beginner question-organizing catalogs

[robinmay]

Peter,

 I really loved the image workflow chart you showed us in the DAM book.  And also how you took us step by step thru the workflow in Bridge. That was great and I understood it fully.  But then when it came time to explain the workflow of Iviewmediapro you changed the way you explained it.  Instead of taking the reader step by step thru making a catalog you jumped to explaining one of you already created catalogs without explaining how you got there and the decisions you made.  I wish you had followed the same procedure with a workflow chart for making catalogs.  I am very confused about the type of catalogs to make, how many and for what categories.  I don't really understand the hierarchical structure involved for them.  Do I make a catalog for each job I do? For each photo session? Or do I just have one big catalog for all my images? Or do I do both?  Does the catalog need to match the folder structure? (I didn't really think so but a photog friend of mine insists that it must) Do I need to make separate catalog sets of ratings for each job I do within the larger all jobs catalog? Do I have separate catalogs for working and archived raw and derivatives? I understand the other functions of the Iview software but not how to organize my catalogs.

Thanks and sorry for the long email,

Robin   

[peterkrogh]

Robin,
The book was supposed to be about DAM in general, and not iView in particular, so that is one reason I did not get that specific on how to do that.  Also, the book was written when iView 3.0 did not yet exist, so a bunch of the features I write about had not yet been turned on, so there would have been no way to do any screenshots.

That said, I will be spending the next few days recording  a couple of iView instructional DVDs which will show all of this in a step-by-step manner.  We hope to get them out very quickly.
Peter

[robinmay]

That's good to know before I throw my computer thru the window.  The dvd's couldn't come a minute to soon.

Thanks,

Robin