| My apologies…. | June 9th, 2008 |
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Hi there.. I wanted to apologize for not posting any reviews or information for a few weeks. I’ve been really busy with my real life job(s) - taking photos and publishing books - so have had to put this other “hobby” on hold for while.
But - I am ready to get back on the horse as they say and jump right in with a review of Imatch! So, stay tuned for it hopefully by next Weekend!
Thanks again for all your comments and for spreading the word about the site… it is really appreciated!
June 9th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Can you tell me who did your layout? I’ve been looking for one kind of like yours. Thank you.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Just a comment; I’ve been searching for a DAM now for about 2 years, and everytime I think i’ve picked one, something happens to discourage me at the last minute. The latest issue is OpenEXR support (.exr), a high dynamic range image format.
So far, the only DAM I’ve found that supports it is alienbrain, which is otherwise overkill (and price) for my needs. Its not like the DAM has to do anything other than generate a decent thumbnail and preview (which is slightly more complicated for openexr and radiance (.hdr), but they should be able to manage a decent autoexposure and/or provide a slider). Its frustrating further because OpenEXR is available as a royalty-free open-source license. (incidentally, JpegXR is an up and coming format that DAMs need to be seriously thinking about as well).
I was especially surprised by Lightroom’s limited file support (LR 2.0 was my latest “it’ll do” product, until…); I figured lightroom would use the same image library as photoshop which can read (and write) practically everything; alas apparently LR only does jpeg, raw, dng, and some (not all) tiff; sigh.
Oh well, maybe the new Bibble, but not holding my breath.
In my case at this point, no OpenEXR, no sale. I also have various other issues with DAMs, but this is the current show stopper.
One of those other issues is a general lack of support for actually *managing* assets. They’re generally great at *cataloging* assets, but have varying levels of frustration in the managing department. (for example: write the selected images to 2 copies of X dvds (however many are necessary), include on each dvd contact sheet images and/or web gallery of the images on *that* dvd, erase from disk after verifying that both dvd sets are good, use intellegent labels for each dvd, and update catalog to “know” where the images are now).
Ideally, I should be able to define what I want done; scripting would be fine if its powerful enough to do something like that, which bring imatch and idimager to mind, alas neither one supports OpenEXR. Lightroom (with some manual steps) would appear to also let me do something similar (copy selected to folder for burning to a dvd myself, and generate a web gallery /contact sheets from the same selection, into the same folder), but alas, again, no OpenEXR.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts and frustrations about the current state of the art (so to speak).
Dave (A photographer who uses OpenEXR, as well as tiff/jpeg/raw, and possibly JpegXR and DNG in future).
June 10th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Hi Dave - thank you for your comments and insight. I too agree that as more and more HDR images are created (thx to advances in software and cameras) we’ll need software to take advantage of these unique file formats.
I know for sure that Idmager doesn’t natively support it but you can set it up to appear in Idi:
http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6882&p=39960&hilit=exr#p39960
Perhaps you might have asked the question even…?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of Idimager and use it now to manage my pro and personal photo collection. The combination of features, continuous updates with corrections and enhancements, along with the amazing support by Hert and the entire community make is really difficult to look elsewhere.
I agree that the scripting system in Idimager makes is possible to do many things that aren’t possible using the base software alone. My hope for the future is a fully detailed help file of all scripting functions with examples. In addition, I’d love the editor to include autocomplete for functions ala Visual Studio.. start typing an object and it would show a list of possibles including methods, etc. This along with an object viewer, would complete the scripter!
Not an easy undertaking but it would really enable the majority of users to realize the amazing power of being able to write scripts (or standalone applications!) that access and modify their database with custom functions.
Anyway.. hopefully OpenEXR will be added to most programs down the road.
As a side note, I switched over to DNG from NEF awhile back and love the flexibility of not having a sidecar file and being able to see the embedded DNG thumb updated in Idimager… makes the extra time spent to convert on download well worth it.
Thx again for your comments… Andy.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:10 am
You slacker!!! Get back to work immediately!!!
LOL. I honestly didn’t know how you could be doing all this as quickly as you were.
While I eagerly await your opinions of iMatch, I can certainly wait until you are able to review it.
Thanks again for all your efforts and as far as I can tell, the resource you are building is a unique one. Congratulations!
chris
June 28th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Great site - found you thru Nikon Cafe. As my RAW image collection grows, so does my need for a DAM product. Sorting thru them all is a HUGE task.
My perspective is as a Nikon RAW shooter who used Capture NX2 as my central piece of editing software. The ability to write keywords and star ratings in the latest NX2 triggered my interest in DAM products. The fact that NX embeds the keyword in the NEF seems to me to be a central consideration. I want a DAM program that honors that scheme. Looking at iMatch and may download the demo to test it out.
Tomas
June 28th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Thx Tomas - and welcome to the site! Great to see you came from the Cafe.. I am there quite a bit and love that site!
As a Nikon RAW shooter myself, I totally understand your interest. However, I must admit that I have switched over to using DNG as my RAW of choice. I use Downloader Pro to ingest my images and convert them to DNG on the fly. I then only edit my DNG’s.
The main benefit… the embedded preview in the DNG corresponds to the edits I make in my RAW editor (LR at the moment). Thus, in my DAM program (IDimager), I get to see the exact changes I made… unless you are using the RAW editor as yoru DAM tool (ie: Lightroom), you cannot do this with NEF files.
Like NEF’s, DNG files embed the XMP data directly into the file so you also do not have any sidecar files floating around to work with..
My Imatch review will be out in about 2 weeks… please stay tuned to see if it will work for you.
Thx again for your comments!