Reviewing DAM products takes a lot of patience… as soon as you finish one review, you are eager to get started on the competition and see how they compare. Having just reviewed Idimager, I immediately began work reviewing our next product: IMatch! I have spoken with many photographers that use either program and they are always comparing Idimager and IMatch to each other. So, here is my take on Imatch!

Application	Version	Review Date	Price	Review By	Technology
IMatch	3.6.0.60	July 7, 2008	$64.95	Andy	PC (MAC via Parallels)
Website	http://www.photools.com

General Overview

IMatch is a technical photographer’s dream program. As with Idimager, IMatch has been developed and is supported by a single developer, Mario Westphal. The product contains a full suite of management features that let you organize and find your images fast.

Before getting into the detailed review, I do want to fully disclose that Mario did provide me with a press license for the software so I could test the features beyond the 30 day trial. As with my review of Idimager, I assure everyone that it did not affect my review of the product in any way. Ok, on with the review!

Installation

The installation of the product went very smoothly. You are first presented with the welcome screen which is then followed by standard license agreement followed by the location to install the files to:

After a couple minutes, the install is complete and Imatch is ready to run!

After starting the program for the first time, I chose to create a new database using the Database Wizard. The database is of course central to IMatch and contains the thumbnail and XMP data used to view and search for images in your collection. The database for IMatch is in a proprietary format but can be exported any number of ways to access the data outside of the main program - more on that later. In any event, I was presented with the first screen of the wizard:

After hitting Next, I was presented with the option to create a password for my database and then asked for the location to store the database on my system. I was also given the option of setting the thumbnail size for images - if you choose to change the thumbnail size later, then you must rebuild all your thumbs to see them at that size (including offline images):

Next, you are given the option to setup some initial database content, specifically default categories and properties fields. Since I will be testing the application by building categories from IPTC keywords, I chose to turn off the category creation:

Once the database was created, I was then offered the option to import some photos into the database. As you can see below, I chose to include my test stock photos to add and used the default settings to include all image types:

I then was given the option of assigning these photos directly to a category. Since my DB was just created, and I chose not to include any categories, the cateogry assignment box is empty:

Finally, the program was ready to go and started the import into the catalog. The import was very fast and only took about 20 seconds for the 32 images:

And that was that. I was then presented with the default GUI and was off and running.

So, to recap, the install process was very smooth - the database wizard did a great job taking you through the process of creating the DB and then seeding it with images. The process was quite fast as well although I wasn’t assigning the images to any categories.

Just a note… I’m not sure if it is my test system or not, but it takes me around 30 seconds or so before IMatch starts. Perhaps the program is doing some updating up front on watched folders, etc.. but I was a bit surprised by this.

Ok.. on to the GUI!

User Interface (GUI)

Note: As mentioned before in other reviews, I am running my display at 1024×768 using a 15″ LCD display which significantly curtails the amount of screen real estate I have. As such, please realize that most users will have *a lot* more screen to work with and will be able to display more panes or larger panes than I have in my screenshots.

The picture below shows you the main GUI for IMatch:

As you can see, the GUI is broken shown above has 2 sections: the Main Thumbnail Viewer and the DB/Catgory Panel. You can also have open the properties panel, the 1-click dialog bar and the Category Assignment Dialog which will all be shown in screenshots below. In general, the GUI is clean and fast but somewhat limited in terms of customization. You are able to customize the colors of the thumbs, screen and background via the program properties:

You can also modify the information that displays around your thumbnails. To me, this is very important and IMatch handles this very well by allowing you complete control via scripting. In addition, IMatch allows you to customize 3 different views: a small thumbs view, a medium size compact view and a large detailed view. Of course, since you control the width and height of thumbnails under each view, you can make each of these as small or large as you’d like. As you can see below, not only can you choose basic information such as filename and dimension but you can design how add’l information will appear by using HTML code along with XMP database variables:

The results of the above are thumbnails that appear as follows for each view - thumb, compact and detail:

Very nice!

