This category contains Know-how articles and tutorials for IMatch plus articles about Digital Asset Management (DAM) and digital imaging in general.
The Did you Know? app included with IMatch contains a large number of helpful topics, highlighting certain features or options.
The app to be used while you work with IMatch, reminding you of rarely used features or giving you tips for how to work more efficiently.
You can open it from the Help menu or from the App Manager.
New topics are added frequently, often based on questions asked in the IMatch user community.
An often overlooked but useful feature in the File Window is to open the selected files in a new result window.
This feature allows you to work on a subset of the images in the current scope, which may provide a better overview in some situations.
Or you use the File Window Search Bar or the Filter Panel to find files in the current scope. Then select these files and open them in a result window, for further searching or filtering. This creates an easy drill-down workflow.
To open all selected files in a new result window, press Ctrl + G , R
IMatch apps are designed to be responsive and adapt to the current screen resolution. But sometimes this may not be enough, for example, when you want to use very small App Panels to maximize the screen estate available for other panels or the file window. Or when you use IMatch on a small tablet or notebook while on-location.
Under Edit > Preferences > Application: User Interface you can control the global scale for information rendered in App Panels. You can reduce or increase the scale in 16 steps between -8 (smaller) and +8 (larger).
Using the Apply button allows you to see the change in all open App Panels immediately. The App Panel on the left uses a scale factor of 0 (default). As you can see, the buttons in the panel need to wrap because the panel width is too small to display them in one row. By reducing the scale factor to -3, the data and control elements fit neatly in the available panel.
The global scaling for App Panels enables you to size the contents precisely to your requirements and liking.
See also the related article Configuring IMatch for High-DPI Screens and Easier Reading.
Services like Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and others make it very easy to backup files into the cloud. This is often used as a second or third tier backup strategy. In addition to local backups of all your important files for easy and quick recovery.
This know-how article explains how your can integrate cloud storage with IMatch.
All of the above cloud providers allow you to use a mode where you keep a local copy of all the files managed in the cloud. This makes these files accessible for all applications on your computer — without any special software and also very fast. If you change a file in one of the cloud backed folders, it is automatically synchronized with the cloud storage. If you change files on another computer which is synchronized with your cloud, the changed files are automatically downloaded to all your other computers.
This is exactly the way to do it when you want to manage your files in IMatch and use the cloud to store your files.
You just include the folders in the local copy of your cloud storage (e.g., the Photos sub-folder in the Dropbox folder) in your IMatch database.
This way you can manage the files in IMatch, search, view, edit metadata etc.
Whenever you change a file in IMatch, the file is synchronized back into the cloud automatically. And when you change files on other systems and the cloud synchronizes your local copy with the cloud afterwards, IMatch detects the new and updated files and updates the database.
This gives you the best of both worlds. IMatch and integrated cloud storage.
As a backup, great. Just copy your IMatch database(s) into your cloud folders at regular intervals or let Windows do it with a scheduled task. Keeping a live database in cloud storage, however, can be problematic and sometimes even dangerous.
When IMatch has a database open, it creates temporary files, lock files and short-lived transaction journal files. These files come and go as needed by the database system. They enable IMatch to cleanly undo failed database operations, to recover from catastrophic events like power failures and to handle multi-user scenarios. And of course IMatch updates database file several times per second.
When IMatch closes a database, all temporary files are removed and only the .imd* database file remains. The database is then in a clean state and ready for backup.
But when you keep your ‘working’ IMatch databases in the local Dropbox folder, this is what happens:
Dropbox recognizes that the database file has changed and that temporary files have been added, updated or removed. It then starts to synchronize these files into the cloud. While Dropbox is doing this, IMatch continues to update the database, creating and removing temporary files. Whatever ends up in the cloud is most likely outdated and inconsistent. Nothing you can rely on as a backup.
And there might be a performance penalty, too. If Dropbox is locking files while it processes them, IMatch may be slowed down or even run into timeouts.
For these reasons, it is not recommended to keep ‘live’ IMatch databases in Dropbox. You can copy a closed database into a Dropbox folder for backup purposes. But not while IMatch (or IMatch WebServices™) have the database open.
I used Dropbox as an example here, but the same behavior can also be found with Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive.
Find other interesting articles in the DAM Knowledge Base.
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Using smart file names can be a key for successful digital asset management. Some users prefer to include dates in file names. Other users include project codes or use a globally unique file naming schema. Whatever naming schema you decide to use, IMatch has tools to make the job easier.
