IIP Improvements

[peterkrogh]

I continue to be surprised at the power of IIP. I have recently overhauled how I have it set up, and I am very pleased with what it can do that I did not even know. (Guess I need to RT*M better.)

Darren and I discussed this today, here's what we think:

1. Setup Wizard - setting IIP up is no picnic.  You really need to know what you want it to do before you can take full advantage of it.  It would be nice to get some kind of setup interface that would let you work through settings in one place.  As it it, you need to dive through a lot of boxes to get full value from the program.

2. Preference Inspector.  This is probably the highest cost/benefit return.  There are lots of settings and they are distributed through many boxes.  I'd really like to be able to call one dialog that would show me (and let me change) all preferences.

3. GPS checkbox in preferences.  Although I'd ultimately like to change the way preferences are saved and combined, one thing that would help me reduce the number of sets would be a preference for enabling GPS that is persistent.  In current functionality, the "Apply GPS" is remembered per preference set.  So if you dismiss it for a set, you get no reminder next time you download that it's inactive.

4. More fields in Ingestion record.  At minimum, this should show where the files were downloaded to. GPS tagging would be nice, as well as timing for the process.

5. Longer names for Preference Sets.  Due to the number of variables I'm stuffing into the Preference sets, I need to give them longer names - maybe an extra 25 characters.

6. Preference/Preset Redesign.  I know this would be a lot of work, but I think that the dialogs should be split between the file handling and the metadata handling in preference groups. Right now, it's all lumped into one.

The File Handling Group could control just about everything that is in Preferences, with the exception of Data/QuickFields

The Metadata Handling Group would control the IIP Metadata "template", GPS, the Quick Fields setup, and quickfields values. I've been using Preference Sets to wrangle all this, when I really just want a subset that deals with Metadata only.

On top of both File Handling and Metadata Handling, Id like to see Preference Sets that let you mix and match.

Well, that's enough for a Wednesday.
Peter

[Chris Bishop]

I'll add it's a GREAT program, but ( always a BUT) how about time bars for each stage of the process. Ingestion can take 12 mins, but DNG converter (verification only) can be longer but no time bars. When we go for a break and stick our head in front of the screen again we don't know how long still to go.
Chris Bishop
Missing thumbnails would also be nice (Fuji S9500 (S9000))

[Marc Rochkind]

Thanks for these suggestions!

--Marc

[Chris Bishop]

Must emphasize it'sa great program.
Chris Bishop

[markpirozzi]

I bought IIP a few weeks ago but was just starting to use it today.  I was able to set it up just about to my satisfaction.

I agree with Peters suggestions.

-Longer names for the preference sets would be very helpful.
-It also it would be a timesaver to have a button to open the preferences next to where the prefs drop-down menu is.
-I'm not wild about changes being made to preferences without saving or going through a Modify option.
-Uh oh, another preference comment. I needed to duplicate a preference, make a small change to the settings and to the name a number of times.  This would be made much easier if when you selected a preference and selected New, the naming dialog box contained the name of the selected preference.

A bug?  When I have Merge XMP checked, but import both NEFs and JPGs, the XMP files don't merge.

The above probably won't bother me too much because your program allows me give the JPGs and NEFs slightly different naming schemes by downloading in 2 (cringe) passes. You guessed it - I've got a preference for NEFs and for JPGs from the same camera.   It's great they way you can disallow a file type in your preferences.

I got this set-up without hardly looking at the manual but will be reading the manual to try to add functionality.  I hardly looked at the manually but I imported the same pictures about 20 times testing things out.  The first link to your manual that I came across on the II website took me to an early 2007 version of the manual, I found another link to an early 2008 version later.

So far a really nice program and I only had to do minor tweaking to my back-up folder arrangement (after I realized the root folder could be any folder) to make it work for me.

***Is there a way to have the file name copied into the Title field?***

Mark

[Robert Q Groom]

***Is there a way to have the file name copied into the Title field?***

Mark

Yes, you can define a macro in 'IPTC Fields > Status  > Title'

e.g.  {@filenameNew}.{@extension}


Robert G

[markpirozzi]

Robert,

Thanks, that worked great.


Mark