Unfortunately, you do not have the ability to move the panes around and you cannot create workspaces that can be saved and displayed as needed. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a really important option for me as I typically change my views with my workflow steps. While I can resize and turn on and off the panes as needed, the lack of workspaces does slow down my workflow a bit. IMatch will remember the pane sizes as you move between tabs in the DB/Catalog panel though. So, if I always open the preview tab wide with a narrow thumbnail panel, when I switch from the catalog tab to the preview tab, the system will remember that setting and reopen my thumbnail strip as narrow with a large preview… close.. but not quite enough:

Next, I thought I mention how fast the program feels to the user… it’s very fluid. I would have to say that IMatch is as fast as Pro 2 and much faster than Idimager in general. Scrolling through the thumbnails shows a noticeable improvement over Idimager even with similar XMP tags to display on the thumbnails - there is no delay in showing the XMP info and the thumbs and info is always there - a problem I often run into with Idimager.

Well.. that about wraps up the GUI. In summation, not bad really. I like the speed and the fact that your info is available to view when you want it to be. The panels are clearly labeled and certainly let you take care of cataloging and finding your images… however, I wish you had the additional flexibility to further customize things - especially creating retrievable workspaces and being able to move panels to different screen locations. But - the ability to fully define your thumbnails takes it to the next level. Not bad at all!

Metadata Handling

So, how does IMatch work with your metadata? Let’s test drive this important functionality and see!

Metadata in IMatch can be created in a many ways. I took a dual approach to testing this for IMatch and found a few interesting things out along the way. First of all, you can access your metadata by using the 3 editors included in Imatch - one for IPTC, one for EXIF and one for XMP:

Each editor will allow you to view and change the values for a single or group of images and will write that data into the database and the image:

The editors are well laid out and allow you access to advanced functionality such as thesaurus and user fields. I really like how you can view and edit you XMP fields as well.. again - nicely done:

Another way you can apply metadata is by linking your images to categories. Similar to catalog labels in Idimager, categories can be a hierarchical organization of topics that allow you to quickly and easily find your images. Categories can be auto-created/assigned when you import images into the database by reading your IPTC keywords, categories or supplemental categories:

The main issue I have with this method is.. it only works well if your IPTC categories or keywords are already stored in dot-notation. For example, I uploaded an image that I have sync’d with Idimager without dot-notation and the following categories were created:

As you can see, IMatch created 8 top level categories for this image. This makes sense of course as each keyword is considered a seperate element but it does mean that unless you are using a hierarchical setup already in your image data, importing the images into IMatch will include a lot of cleanup if you then want a hierarchical structure. Once I cleaned up the images a bit, my categories looked like this:

Very nice… I then wrote out my categories as dot notation and they overwrote the keywords in my images which is great! The only problem, lets say you import another images with “cat” as a keyword…. you will get another top level category of cat and image will need to be moved to the Animals->cat category. This of course isn’t a problem if you are not importing your metadata into IMatch - but since the majority of users will be doing this, it is something to be aware of.

Synching metadata between your database and your images is very important… You want to be sure your images contain all the database data so you can easily move from DAM application to application as you might want to. If you use the IPTC or EXIF editors, then IMatch automatically writes IPTC and EXIF data back to the original image at the moment you save the info. This is also true if you use a script to modify the IPTC or EXIF data.

In Imatch, I have found you need to do 2 things to ensure your catalog metadata is always written to your image files: Run the script: Copy IMatch Categories into IPTC Categories and Refresh XMP Cache. When you run these 2 functions, your categories get written to the IPTC file and then your XMP cache and file metadata get updated. While I cannot wait for the day when you will be able to just have synching enabled real time without any performance hit, in the meantime, this isn’t a bad approach to ensure you data is sync’d correctly.

As an aside, you can also write out all your XMP changes by simply disabling the asynchronous update mode setting from the Preferences -> XMP dialog. IMatch will then flush out changes made to XMP data to the original file or the sidecar file immediately… then you can turn it back on again. Neat!

Ok.. moving right along, another big aspect of metadata in Imatch is dynamic categories. Dynamic categories allow you to setup expressions that will then automatically update based upon that logic:

In the screenshot above, you’ll note that this category is setup to always show unassigned images - images not assigned to any category in the system. Setting up dynamic categories is a great way to manage images in your collection.