IMatch includes a powerful tool named Renamer. With it you cannot only rename files in smart ways, but also copy and move files, add folders on-the-fly, create automatic backups, and more…
Cameras often use file names like _DSC12345.jpg, which are not really informative or useful. You cannot tell anything about the contents of the file by just looking at the file name. And, if you use more than one camera, you may even end up with duplicate file names. And that’s never a good idea.
Although the physical file name is not that important anymore when you use a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system like IMatch. But it’s always better to be able to work with your files properly outside of your DAM, e.g. when you upload files to your web site or send them out to clients or a printing service.
The IMatch Renamer tool enables you to create consistent and descriptive file names – automatically, when new files are indexed by your database, or later at any time. Whether you use simple numerical file names or you include additional information like date and time, a project code or even metadata like title or job id is up to you.
| _DSC12345.ext | This is the file name format used by most digital cameras today. Each image file gets a sequential number and the prefix DSC (Digital Still Camera). A leading underscore is added if the file is in the Adobe RGB color space. |
| 2015-08-01_12345.ext | This file name consists of the year-month-day the image was taken, plus a sequential number. This format is pretty common because the file names are not only descriptive but also ensure that the images are sorted by date in software like Windows Explorer. |
| P8781-00121.ext P8781-20150801-00121.ext |
A file naming schema which uses a project code (P8781) and then a 5-digit sequential number which identifies each file in that project. The second variant also includes the date and time.
The Renamer has a special project code feature which prompts you to input a project code automatically. |
| 20150801-usa-new-↵ york-890.ext |
A file name which consists of a date stamp, the country and city name where the image was taken and a sequential number. File names like this are great when you travel a lot.
The Renamer can construct such file names from the location metadata in the image automatically. |
| Project_Location_Lab_Cond_↵ 20150801100501_001.ext |
A file name how it is often used for files created in research projects. Each file name contains important information about the object(s) shown in the image.
The Renamer can construct such file names automatically by accessing both metadata stored in a file and global variables, e.g., the project name or the location and lab data. |
Your naming convention make be based on one of these examples, or you create your own unique way of naming files. The Renamer in IMatch is flexible enough to handle (almost) everything you can come up with.
To rename files, select them in a File Window and then bring up the Renamer by pressing <Ctrl>+<F2>. The Renamer has a comfortable user interface which allows you to produce file names by adding one or more steps. There are steps to:
[list_font icon=”check-square-o” list_item_1=”add date and time in various formats” list_item_2=”add plain text and IMatch variables” list_item_3=”converting the case of file names” list_item_4=”including selected parts of the original file name” list_item_5=”replacing or delete text” list_item_6=”removing (leading/trailing) digits” list_item_7=”adding unique or sequential numbers” list_item_8=”copying and moving files” list_item_9=”creating folders on-the-fly, even with names based on variables” list_item_10=”prompting the user to enter a project code when he renames files” list_item_11=”…”]
While you add or change steps, the embedded preview allows you to see the resulting file names. No changes are made to the file system, the Renamer merely simulates the rename operation. It also checks for and indicates duplicate file names you may produce with your steps.
In the screen shot above we create file names in the format: YYYY-MM-DD-nnnnn.ext format. At the bottom of the dialog box you see the source file name and destination file name. If you rename more then one file, you can click on the Preview… button to see the resulting file names for all files.
To create the more complex YYYYMMDD-Country Code-City Name-sequence number format explained in the table above, we just need a few more steps:
The first step adds the date in the YYYYMMDD format. Then we add a – and the ISO country code. We follow up with another – and then the name of the city. The country code and city name are retrieved directly from the XMP metadata of the file by using the corresponding IMatch variables. The final two steps add yet another – and a 5-digit sequence number. For the sample image used for this demo, the resulting file name is: 20140321-USA-New York-28190.jpg.
See the Renamer topic in the IMatch help system for numerous additional examples and tips & tricks.
Most of the RAW processing software in use today (and also image editing software, audio and video processing tools) produce sidecar or ‘buddy’ files for each file you process. A typical example are XMP files which contain the XMP metadata for your RAW fies. If you have a _DSC12345.RAW file, the XMP file will be named _DSC12345.XMP.
RAW processors or image editing software also create a variety of other files with settings, configuration data or history info for each image you process in these applications. Sometimes these files are in the same folder as the image, sometimes in sub-folders.
When you rename an image file, it is important to rename the sidecar and buddy files as well. Otherwise you may break the ‘link’ between the image file and the sidecar files which can have dire consequences.
The Renamer cooperates with IMatch’s unique file relations concept and thus ‘knows’ about buddy and sidecar files – even if these are not indexed by your IMatch database. The Renamer automatically ensures that buddy and sidecar files are renamed together with the image file.
