DAM Catalog Software Choice for 10k image archive

[swteven]

I have been researching DAM catalog software that can most effectively manage my own stock photo image archive. The quantity of images in my archive which I would ingest in the DAM catalog is only about 5,000 images. About half are film capture images and the other half are digital capture images. At my current production level I could see this number doubling in another 5 years so I will need software that can easily manage 10,000 images.

I have learned the functions of several image browsers (Bridge, Photo Mechanic), PIEware (ACR, Lightroom) and catalog software (Expression Media 2, Lightroom). I have read much of the DAM Book by Peter Krogh which is an excellent primer. I work on a Mac platform and prefer to stay with Mac.

I was hoping the new Phase One version of Media Pro would be a perfect solution. However, as I have read the frustrated posts of users who have upgraded to this version I am concerned about the future of this software. The functionality of Media Pro seems to be wrought with difficulties and the support of Phase One seems to be lacking. I am aware of other Mac options (Portfolio, ACDSee, ImageFolio, Cumulus, etc.) and all seem to have their own pros and cons.

I hope to make a choice which can serve me for the long term. I would greatly appreciate feedback from other DAM catalog users.

Scott

[peterkrogh]

Scott,
Have you tried to use Media Pro, or are you just reading the posts?
While I can't speak to the inner commitment to Media Ro over at Phase One, I would point out some history of the company.

Capture One languished for a while as the company restructured the software. In the past year, development of the software has accelerated dramatically, with releases coming at a pretty remarkable pace, considering the additions in each release.

I'm not saying that this is what will happen with Media Pro, but it is helpful to look at the track record of a company hen trying to evaluate what they might do in the future.

There are a number of people who would maintain that the trajectory of Expression Media was not atypical for a Microsoft acquisition. While I would maintain that this oversimplifies what happened with that software, it does track reasonably closely with what the company has done in the past.

Peter

[swteven]

Thanks for replying to my concerns Peter. I have used Expression Media 2 but not Media Pro.

It does seem that many of the posts by users discuss difficulties related to migration of archives to Media Pro from another application or a previous version. Since I am starting from scratch I may not have these issues. Perhaps I should download a trial and just dive in!

Scott

[sue2404]

A bit late in the day, but as someone who has moved through iView Media, Expression Media and now onto Media Pro I am hoping and praying that Phase One sorts MP out - the sooner the better.  Far from the advertised 'warp' speed I find it extremely slow to the point where, were it not for the excellence of the rest of the product, I wouldn't use it.  Even EM was faster which must be a record for Microsoft!

[swteven]

A bit late in the day, but as someone who has moved through iView Media, Expression Media and now onto Media Pro I am hoping and praying that Phase One sorts MP out - the sooner the better.  Far from the advertised 'warp' speed I find it extremely slow to the point where, were it not for the excellence of the rest of the product, I wouldn't use it.  Even EM was faster which must be a record for Microsoft!

Thanks for reporting on your experiences with iView/EM/Media Pro. I have hesitated to move forward with Media Pro because of the bad reports and questionable future support of Phase One.

I am essentially starting from scratch with my DAM so I am still in a wait and see mode. Recently I have been looking at Adobe Lightroom. It may not be an ideal DAM but at least it will have the future support of Adobe.

Scott

[BobSmith]

I moved from Expression Media to Lightroom a little over a year ago.  v3 of Lightroom was the tipping point for me.  I've been very pleased with the transition and feel like I finally have a really solid DAM workflow.  I miss a few things from EM but I'm extremely happy to be able to have just one catalog (currently about 180k images).  It makes it easy to find/sort anything quickly without having to deal with multiple catalogs.  I'm also extremely fond of its print module.  I do a lot of custom printing to a variety of wide format Epsons.  Once a library of suitable presets is built up, it takes just a few mouse clicks to find a "print master" version of an image... and output it at a variety of sizes on an assortment of media if desired.

The most annoying aspect of Lightroom is its lack of a really wide variety of document format support.  That gets better with every version and will surely continue to do so.  I'm managing a library of mainly photographs but I sure would like to at least see the presence of support docs or odd image formats that happened to be stored along side of a particular batch of otherwise "common" image files.

Bob Smith