Another really nice feature in IMatch is the One-Click Bar. This vertical strip is displayed on the right side of the screen and contains a number of “shortcuts” to features such as running scripts and assigning categories:

You can setup individual categories or create “Splashers” that enable you to assign images to multiple categories at once.. this is a real time saver! For example, I setup a splasher for client portraits that linked to several categories: Client, portraits, June, etc. You can also setup individual categories as shown above. You can assign different colors to highlight more commonly used categories or to arrange them in a specific order. I also use the One-Click bar to store my sync scripts which is very handy and is something I used to quickly sync my images with the database.

So, in conclusion, IMatch does a nice job in allowing the user to maintain metadata. With the ability to display information under each thumbnail, you can get a quick overview of meta information without having to scroll through a meta panel. The IPTC/XMP view/editors are nicely laid out and provide you with access to this important information. The only problem I have is with the process of syncing the database to your images. Although an easy 2 step process, I would prefer a more “visual” method that clearly notes on the thumbnails or in a panel which items are out of sync. Also, I really would love for the software to sync images automatically for you… there is a setting in the options to auto-sync but it does slow down the system and it is recommended to keep the option turned off. I’d love to see IMatch thread this process to the background in the future - not having to worry about syncing would remove a huge step in my workflow that could be missed. If this is still too “costly” in terms of processing time, then perhaps a feature where you determine what info to sync (ie: categories to keywords) and the ability to visually see which items will sync. Then, click one button and off it goes in the background.

All in all, I am quite pleased with IMatch so far…

Search Capabilities

Let’s see how IMatch handles looking for and finding images in the database. IMatch takes a slightly different approach than most programs in how they present searches to the users. There isn’t really a “quick search” like you see in Pro 2 and Idimager - instead, IMatch has separate “selections” which can be built to create complex of simple searches. This concept is very nice for the power user but might put off the casual user a bit who just wants to find “Aunt Sarah” quickly. In any event, IMatch does come with some pre-built selections and these appear under the Search Menu as follows:

As you can see in the image above, a variety of selections are available to you: File Name, XMP Metadata, specific formats, by date/time, and even an advanced method where you can find images by matching them to a selected image. It is an interesting approach and with the ability to create your own selections using expressions, it is a very powerful feature - but I’ll cover that shortly. First, let’s have a look at some of the searches you’ll be doing often: file name and XMP Metadata.

In the above screenshot I’ve selected the File Name Search and chose to search for ‘+901′. This expression will search the database for any image with ‘901′ in the filename. If IMatch doesn’t find any, then a dialog box appears to let you know the search results are empty. If it does find images, they are presenting in a new “window” as follows:

As you can see, the results are displayed along with a preview window in a new window “on top of” the original IMatch window. A nice feature.. if you resize say the preview window - the next time you run a search, the window will display with your modifications. If you close this window, then your workspace will re-appear as it was setup before the search. This works out well and is a nice idea.. Since you can swap between the windows, you can keep your searches open if you’d like as you work in another workspace.

Let’s take a look at the metadata/XMP search:

The search window for XMP allows you to either search all XMP fields.. or to narrow you search to a specific XMP field. You can use a pattern as I did above - look for ‘cat’ which would find cat, catch and placate if these words appeared in any XMP field. You can also use regular expressions which allow you to do some advanced searches like: \Abeach which with find all file names starting with beach or “[a-z]” will match any character in the range “a” to “z”. There are lots of options and the help file does an ok job explaining them and providing some examples.

The real power comes in the ability to define your own selections.. and then use them combined to create more powerful selections. Let’s take a look at some of other pre-built selections and then we’ll look at the selection editor:

In the window above, you note that I’ve selected the “selections” tab in the bottom left window which displays the selection panel. Once I chose the “Find all files <= 100 KB in the database” section, the selection details window opened in the middle screen. The selection details window is where you define the specific search criteria that makes up the selection.