The Renamer tool in IMatch enables you to create descriptive and consistent file names. It offers easy features to include date and time, arbitrary metadata, text and automatic numeric sequences in file names. By using the embedded preview you can test your rename results without making changes to the file system. The Renamer also cooperates with the unique file relations feature in IMatch to automatically rename buddy and sidecar files when the corresponding image is renamed.
The ability to export metadata in various formats is a key feature for every digital asset management system. IMatch includes a wide range of export modules which allow you to export attributes, metadata and other data in a variety of formats.
This know-how article covers the flexible Text Export module which enables you to create text files in a variety of formats. The export module supports both UTF-8 and UTF-16 (Windows® UNICODE) encoded text, which allows you to create output which works on all platforms and operating systems. IMatch enables you to output virtually every metadata field and Attribute it maintains in the database, ready to imported into other applications and systems.
These output formats are supported:
Each format can be customized to match whatever format the importing application expects. As a result, you can export virtually anything that is stored in your IMatch database conveniently into other applications.
You control the data to export via standard IMatch variables, which gives you complete access to all metadata and Attributes IMatch maintains for your files. Using variable formatting functions you can further format and modify the output to meet your requirements.
Each file processed by the export module produces one ‘record’ in the output. The resulting record can have any number of ‘fields’. A field has an (optional) name and a value. The name is plain text and the value is composed from one or more variables and literal text. For example:
FileName:{File.NameExt}
The name of this field is FileName and the value comes from the variable {File.NameExt}, which returns the file name and extension of the file (e.g., beach.jpg). Field name and value are separated by a colon:
To export multiple fields per record, just add additional declarations on additional lines:
FileName:{File.NameExt} DateCreated:{File.MD.createdate|format:YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss} Description:{File.MD.description} Credit:{File.MD.credit}
This declaration exports 4 fields per record. To keep things tidy, this example uses shortcodes like createdate instead of the long standard variable names. See the IMatch help for details about shortcodes.
By default IMatch exports date and time information in your local date&time format (as configured in Windows). This may cause problems when the importing application expects date and time in a specific format.
To prevent any problems in this area, we use the format function together with the createdate variable to produce a date and time format in standard ISO YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format. This avoids any ambiguities.
IMatch supports dozens of variable formatting functions. Please see the Variables help topic in the IMatch help for a full list and examples.
Not only for this case, but in general when you work with variables in IMatch, the Var Toy App can be a big help. This app allows you to enter a mix of literal text and variables and to immediately see the result.
Open an App Panel via View > Panels > App Panel (or <F9>,<1>) and select the Var Toy App in the drop-down list at the top of the App Panel:
The Metadata Panel has a useful command which allows you to copy the corresponding variable for a metadata tag into the clipboard. Right click any caption in the Metadata Panel to open the context menu:
The Copy as Variable command copies the variable for the clicked metadata tag into the Windows Clipboard. From there you can insert it into the VarToy App or into whatever feature you want to use it with.
Select the files you want to include in the export and drop them on the Text Export module in the Import & Export Panel. You can also drop one or more folders, categories, collections or time-line nodes.
If the panel is not visible, open it via View > Panels > Import & Export or <F9>,<X>.
After you have dropped the objects, the Text Exporter opens a dialog box where you can configure the format and options for the export:
The options in this dialog are mostly self-explanatory. Press <F1> to open the corresponding topic in the IMatch help, which explains each option in detail. The help also contains examples and suggested output formats for a variety or common applications.
We create a standard CSV (comma-separated values) file in this case. Fields are separated with a comma (,) and each row (aka ‘record’) is delimited with a carriage return / line feed pair. This is the format expected by most Windows applications and Office suites.
At the bottom of the dialog you see the field definitions we have defined earlier. We just coped them from the VarToy App into the input field in the Text Export module. You can of course also enter and edit them in this dialog directly.
After running the export for 3 sample files, we can open the resulting file in Windows Notepad for a quick check:
Or we open it directly in Microsoft® Excel (or Open/Libre Office):
CSV files like this using , ; or <tabulator> as field separators can be imported by most Office applications, statistic software, database systems etc.
If you have more sophisticated applications, they often support XML or JSON as an import format. If we run the same export again, but this time switch the output format to XML, we get a result that can be easily re-formatted and imported by a wide range of applications across all platforms:
Note that the only change was switching the output format to XML. Our field definitions are the same as before. The Text Export module automatically used the field names as node names for the XML file and converted the values into proper XML data records.
