Rank and File questions

[AlanDunne]

As is advocated frequently in The DAM Book, it is important to adequately test your system. So I am doing just that. For reference I am currently using R&F 1.14, Bridge 1.03, IVMP 3.01 on Windows XP SP2.

When I apply rankings in Bridge, then run R&F, I can see the Bridge ranking and label applied  to the keywords, as advertised. I can then import those files into IVMP and see the keywords, there as well. Since moving from IVMP 2 to 3, the Bridge ranking as directly viewable in IVMP. So far so good.

One test case that I ran was to downgrade the ranking in Bridge, then re-run R&F. If I start with an image ranking of 3 stars, run R&F, I end up with a ranking pyramid up to 3 stars in the keywords. If I now change the rating in Bridge to two stars and re-run R&F, I still have a ranking pyramid up to 3 stars in the keywords, so the keywords do not match the ranking any more. If I upgrade the ranking from 3 to 4 stars and re-run R&F, the ranking pyramid correctly get set to 4 stars. Is this expected behaviour, or a bug?

I know it is pretty rate that once set, rankings will change, but I wanted to test this beahviour regardless.

One further question ... when using IVMP2.x and R&F/Bridge I was using the "IView Compatibility" feature. This mapped the bridge rankings into Iview labels. Now that IVMP3 directly supports the Bridge rankings, I would like to be able to use this feature to transfer the Bridge labels rather than rankings to Iview labels automatically. I haven't got this to work yet. It may not be supported though. I can manually search for files with keyword label X then manually set the Iview label, but I was hoping this could be automated.

Any thoughts or comments on these two issues would be appreciated..

Cheers .... Alan

[peterkrogh]

Alan,
Rankings are never reduced by Rank and File.  For one, it would be very dangerous to have any script delete keywords automatically, for another, it would be very complex programming, and would have to include the ability to define all the rankings syntax that you would want to be deleted. 

Second, I suggest that you use the Ratings in Bridge to bump images up incrementally, so I would suggest that you don't give questionably high ratings in Bridge.  I like to think of the work you do in Bridge to be to get images to a threshold that helps you direct your Camera Raw effort efficiently. 

Third, once you bring your images into your DAM software, you should do your ratings there, so Rank and File becomes somewhat superfluous after you have moved to the DAM application.  It's really for transfer between Bridge and iView/DAM application.

As to Labels, that's another one that would be a huge programming chore to transfer to iView Labels, so the behavior you observe is as designed.  All Rank and File can do with Labels is to transfer them to Keywords.  It's up to you to then select images with similar keywords and apply a particular iView Label, if you use iView Labels this way.  This is what I do.

FWIW, I hope to convince iVIew to build this functionality into a future release. (I think I can claim some credit for getting both Portfolio and iView to harvest the Bridge Ratings).  Ideally, iView would be designed so that you never need Rank and File.  Worse for me, better for everyone else.
Peter