So, in the above example, you will see that we use the Basic Selector: File Size and have chosen to select images with an absolute file size between 0 and 100 KB. If we were to run this selection, we would be provided will all database images with a file size < 100 KB. Let’s look at a more powerful example:

In the above example, I created a selection that would show me all JPG images that are greater than 2 MB in size and are copyrighted to me. This required me to setup selectors for File Format, File Size and XMP Data (bolded above). Pretty neat stuff!

Some other cool things you can do… you can choose a particular image and have the software find images that are “similar”. This can be similar in color or similar in shape. You can even find images that are similar to a particular shape that you sketch.. although I didn’t have much luck using my sample DB (I almost always received all the images as results even though most shouldn’t have been found).

A nice feature - the result window (result set) also contains the original selection data which you can modify to further narrow your results. Another nice feature is the selection result history which will allow you to quickly recall recently used selections. Note: the history is only available while the program is running. As soon as you close the database, the history is reset. Also, if you add any images to the database, these images are not reflected in the selection history and you will need to re-run the selection in order to get accurate results.

To keep result sets even after you close the program, you’ll need to convert the results to Persistent Sets. These sets will remain in the database so you can view them down the road… but you will still need to re-run them if new images are added. It would be nice for the system to automatically update these (again - in the background) as you manipulate the database although having to re-run them isn’t too much trouble.

To be honest, I’m not sure what value saving the result sets brings to you since you must manually re-run them whenever you modify the database… the real value would come if the system maintained these for you as you work through your database - then, commonly used searches would return accurate results instantly.

So, in summary, the search capabilities while different than other DAM applications, is a powerful way to find your images. I think the lack of a quick search type box might put off the non-power user.. but to the power users amongst us, selections is a very powerful mechanism to locate images. In my test database, searches were quick but of course I was only using my 32 image DB.

Scripting/Batch Functionality

At the heart of a great DAM is the ability to script. This feature opens up your database (and the application) and allows you to truly create new functionality that is missing from an application. IMatch thankfully contains a powerful scripting language based upon a BASIC programming language and comes complete with an integrated development environment (IDE) to create, edit and debug (!) your scripts. Let’s take a peek shall we?:

Ok, so under the scripts menu we see a number of things: access to the pre-defined and user scripts, access to the scripting manager and access to edit application and database event scripts (more on that later). FIrstly, lets talk abut the Scripting Manager:

The Script manager is a centralized location to manage and maintain your scripts. The icons above the script list allow you to edit, run and create scripts while being able to view the script details in the detail pane. Scripts can be ordered into groups for easier viewing as well.

The main place to create or edit scripts is in the script IDE editor:

As you can see above, the script editor is a full featured IDE with the ability to even debug your scripts as you run them. Given that IMatch uses a BASIC variant for programming, the readability of scripts is very high - perfect for learning how to create your own. If you want to present the user with a dialog, you can either program the dialog in the code or use the user dialog editor:

In general, the ability to script in IMatch is very well done. Of course, as with any language, you’ll need to learn the vagaries of it before you can really program your own scripts. I found myself wishing for the easier syntax of Delphi or Python but after review many of the examples, was able to put together a few scripts that I use in Idimager to perform similar operations in Imatch.

IMatch comes with a good number of scripts that you’ll find yourself using often. For me, its the IPTC to XMP Categories script which copies your catalog catalogies directly to your XMP. As mentioned above, this enables me to keep my database and images in sync and is a very nice script to have.

One other very powerful feature in IMatch is the ability to define database and application event scripts! While processing commands, IMatch sends messages (events) to the scripting system on an ongoing basis. The events can be added or removed from the system as the program processes instructions. The beauty of this… you can create scripts to run based on these events! Let’s say you would like a script to automatically create a new image resized to 800×600 whenever an images is added to the database. You can setup a database event script to do this based on the event handle: FileAdded. Perhaps this isn’t the most practical idea… but you get the idea of what you can do with this.

Of course, you need to keep in mind that this will slow the system down and does have the potential to really impact how the program performs. You can also really cause some major damage to your system if you do something wrong (as with all scripts) so please be careful about how you use db and application scripts.

In summary, I was really impressed with scripting in IMatch. In reviewing the forums and talking with many users, it certainly is one of the main reasons they use the product.

