Image Management Software
For my first few years as a serious digital photographer, I used Adobe’s Photoshop Album. After a while, though, I started getting nervous about the fact that all my metadata was stuck in the Adobe database and not in my files. (Since that time, the same functionality has been added into Photoshop Elements on the PC only and a function to export the metadata into the files has been provided, but it’s not automatic).
So, I started looking for software that stored my metadata in the files themselves. This led me to Microsoft’s Digital Image Library 10 (included in Digital Image Suite 10). It stores the metadata directly in the files, so I thought I was home free.
Two weeks ago, I actually tried to read the data out using photoshop and it just wasn’t there! Photoshop only reads the IPTC fields, while Digital Image Library stores the metadata in extended EXIF fields. I got worried that there wasn’t anything out there to read the extended EXIF fields except Digital Image Library itself, and started looking for other organizers.
“Andrej”:http://andrej.mobileduo.com/ has been recommending “iView MediaPro”:http://www.iview-multimedia.com for years. I did a bunch of research and came to the conclusion that it’s probably the best thing for the job. I installed the demo, and voila: all my Digital Image Library keywords were already there! Whee! So now I can keep on using Digital Image Library secure in the fact that my metadata is being preserved. Now I just need to find something to upload to Flickr and Smugmug using my embedded data.
Oh, I *did* try “Picasa”:http://www.picasa.com, and it is great once all your files are imported, but it’s slow as molasses to get things imported. It was more than 10 seconds per shot when pulling pictures off of my CF card. Sheesh!
Enjoying reading your blog.
I’m the CEO & Chief Geek at smugmug, and would love to get some more information about the “Now I just need to find something to upload to Flickr and Smugmug using my embedded data” comment.
smugmug automagically reads EXIF & IPTC data and pre-fills keywords, captions, camera info, and the like, but I imagine you knew that already.
We also have a published API and people are creating upload and sync tools, so if you need something richer than EXIF/IPTC, maybe one of them would do the trick? Some of them integrate nicely with iViewMedia Pro and iPhoto and the like, so you might want to check them out. See: http://www.smugmug.com/hack/
Anyway, we’re very much in love with getting and using any metadata you might want to share, so if you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Don
Don MacAskill
21 Apr 05 at 11:37 pm
Does iView Media Pro allow image editing in Photoshop?
Dad
4 May 05 at 3:37 pm
Yes, iView MediaPro supports editing images in any external program, though it doesn’t help you preserve the original. With Adobe Photoshop Album, when you choose to edit a file, you edit a copy created on the spot. With Microsoft’s Digital Image Library and iView MediaPro, you have to do the “save as” yourself. Alternatively, if your workflow has you making copies of originals up front, that works as well.
I’m still looking for a workflow that really serves me.
michael
6 May 05 at 1:06 pm
Any updates here? I’ve been using PictureSync on OS X for sometime which works well on Smugmug. See: http://paininthetech.com/upload_annotate_and_share_photos_with_picturesync
On a PC I started using iTag: http://itagsoftware.awswa.com/
Requires .NET installation. This writes title, caption, and tags fields to IPTC, however Smugmug (who I use for sharing) does not read the title field as of Build 122. I’m contacting Smugmug on this issue. Otherwise iTag seems like a nice lightweight way to annotate photos. Thanks!
Andy Atkinson
3 Oct 06 at 8:17 pm