IIP put the photos where you tell them to. see Marc's user manual for more information on how to define where you're sending the photos. also, like i mentioned to Niall, it's just a few extra bucks for IIP, and you get a lot more flexibility out of it. a few bucks for saving your sanity on a regular, ongoing basis is hardly "too much".

{for the record, i am independently self-employed and Marc didn't tell me to pimp IIP for him}

I have not decided on LR or iView yet so I am still at the basic level.

check out Peter's observations on Lightroom in the Lightroom board on this forum. Lightroom v.1 is not DAM software.

i understand quite well the basic confusion with how to get started with following DAM principles. there is a modicum of comfort and familiarity in doing things the way we've been doing them, and (at least for me), Peter introduced some highly significant changes. in fact, i'm still processing on nearly 200,000 raw photos, in some cases, just to learn this better way of doing things, completely going through old shoots as if they were just done yesterday and reprocessing them from the ground up. ~ i can (sort of) get away with this because as an environmental photog, i don't do that much shooting during the winter months here in the upper midwest. at any rate, what i found the best thing for me to do was just to accept that Peter's experience was more formative than mine, and i just chose to adopt it, lock stock and barrel. jumped in with both feet, in other words, and didn't try to grab the diving board on the way in.

i truly think Bridge and iView will serve you the best, even with the imminent changes coming to iView/Expression in the future. and i definitely think it would be a mistake to attempt to rely on Lightroom now for DAM.

[Tom]

Thanks so much for some clarity. I tried iview but not as much as I needed to determine if it would work of me. I do like IIpro and once I learn it well to get what I want where I want it I think it will be a great program for me regardless of my other choice. I guess the lack of DAM features were my concen about LR. I can upgrade to CS3 and have all but the DAM parts of LR and use iView media for that aspect.
Maybe I will just bit the bullet on iView media pro and learn to use it well, then should be positioned for anything in the future.
I can use the email function in iView media and maybe they will improve with expression.
Thanks again,
Tom

[Marc Rochkind]

Regarding sidecars besides XMP: This is something I'd like to do, as the macro-processing capability is very general and can work with any text file, as Dawnne's experiments have shown.

What I need is the set of rules for each of the various flavors of sidecars. For Adobe, I had to discover these empirically, as is no documentation that I've ever seen about how DNG Converter and other apps treat sidecars on input. (Related to this lack of documentation is the problem of sidecars and JPEGs, which was discussed in another thread.)

I think Raw Shooter will be low priority, as it is now gone. Is this right? Is there any continuing product that still uses rws files?

I'm most interested in pursuing Capture One, as it's important for large-format digital backs and for the Leica M8. I don't know if it even uses sidecars--my research hasn't even begun. Then maybe Bibble and some others, icluding possibly Aperture (if it uses sidecars).

If I can, when I do this sort of design, I try to make the approach so general that new formats can be handled by configuring some tables or parameters. We'll see if that's possible here.

Anyway, this is definitely something I'm interested in putting into II.

--Marc

[Dawnne Gee]

i'll be happy to help you test with Bibble. i don't really use the program anymore, and i'm not going to upgrade it. i have it largely because i used to work with one of their original programmers (David Somethingorother) at MetaCreations before our board of directors pulled out of packaged software. so, like with my usage of Lightroom and even Capture NX, i only hit it when i have problem files, or when i know explicitly that it has a certain process i understand better to get a specific desired result. believe it or not, i keep current on Corel PhotoPain(t) for the same reason. but since that means JPEG or TIFF for 'cross-communication' between it and more robust software, usage has become more like 'once every third blue moon' or so....

okay, i'm rambling again. obviously not enough sleep last night. bah....

[Niall Horley]

but to keep this on track with imageIngester, if i may be so bold, methinks you are putting it into the wrong point of your workflow. ideally, you should be using II or IIP to bring the photos in from your camera or card. while it works just fine for moving files between folders on your own computer, that's an ancillary step that i think is a) potentially wasting your time and b) causing you more heartache than you need. if you're going to start using Lightroom, at least setup a metadata template for yourself (see Marc's user manual) and have XMPs created as you originally bring the photos in to your computer.

I am looking to folow the principles that peter has laid out in his DAM good book, so not only do I have to worry about new shoots for which II seams to be ideal. Secondly I need to migraate my current structure to use the buckets which I see as invaluable and also to rename my files. This is why I was asking the questions I did. Ideally I want to migrate my currrent structure and rename all the files in the process. II seamed a good place to start looking at how to achieve this.  

also, i tried this the other day, and found it kind of interesting. i opened up a *.bib file (Bibble Pro)  in a text editor and taught myself where generic metadata should live. i tweaked it out with the relevant IIP macros, cleared the image-specific EXIF data, then saved a copy of it into my PhotoShop metadata templates and renamed it to XMP (so that it could seen by IIP). then, i used it on a test ingestion. after the ingestion, it was as simple as going to a DOS prompt, navigating to that directory, and typing "ren *.xmp *.JPG.bib" (without the quotes). worked just fine.

so theoretically, as a workaround, if one is absolutely convinced that one must use something other than Bridge or Lightroom, it's entirely possible to use IIP to generate proprietary metadata the same way it builds XMP. i assume your .rws stuff is also just a text file, so you should be able to do the same thing. it would save you some time in the long run.

