Software Other Than Organizer

[Sissy]

I'm having so much problem with my Organizer, that I'm thinking of just not using it even though I've spent hours organizing my Digital Scrapbooking catalog and my picture catalog. I've posted my problem on the Adobe forum, and we'll see what kind of response I get.

My question is, I remember seeing some software on one of the digital scrapbooking web sites featuring some software that would allow you to create a database almost exactly like the Organizer. Now I can't for the life of me remember what it was called or where I saw it. Thought I had it bookmarked, but after digitally scrapping for a while now, my folder of favorites under digital scrapbooking has become unmanageable!! Now I need to organize that.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

[troush]

Sissy,

I use IMatch for organizing. Someone has written a script to convert the Organizer database to import into IMatch - at least for version 3. However, your database from the Organizer would have to be in good shape before doing an import.

-Trish

[Sissy]

IMatch is not the software I was trying to remember the name of, but thanks for the tip. I have not heard of IMatch. The software I was trying to remember was created specifically for organizing digital scrapbooking elements. But now you've got my curiosity up; I'll have to check this software out, too.

[troush]

IMatch is really a pro-level organizer. It has scripting, and other features. I use it to catalog all my images and scrapbooking, and then to generate a web gallery for my family to see pictuers of my kids (which I haven't done it a while). But you can do soooo much more. What I like about it is how scalable it is. A database of 500,000 images doesn't really slow down (unlike the organizer). I like it because it has true IPTC/XMP handling. You can edit IPTC data in the Editor, but it re-saves the image too (which if it's a jpg, can cause quality degradation. In IMatch you can edit IPTC/XMP data without rewriting the image section of the data, therefore the image quality is preserved. (And the reason I like to use IPTC, is because if Adobe went belly up, I would still have the data associated with my pictures IN my pictures, which is important.)

-Trish

[chris.orrell]

Trish, can you use Imatch on a pc or is it a mac program?

[troush]

IMatch is PC only.

-Trish

[thelegacylady]

The best I have found is Picasa - it is free and very easy to use. Here is a download link

Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/)

[Sissy]

The problem I had with Picasa when I tried it was that it automatically kept importing all kinds of things I didn't want imported. I couldn't figure out how to make it stop doing that.

Trish, thanks for the detailed info on IMatch. I think I now know why you're so good at giving advice to those of us who keep having technical problems. I don't understand half of what you said this software will do--IPTC/XMP handling, scripting??? And I always considered myself pretty computer and graphics savy. But no more. After reading what you've just written, I feel like I need to go back to kindergarten. :D I'll have my husband read your post in the morning and see if he can explain it to me!

If you read my reply to another discussion in this same topic area, you'll see that your advice to someone else fixed my organizer problem. After three days of messages back and forth to Adobe tech support, they still haven't suggested doing what you did--forcing the thumbnail cache to rebuild itself. So I posted a reply to them tonight telling them that this wonderful lady on a scrapbooking site solved my problem. Thought that'd jangle some chains! And I very nicely told them what your solution was.

I love this forum. :o :o

[troush]

Sissy,

Sorry I threw all that jargon at you... Let me explain... When you take a picture with a digital camera (or scan an image with your scanner), you make a jpg, tiff or RAW file (usually). The image data (the pixels you see on your screen) is just one part of the data in the .jpg file.

The camera also puts in EXIF data - things like the time the picture was taken, what the focal length, aperature, lens, flash settings, etc. The EXIF data is basically your camera and lens settings.

Way back when, the journalism field came up with "IPTC". It's an international definition for more data that you can add into images. This is things like copyright, photographer, caption, location, etc. There are a lot of IPTC fields. Anyway, most (but not all) image formats support EXIF and IPTC.

More recently, Adobe came up with XMP. XMP is another standard that supports all these EXIF and IPTC fields, but in a more human readable form. You may hear of things like XMP side car files. Adobe Bridge sometimes makes them. Anway, XMP is just a combination of EXIF and IPTC, plus, you can add more. Again, many image formats do already support XMP.

(For more history, XMP is just a subset of XML - which means eXtensable Markup Language. This was something that was defined, again by an international standards body, about 8 years ago or so. It is a way to easily share "metadata" - data about data - between programs. Programmers use it a lot, which is why I know about it.)

The problem with using any particular database/organizer program is that the company could just go away or the program stop being supported after an OS upgrade, or whatever. So, keeping the data in the image files themselves you always have the data (and hopefully, some other program can read the data).

The problem with PSE Organizer/Editor, is that if you modify the IPTC data of an image, it rewrites ALL the data, including the image data. If your file is a jpeg file, that means that the "image" portion of the data, the pixels, get recompressed and rewritten. Now, one time probably isn't too bad. But, it doesn't HAVE to be that way. (In fact, I put a feature request in over at adobe to be able to edit IPTC data without rewriting the image data portion.) In IMatch, if you edit IPTC or EXIF data, the program is written so it only rewrites the metadata section of the .jpeg file, not the pixel section, so no recompression and no data loss.

Anyway, hope that makes more sense than my previous post.

-Trish

[Penny]

Thanks Trish - I have iMatch and wondered what all that (IPTC or EXIF data) was about. :eek: Thanks for explaining it to us. I will be adding this to my printed notes. I know I have not used iMatch to its fullest. It takes so much to get organized - I have way too much stuff.

[Sonita]

Sissy,

Is it ACDcee? I really don't know what it is, but have read about it in this forum. I use Picasa. It shows all images in your computer, but you can create a folder(s) for your scrapbooking stuff.

[troush]

Aha! I think it was in this (http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=945&page=2) thread - digitalscraproom.com that you're thinking of.

-Trish

[meems]

I believe digitalscraproom has been taken over by ACDSee.

I switched from PSE4 Organizer to ACDSee 9 Photomanager last fall (I think). Anyway, ACDSee is AWESOME! It uses the Windows Explorer file tree so there is no need for importing. I use it instead of Windows Explorer. For digi scrapping it's very nice b/c you can tag all sorts of items all sorts of ways. You can also preveiw .ttf files (fonts) and specify a background color for pngs so that you can actually see white png files. and it is FAST.

I probably sound like a commercial but I get really excited whenever I think of ACDSee9. I really really really love it. It does quite a lot but I will be quiet now. :p

[Sissy]

Aha! I think it was in this (http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=945&page=2) thread - digitalscraproom.com that you're thinking of.

-Trish


Yes, yes. That's the software I was trying to remember. Oh, thank goodness. It's so frustrating to not be able to remember something like this.

And, Trish, thanks for the explanation of what all the "jargon" means. That was a big help.