Beta 7 of ImageIngesterPro Preview - flexible file and folder naming with macros

[Marc Rochkind]

OK, the last beta of the week... back to my day job on Monday.

This one scraps the various choices for file and folder names in favor of macros. This design should now meet the needs of everyone who's asked for more flexibility, although it still can't pull EXIF data from inside an image. (Windows users, I feel your pain.  )

The new Preferences tab for choosing file and folder names is much simpler than the previous two tabs, but much more powerful, thanks to macros. If you don't want to get into coding macros right away, there are presets you can choose which paste macros into the fields for you, as shown in picture, below. You can keep what's there, or edit it a bit (e.g., by deleting underscores), or write your own from scratch.



There's lots of information, examples, screen shots, and download instructions (for the Mac only) in what's become a pretty lengthy page at http://basepath.com/ImageIngester/pro-preview.php.

--Marc

[Mike Guilbault]

I'm just starting to read through all the new features.  You left me in the dust at Beta 3!!

This may be a dumb question, but when using the macros to indicate client or project, where does the information come from?  Where does this information get entered?

[Marc Rochkind]

Mike--

The macros {@client.name} and {@project.name} take their data from one of the rows entered into the database. You choose the client name and project name from the drop-down menus on the main window. To get to the database, choose Manage on the the client or project menus.

If you don't want the hassle of entering client and project names into the database, you can also set up client and project Quick Fields, and just enter them into the Metadata panel.

--Marc

[Mike Guilbault]

Ahhhh.. thanks Marc... I'll give this a try.  I thought it was going to be too complicate, but it looks pretty straight forward.

[peterkrogh]

Marc,
On first look, I'd say the new syntax for renaming is pretty confusing compared to earlier versions.

BTW, It would have been considerably more painful for me in Iceland if didn't have II with me.  It made download/backup/rename/metadata a breeze, to the chagrin of some on the Lightroom team...
Peter

[Marc Rochkind]

Peter--

Welcome back! I did get to see a few of your photos in the gallery while you were away. Wow!!!!

(Did you get to learn anything about the custom software that Bill Atkinson wrote for himself? I remember his programming work very well from when I first encountered the Mac in 1984.)

Back to the land of night and day...

The preset menus are designed to contain the equivalent of most of what was useful in the previous 4-component-menu approach. That is, one can choose from IMG_YYYYMMDD_nnnn, original filename, etc. Then something admittedly very advanced appears in the text box. Maybe I need to add more to the presets and make the textbox appear only when the user clicks an Advanced button?

I'll hold off until we get some more experience with this new approach...

By the way, in Beta 8, which I'll upload today, there's a new option for number-range folders that tells ImageIngesterPro to partition them into subsets, for the case where there are too many images in one ingestion. That is, if you have 800 images on your 6GB card, you can get them split into groups of, say, 200.

The way to partition other folders, say a date folder, is to have a number-range subfolder, like this:

{@datetime,1,8)/{@numberrange}

and to turn on the partitioning.

--Marc

[peterkrogh]

Peter--

Welcome back! I did get to see a few of your photos in the gallery while you were away. Wow!!!!

(Did you get to learn anything about the custom software that Bill Atkinson wrote for himself? I remember his programming work very well from when I first encountered the Mac in 1984.)

I hope to get some more stuff up soon. It was an amazing experience.  And as you might imagine, an eight hour jeep ride over a glacier with Bill Atkinson and Michael Reichmann was a chance to geek out pretty severely, in both the photo and computer modes.  THey are both wonderful, fascinating people.

The preset menus are designed to contain the equivalent of most of what was useful in the previous 4-component-menu approach. That is, one can choose from IMG_YYYYMMDD_nnnn, original filename, etc. Then something admittedly very advanced appears in the text box. Maybe I need to add more to the presets and make the textbox appear only when the user clicks an Advanced button?

I'll hold off until we get some more experience with this new approach...

Guys like you can just read that code and it's like "see spot run".  For the rest of us, it's like "huh?"
The user-friendly front end that never puts anything like script in front of the poor photographer should be a goal.  The previous naming UI was instantly understandable.  Can you have that, as well as some of the more robust capabilities that script/code or whatever that is provides?