The Kitchen Sink

So, what else does IMatch have that fits the bill for this section? Let’s take a look:

Slideshow

IMatch includes the ability to view images in a slideshow format:

I really like this window as you can view some metadata, set ranking/ratings and even assign/review categories right from this window! However, it doesn’t allow you to create or save slideshows so is basically just a full screen view that can be setup to move from manually or automatically from image to image.

Batch Processing

Although I typically include this with the Scripting discussion, I wanted to separate this out for IMatch and include it under the additional functions here. For IMatch, the 2 really are distinct tools with a variety of batch functions and conversions available to the end user. Let’s start by showing some of the options:

As you can above, you first get to choose a preset to load. The presets all contain data that will be displayed on the upcoming screens - so you can create your own batch presets to load for your own usage (ie: adding a custom watermark). Let’s look at the screens:

Using similar settings, I converted an image to a 600×800 JPG with a frame and frame mask to get the following:

Neat! The one thing I wish you could do would be to batch editing commands such as sharpen or brightness contrast. Otherwise, this is a powerful batch utility that works really well.

Editor

IMatch includes a basic photo editor which can be accessed to perform general modifications to your images:

Shown here with the Image panel pulled down, you can see the editing commands available to you. With the ability to create custom selections, you can really narrow down exactly where edits will take place which is a nice advanced feature.

Image Reviewer

IMatch also contains a neat feature called the Image Reviewer. Basically, it is a quick summary screen where you can see and manipulate details such as categories for a single or group of images.. kinda like a mini slideshow or browser:

The only problem I have with this is the inability to resize the window or the category panel. But this was a nice easy and quick way to review images and make some adjustments as needed.

Side-by-Side Preview

A relatively new feature to IMatch is the side-by-side view. Allowing you to view multiple images in a single screen, the SBS view is a great way to compare images and really helps my workflow, especially the initial review of images:

With the ability to rank, label and bookmark your images from the screen as well as the ability to auto enhance the images, the SBS window is a great tool to choose a single image from a group of similars (of course, not my example above). A great feature… the loupe tool. Like a magnifier on steroids.. the loupe is really great to zoom in and see an area in detail.. no doubt how sharp this image is!:

Conclusion

So.. another long detailed review of one of the top DAM applications on the market. My final thoughts? I do like IMatch and think it is a great DAM product but it feels a bit “old” when compared with some of the other DAM products I’ve recently reviewed. The GUI looks a bit outdated and lacks the flexibility that many users might want (ie: workspaces). I also feel that the product is geared more towards the “power user” as it lacks many simple functions that a non-power user might lookfor (ie: ability to email photos, upload to flickr, photo view by calendar, etc). I do hope that many of these issues are addressed in the next version of IMatch dubbed IMatch NG (next generation).

However, the program shines in terms of speed and the ability to define solid selections and beginner to advanced scripts. So, once again, it really depends on what type of user your are and what your goal is in terms of asset management.

Pros:

Scripting: IMatch certainly does scripting well and if you are a power user, you will love the ability to setup scripts for just about any task you might envision. The IDE is a nice touch and enables anyone to learn from existing scripts and even debug them while they are being developed.

Support: As a single developer, Mario is an active member of his forum (and other popular photography boards) and responds with helpful advice. The forums are pretty active with a dedicated user base that truly loves their product.

Metadata: XMP support, easy input screens

Searching: Complex or simple searches via selections, ability to save selection for future usage

Speed: Thumbnails display very quickly even with full XMP data displayed, operations are done quickly

Extras: Side-by-side View is a great recent addition to the program! You can send files (even multiple) via the “Send Email” command.

Cons:

GUI: Not fully flexible user interface, no ability to define and save workspaces, cannot move panels, no tab browser/search result panels.

Complexity - again, this is a tough concept since each person can have a different take on a program… but I do feel like the program might not be the right fit for a non-power/newbie user.

Versioning - no ability to easily setup links between similar images

Downloader - no built in downloader

Web Gallery/FTP - no built in editor - although there are scripts ( Scripts > Publish your images to the Web) that allow template-driven web page creation.