Comparison of IDimager v4 to EM2

[billseymour]

Manual? What is this word I've never heard of?

--Bill
(or, from 'Treasure of Sierra Madre':  "Manual? We don' need no steenking manual!"

[danaltick]

Did I say "read" the manual?  Wow!  That was a real slip of the keyboard.  Should have been "ditch" the manual.  Bill, thanks for pointing that out.

Dan

[billseymour]

De nada. (I was worried there for just a sec...)
--Bill

[danaltick]

I finally finished a first pass of the IDimager manual with some hands-on experimenting and a bombardment of questions at the IDimager forum http://forum.idimager.com/viewforum.php?f=2&start=0.  Wow!  Talk about allot of info!  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  At times along the way I kept debating whether the app was just too complicated and/or confusing; however, now that I'm beginning to see the larger picture, I believe it all serves a purpose and is extremely well laid out.

All I can say is, this application is everything a catalog manager should be.  It's truly in a class all by itself.  I have never seen an asset manager this comprehensive and yet so user friendly.  If this was truly developed by one individual (i.e. Hert), then I'm totally blown away!  And Hert, I don't think you have to worry about Lightroom or Expression Media catching up to the asset management capabilities of IDimager any time soon.  I really can't wait to see what's coming in version 5.  Simply an amazing app!

Below is a list of those features I believe are worth noting and for the most part either have more capability than EM or are not supported by EM.  There were actually a number of other features that were as good or better than EM or were not supported by EM, but I did decided not to list.  For example, the Stamper, powerful Batch processor, comprehensive email support, printing, elaborate CD burning, full backups, extensive built-in editor, and more).  You can find out more about these in the online manual below.  I did also note a few weakness of IDimager in the list (albeit not many).

I did my best to make each list item clear and concise, but again you can find more information from the online manual http://manual.idimager.com/ where necessary.

Note - idImager refers to Catalog Sets as Catalog Labels (or just Labels).

1.   Free floating & docking panels w/ collapse capability (like PS CS4)
2.   Supports IPTC 2008 XMP extended schema
3.   Supports PLUS XMP schema
4.   Good mouse-over details of all XMP fields including XMP syntax for the given field
5.   For selected images, a per-XMP field ability to append, replace, delete, or leave unchanged
6.   Powerful script engine w/ ability to code scripts and macros directly into XMP fields
7.   Full EXIF browsing and searching
8.   Private Label support
9.   Full XMP harvesting and syncing w/ PIE adjustments
10. Visual thumbnail indication of whether images are in-sync or out-of-sync
11. Visual thumbnail indication of whether images have assigned catalog Labels
12. Visual thumbnail indicator of whether images are online, offline, or missing
13. Per-image list of currently assigned catalog Labels
14. List of most recently used catalog Labels
15. 100% loop preview from thumbnail view (similar to Bridge CS4)
16. Prevents accidental changing of star ratings when clicking on thumbnails (Use Alt-Click for ratings).
17. Full script support with library of plug-in scripts
18. Ability to setup Workspaces (including color themes) similar to Photoshop with each having a keyboard shortcut (EM2 uses View Options dialog)
19. Full image downloader w/ mirroring, validation, DNG conversion, and integrated Label assignment (somewhere between EM and IIP)
20. Full XMP GUI meta editor w/ custom schema creator http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?t=430.
21. Ability to attach GEO location info (w/ distance radius) to catalog Labels
22. Ability to establish relationships/links between Labels for quick navigation to related Labels.
23. Supports Stored Groups analogous to Lightroom's Smart Collections, but also automatically assigns Labels as images are added to Stored Groups
24. Can drag-n-drop both directions: images to Labels or Labels to images.  Can also drag directly from file system to Labels.
25. Separate Catalog Assignment mode allowing for quick series of Label assignments via checkboxes
26. No Back button or history in IDimager, but can go back to main page after a search
27. Copy and Paste Labels to/from selected Images (Ctrl-Shift-C, Ctrl-Shift-V)
28. Supports versioning for derivatives w/ Version Detection Wizard and metadata cascading across the versions.  Versions show as single thumbnail.
29. Supports stacking for Pano's, HDR, collages, etc.
30. Supports virtual and fast selections for quick groupings prior to assigning permanent Labels
31. Very powerful searching capabilities including:
     Extremely fast multi-searching w/ mouse of everything including Exif, Search hard drives using wildcard characters, Boolean-wise conditional searching, Search for missing images, Search for out-of-sync images, Search across categories (e.g. catalog Labels, color Labels, file types, ratings, etc.) using AND, OR, and NOT
32. Integrated GPS with Google Maps
33. Comprehensive Light Table w/ up to 30 images w/ DNG preview support.
34. Full-screen image viewing mode w/ DNG preview support.
35. Does not support playing of audio or video files, but can catalog many different file types.
36. Browse and select images across date ranges with a visual calander
37. Extensive slideshow editor with multi-track timeline supporting MP3 and WAV.  Can create AVI, GIF, and self-extracting EXE movies.
38. Extensive web publishing with powerful template editor w/ built-in HTML code and metadata access
39. Currently supports uploading to Flickr, ZenFolio, SmugMug, Google Picasa, and Facebook
40. Smorgasboard or options including complete thumbnail customization with HTML editor
41. Uses industry standard SQL database format
42. Good documentation
43. Good support forum

It is unfortunate we don't currently have a Mac version, but I would hate to see that slow down Hert's progress.  Hopefully he can hire someone to help him with that down the road.