Peter

[Mike Guilbault]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Peter on this one Marc.  Although I appreciate the macros, I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by all the programming I have to do.  Obviously for you, it's not much, but to the rest of us weebles, it's a little mind-boggling.  It took me almost an hour to figure out how to create a filename with "YYMM_filennumber".  (I'm skipping the day part of the string 'cause I don't shoot as much as Peter and it simply saves me two digits in the new filename). I appreciate that I can do this now, but I think for most folks, the K.I.S. principle still works best. 
What I would like to see is the ability to customize the fields with the macros, but then be able to save it under a user-definable 'real' name that I can understand when I scroll down the list of options (for naming, for example). 
Other than that, I'm really enjoying the new Betas.

[Marc Rochkind]

Thanks for the feedback... definitely will require some adjustments to the design.

--Marc

[Marc Rochkind]

Thanks Peter and Mike for pointing out the difficulties with the Beta 7 design. My idea was that the menu would be used by most users, and only those who are comfortable with them or who have unusual requirements would use the macros. Unfortunately, with my design, typing a prefix (MJR_YYYYMMDD_1234) meant going to the macros; even if you didn't type in the macros your choice didn't show up as a menu selection when you reinvoked the app; there weren't nearly enough choices; and the macros showed all the time. (OK, so my UI design had 4 major design flaws... I've done worse!)

With the new design, there's an edit box for the prefix, so you don't have to type in the macro box, the macro box is hidden unless wanted/needed, there are many more menu choices, and, if you make a choice, you'll see it selected in the menu next time. Here are the choices right now:



There's a legend obscured by the menu that says that numbers 0001 are example filename numbers, and numbers 3456, 23456, and 123456 are example auto numbers.

Any suggestions for some additional presets in the menu? Remember that editing the macros isn't out of the question, just something to be avoided.

I thought about supplying an edit box for the delimiter (underscore, by default), but then decided that editing the macro box for no other reason but to change the delimiter wasn't too much to ask. Maybe I'm wrong about that one too.

(Mike, this is for you: If the prefix is empty, there's no leading underscore.)

--Marc

[Mike Guilbault]

That looks good Marc - and thanks for the extra effort.  So, if I leave the  Prefix blank, the underscore that follows is eliminated and the template starts with the YY - is that correct - as in YYMM_3456? 
I assume that this will be available in the Beta 8 release? 
I did play with the macros somewhat today and have a pretty good handle on it now - but it did take some effort and I think it would  be too confusing for the average user.  It's nice that you're making it an option.  Thanks.

[Steve Fines]

Hello,

I've been playing with these since beta 5 and am very impressed.

I'm looking forward to the feature of being able to break up 800 shots into groups of 200.

It took me a while in beta7 to figure out that I could just edit the "IMG" text on the macro line (Preferences > naming > IMG_macro stuff) to be what I wanted. I was trying to figure out where in the database I was supposed to put this. Looks like you've simplified things in beta8 with a specific "Prefix" field, but I think it speaks to the issue that others have brought up that the initial screen needs to be simple with the option to pull up the more powerful features.

This has very quickly for me become a program that I say " why on earth was I doing all that by hand before" each time it ingests a card.

I did have one very small glitch - not sure it it is II related or not, but I hadn't seen it happen before.

System is OS X 10.4.7 Dual G5. I loaded II beta7 and a popup came up saying t check the website for updates. I selected Help > ImageIngester Web Site, whic opened in a new Safari window. There were no newer versions (I have 1.0.0B7), so I closed the window and clicked on II on the dock.

At this point the top line of text on the screen (very top - Apple Picture, Name of Program, File) went funny. It still said "Safari" was the program, but the menu choises were mixed from Safari and II. Here's a screen grab (this is after I clicked II in the dock a second time - program changed to II, but the menu options were still mixed up)



I then minimized Safari and all went to normal.

When I tried several times to reproduce it it happened again once.

Again, not a big deal and not even sure it has anything to do with your program.


Looking forward to the next rendition.


Steve

[Marc Rochkind]

Steve--

Thanks for the encouraging words!

I have seen this menu behavior myself, with various apps. One app seems to acquire part of the menu of another. I think it's some sort of timing thing inside OS X.

The other possibility is that you have a bootleg copy of Beta 9, which includes a web browser.  

--Marc

[Marc Rochkind]

Mike--

Indeed, that's how the underscores work. If there's an empty prefix, the name starts with YYMM, not _YYMM.

(The macro involved is {@prefix,1,-1,_}, which means "append the underscore only if the macro replacement text is non-empty." If it were {@prefix}_, you would get the underscore always.)

--Marc