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Mrs Shenstone asked me for a picture of a specific moth, a Herald moth that is found in cave entrances ( see below) that she wanted to do a painting of for the upcoming Hidden Earth conference which has an Art salon)
I knew I had taken loads of pictures of them in multiple caves, but the question was where and when so I could find the files
About an hout later I managed that, but it made me think about DAM systems and this is my research so far. I would appreciate any thoughts before I finalise
it needs to be photo focussed
I need it to be fast or I won't bother with it
I need it to have a proper database that searches across all my Image disks (about 200k Images) not just in one folder like Bridge does with keywording
it needs to have all the usual things like rating, bookmarting etc that I have in other software, for selecting and culling, but I don't need it to be a RAW processor (other than for viewing within it'self)
I need it to handle ORF and JPG versions (and extra versions based on post processing) as a group when I decide to or as individual files
I need it to handle complex relationships e.g. a person can be a member of multiple groups, but I just want to name them once and some very complex biological and geological hierarchy structures (see simple one below)
I need to be able to move these around and restructure easily until it becomes mature
I need it to handle keywording (not that I use it at the moment, but thinking for the future) and Metadata Editing (e.g. on a US trip I forgot to set the timezone on one of my cameras and I want the pictures to agree with the other cameras)
It needs to catch up if I do something outside in e.g. DXO or Faststone and find the new versions and just add them as versions or delete files that I have deleted
Multi user isn't needed (which rules out many things out there as they are more focussed on that and access control than the photo management)
Oh. and it needs to not be stupidly expensive as many of these systems are when aimed at businesses
So far I tried a few things and the one I seem to be coming back to ( I tried a very early version many years ago, but at that time it wasn't up to it) is Imatch https://www.photools.com/imatch/
I have so far imported 120k images into the sytem and in 8 days (About 2 hours per day) built a catalogue and categorised 22k of them
it can certainly handle my complex hierarchy e.g. limestones of different ages are either in their stratigraphic place or in a bucket of all limestones in Rock type
It is also handling the versions that I have created from a single Raw file very well
I've sorted out some of my mis-timezoned pictures
I am still in the trial period so before i make my final decision any other suggestions ( not Bridge, Lightroom, ACDC, Elements organizer, as I have already ruled those out as not being up to it)
I knew I had taken loads of pictures of them in multiple caves, but the question was where and when so I could find the files
About an hout later I managed that, but it made me think about DAM systems and this is my research so far. I would appreciate any thoughts before I finalise
it needs to be photo focussed
I need it to be fast or I won't bother with it
I need it to have a proper database that searches across all my Image disks (about 200k Images) not just in one folder like Bridge does with keywording
it needs to have all the usual things like rating, bookmarting etc that I have in other software, for selecting and culling, but I don't need it to be a RAW processor (other than for viewing within it'self)
I need it to handle ORF and JPG versions (and extra versions based on post processing) as a group when I decide to or as individual files
I need it to handle complex relationships e.g. a person can be a member of multiple groups, but I just want to name them once and some very complex biological and geological hierarchy structures (see simple one below)
I need to be able to move these around and restructure easily until it becomes mature
I need it to handle keywording (not that I use it at the moment, but thinking for the future) and Metadata Editing (e.g. on a US trip I forgot to set the timezone on one of my cameras and I want the pictures to agree with the other cameras)
It needs to catch up if I do something outside in e.g. DXO or Faststone and find the new versions and just add them as versions or delete files that I have deleted
Multi user isn't needed (which rules out many things out there as they are more focussed on that and access control than the photo management)
Oh. and it needs to not be stupidly expensive as many of these systems are when aimed at businesses
So far I tried a few things and the one I seem to be coming back to ( I tried a very early version many years ago, but at that time it wasn't up to it) is Imatch https://www.photools.com/imatch/
I have so far imported 120k images into the sytem and in 8 days (About 2 hours per day) built a catalogue and categorised 22k of them
it can certainly handle my complex hierarchy e.g. limestones of different ages are either in their stratigraphic place or in a bucket of all limestones in Rock type
It is also handling the versions that I have created from a single Raw file very well
I've sorted out some of my mis-timezoned pictures
I am still in the trial period so before i make my final decision any other suggestions ( not Bridge, Lightroom, ACDC, Elements organizer, as I have already ruled those out as not being up to it)
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