I have tried the above, renamed the rws files to xmp and moved them into the same directory as the raw files, II then succesful moves and renames them. I now have a possible solution to move all of my current archieve. Well I will have to write some batch scripts to move and rename files.

The problem with the rws files is that they are binary so I am going to have to rely on the tool that adobe will supply to migrate the settings contained in the rws file into lightroom.

I am aware of the limitations of using lightroom as Peter has pointed out in one of his posts. But I will not be using multiple machines so on of the problems goes away at the moment. Also as a registered user of Raw Shooter I will get a free upgrade to lightroom. So I am prepared to live with its short comings for the time being. The idea of being able to use a single tool to edit & catalog photos is very appealing, and I expect there will be comprimises at the moment, hopefully I will be able to find out tomorrow. But as you say this area of the software industry is quite volatile, the smaller companies are being taken over and the major players are having to respond to each other. Who knows where it will be in a few years time.

Niall

[Dawnne Gee]

heh. we're in the same boat, Niall. i'm still moving quite a hefty number of raw NEFs over to Peter's solution. i definitely appreciate what a bear it can be. i was just saying that ultimately, i came to realize that i was spending a copious amount of time conjecturing ("prevaricating about the bush", in Wallace and Grommit terms) on how i should do the migration, instead of actually getting it done. Peter's approach, being so well documented, won out in the end.

i, too, am basically a one-user/one-computer setup, although i do have my archives on a drive array that is not currently physically attached to this computer (a memory-addressing conflict arose between the array and a piece of software i'm currently testing, so i had to attach it to a different computer). even given the one-system setup, i have reservations about Lightroom for DAM, for what it's worth. i will be carefully going through Lightroom and seeing how this public-release version matches up to my needs. the one thing i did against Peter's recommendations was to stall everything prior to setting up iView to read from the archive folders for RAW and DNG files. i have only a few shoots being managed by iView right now. i like how it works, but if Lightroom can deliver the goods in the short term, i agree that the potential for a one-stop solution is attractive.

well, i guess we've finally derailed this thread from IIP.

wait, i just wrote "IIP". maybe that suffices.... 

[Tom]

Thanks for the advice. I do have one question, will IIPro be able to select LR like it does Bridge, iView or iPhoto for browser (viewer) forgot terminology? I am not a professional so the money for these items comes out of my pocket so don't want to use more than necessary.
Tom Manders

[Marc Rochkind]

Tom--

II and IIP can select any program at all for their viewer. However, I haven't yet determined whether LR can take a starting directory as a command-line argument, or what options it has. However, it will work as a viewer without any specific arguments (if indeed any are relevant) with existing II and IIP versions.

--Marc

[peterkrogh]

Wow, this is a seriously rambling thread. ;-)

A few responses:
I bet Bibble would share the logic with you in order to make IIP compatible.  If you need an introduction, I can happily provide that.  Maybe also for C1 if you like.  Hopefully they would see the value in making this job easy for you.

Dawnee,
As the the "nefarious" process, and Adobe not being in sync with itself, I see it another way.  One business axiom is that you want to be your own competition.  I think Adobe was very smart to let a talented team throw out all the previous assumptions and start building from scratch - especially when a whole new kind of software - live pipeline rendering - makes such a compelling case. 

And Adobe has made the two very compatible.  Lightroom is the Camera Raw engine attached to a database, and Bridge has the same engine on a Browser.  Lots of flexibility in letting the user choose how to work.  The browser model, for instance, probably works much better for those who want to use third-party DAM software. 

And Lightroom is a DAM application - just a V1 incarnation. They'll get it right eventually.

Peter

[Tom]

Yes it is rambling but helpful.
I have decided that I would use IIpro so now a question. If I save my raw files to an external drive and then convert to DNG with full jPeg preview and select LR for my viewer what sort of files show up in LR? If I don't select a viewer then just import the DNGs is that a better method to do work on the pictures? I am still consedering iView but also still considering starting with LR and just hope it improves with a couple of versions.
I probably shoot no more than 100 photos a week on average.
Thanks

[Marc Rochkind]

Tom--

Unlike browsing apps like Bridge, Lightroom (to my knowledge) won't display any images just because it starts up. You have to explicitly import images into the LR database. So, unless there are some LR options I don't know about, which I doubt, selecting LR as a viewer won't import anything, so you don't really "view" the ingested images. All you accomplish is to start LR. In my case, LR is basically running all the time, so I don't both even selecting it as a viewer. (If I did, I would just have to switch back to the IIP window to check the results.)

What I do is convert to DNG during ingestion and then import the DNGs. If you don't convert to DNG during ingestion, and you import the native raws, any sidecars created by IIP will be honored by LR (both metadata and LR Develop settings).

Another observation: If you don't have iView at this point,  I would suggest seeing if LR can handle your cataloging needs. It's possible that LR can handle your cataloging,  "developing" the raw, and printing, but it's for sure that iView can handle only the cataloging, as it neither develops raws nor prints. (They both have slideshow and web capabilities.)

For those who use LR and iView together, the inability of LR to generate full-size JPEG previews, and the inability of iView to read DNGs any other way, makes the two an awkward pair, which you may have read about on some other threads here. Peter, as I recall, has added an extra step to run DNGs through ACR to get the previews, but this sounds to me like a real hassle, as you have to do it every time you make an adjustment. This is something that ACR handled so well when it was doing the adjustments.

--Marc