Dan

[danaltick]

Thought this was worth mentioning.  I discovered that through the use of IDimager's Batch Processor which contains a plethora of editing commands, I was able to create a batch job very quickly that batches out my DNG proofs, resizes them, and sharpens them using a sharpening editor that is plenty good enough for print proofs.  It even has a dynamic sharpener that only sharpens the highlights; not bad.  I think this is a nice convenience because it keeps you from having to edit the DNG's in ACR and rebuild the previews just to add some sharpening for print proofs.  And of course, it's always nice not having to touch your archive.

Dan

[danaltick]

Here's yet another very nice feature I've just discovered.  IDimager has a preview mode similar to Bridge that allows you to setup a filmstrip mode just like Bridge (albeit vertical rather than horizontal).  You can then save that Workspace and hotkey to it at any time.  You tell IDimager to build the previews at a specified resolution, usually much lower than the full resolution of the images.  I built mine at 1280 pixels which is plenty large enough for my monitor.  It puts these previews in a separate database file that can easily be ported along with the primary metadata database.  It's actually faster than EM because it's not working off the full resolution images or full res DNG previews.  It actually downsizes the DNG previews.  I can now hotkey between my LightTable mode and my FilmStrip mode, just like Bridge.  This app just keeps on impressing me.

So far the performance seems pretty good.  It even supports multi-threading.  I've heard that Hert is beefing up the performance even more in version 5.  Anxiously awaiting news on that.

Dan

[havezet]

I've heard that Hert is beefing up the performance even more in version 5.  Anxiously awaiting news on that.

Dan,

I can't share any details about V5 yet, but it adds new features, has some major existing feature redesigns, more multi threading features, and much much more. Oh and you're right...it also adds some performance.

Stay on the lookout for the first public beta soon.

Hert

[danaltick]

Hert,

Sounds great.  Can't wait to test it out.  I plan to build a new Core i7 system this fall.  It will have 4 hyper-threaded cores, so looking forward to utilizing those cores.

Dan

[danaltick]

Did some dragging and dropping of images and folders from one catalog to another to see if the catalog labels travel with the images.  Doesn't appear to.  You have to perform the same export of source and import of destination (i.e. sync) to/from the files to bring along the metadata from one catalog to another; same as EM.  Would be nice if all the metadata would come along with the files without having to actually touch the archive.  Maybe in a future version.

Dan

[danaltick]

A little more info on IDimager's preview mode vs. EM's Media View mode.  EM does allow you to create previews at a fixed 1280x800 pixels.  These are typically used for offline viewing; however, they do make the catalog quite a bit bigger and less portable.  This of course is a similar situation with IDimager's preview mode.  The larger the preview the bigger the catalog.  IDimager does have an Image Viewer that looks at the full size image without using the previews, very similar to EM's Media View mode.  The Image Viewer also gives the ability to rate, add color labels, and navigate, just like EM's Media View mode.  You basically have a choice with IDimager.  If you want to keep your catalogs as small as possible, then go with the Image Viewer and Fullscreen mode options.  If you want a filmstrip mode and very fast navigation, then go with the Preview option.  I like the filmstrip option so I'm probably going to go that route, but make my previews around 800 pixels max.  Unlike EM, IDimager allows you to change the preview size. 800 pixels should be a nice compromise.  Also, IDimager doesn't have the 1.8GB database size limit that EM has, and the previews are stored in a separate thumbs.db database file so I don't really think it affects performance too much as it grows.  I plan to run a test on about 10k images with this 800 pixel size to see how large this makes the database.  I also plan to compare import performance between the two apps.  I know that import performance has been an issue with IDimager, so I may wait for the v5 beta to do this.

Dan

[danaltick]

Been playing around with IDimager's Batch Processor.... very impressive!  I quickly put together a list of batch commands that spit out some quick proofs that were downsized, sharpened, cropped to a different aspect ratio, watermarked with my watermark file, increased the canvas size and made it black along the bottom, then captioned it with my copyright and description just like Dr. Brown's Caption Maker.  Now that is one powerful Batch processor.  The diggs just keep comin'.  Too cool!

Dan

[danaltick]

How's this for support http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10655.  Just like the old days.

This is a 2-page post.  Don't forget the 2nd page.

Dan

[peterkrogh]

Dan,
I, too am impressed with Hert's responsiveness, and the flexibility and extensibility of idImager.
Now if he would only offer cross-platform...
Peter

[danaltick]

Peter,

Understood.

Dan

[Dierk]

Peter, why exactly do you ask for cross-platform as a universal?