The Text Export module in the digital asset management system IMatch is a flexible tool for exporting metadata and Attributes into other applications. It can produce plain text and CSV files, but also more advanced formats like XML and JSON. Using a mix of IMatch variables and text you can control the data you export, and the format in which the data is exported.
Whether you want to reuse data stored in your IMatch database in Excel or a Word Processor or you want to copy data into other database systems, the Text Export module is a great and easy way to handle this.
See also the related know-how article Using the Copy Data App With Your Office Application for another way to quickly transfer data from IMatch to other applications.
IMatch File Windows use a range of icons to present metadata and digital asset states. The file collections, the XMP rating and label, category assignments and more.
Sometimes it may be desirable to display additional icons. Maybe you want to indicate images taken at high-ISO settings, which may require extra care during post processing. Or you want to show a warning icon for files which have no keywords or description – as part of your quality management.
The general idea is to use a custom template in your File Window layout. This allows you to display arbitrary variables inside the File Window panels, and also to use some XAML markup to load and display icons.
To use a custom template, open the File Window Layout Editor, add a new layout (or clone an existing layout) and switch the Attribute property of the cell you want to use to the Custom Template setting.
For this example, we want to display an icon when a file has no keywords. The variable {File.MD.hierarchicalkeywords} returns all keywords of a file. If it is empty, the file has no keywords. We use this to produce this variable expression for our custom template:
{File.MD.hierarchicalkeywords|hasvalue:;default:No Keywords}
We combine the hasvalue and default functions (see IMatch help on Variables for details) to output the text ‘No Keywords’ if a file has no keywords. To test this, copy and paste the above expression into one of your file window layouts. Or use the Var Toy App in the App Panel to try things out.
To display a custom icon instead of the text ‘No Keywords’, we add a XAML instruction which allows us to render an image. The <Image> tag does the job:
<Image Source='file://c:\data\imdb\nokeywords.png'></Image>
In this example, we load the image file stored in ‘c:\data\imdb\nokeywords.png’. This file is a 32 x 32 pixel PNG file with a transparent background. This size works best for our layout, but you can of course also use smaller or larger icons.
We combine this markup fragment with the custom template created earlier to produce the final custom template:
Write everything in a single line. The line breaks ↵ here are for layout purposes only.
{File.MD.hierarchicalkeywords|hasvalue:;↵
default:<Image Source='file://C:\data\imdb\icons\nokeywords.png'>
</Image>}
We also set the Size of the ‘Header 1’ cell to 34 pixel to make room for the icon. The result in the File Window looks pretty cool:
This little icon tells us that the file has no keywords yet. Awesome.
You can display custom icons in any of the four header and eight footer cells – and you can even display multiple icons per cell. A lot of flexibility here.
To add a second icon which indicates missing descriptions, use this custom template:
{File.MD.description|hasvalue:;default:↵
<Image Source='file://C:\data\imdb\icons\nodesc.png'></Image>}
As before, we test if a given metadata tag (in this case the XMP description) is empty. If this is true, we use an <Image> XAML tag to load and display an icon.
For this example, I have combined both tests and icons into the same ‘Header 1’ cell:
{File.MD.hierarchicalkeywords|hasvalue:;default:↵
<Image Source='file://C:\data\imdb\icons\nokeywords.png'></Image>}↵
{File.MD.description|hasvalue:;default:↵
<Image Source='file://C:\data\imdb\icons\nodesc.png'></Image>}
The result in the File Window looks like this:
The left file has keywords, but no description. The file in the middle is missing both, and the file on the right has a description but no keywords. You immediately see which files require some additional work.
IMatch by default escapes variable values to make them safe to use with XAML. This means that special characters like < or > are replaced by their safe counterparts < or > to prevent metadata contents to accidentally break XAML markup in the File Window. This is usually exactly what you want, to be able to safely display all metadata in File Windows.
If the variables you use actually produce XAML, escaping may get in the way, preventing you from displaying images or other markup content. The default: function used above is an exception, because it does not replace unsafe characters. But if you use markup in other functions, you need to use a trick to prevent escaping. This trick involves the pereplace function, which allows you to replace text after IMatch has performed the escaping when processing variables.
In this example we use two steps:
1. Emit the value HV when the file has keywords (hasvalue) and XAML markup for the default: case
2. Replace HV with XAML markup using pereplace.
{File.MD.hierarchicalkeywords|hasvalue:HV;default:<Image Source="C:\temp\checkbox_unchecked.png"/>;pereplace:HV==<Image Source="C:\temp\checkbox.png"/>}
This way, when IMatch performs escaping on the variable, it only sees the safe value HV. Afterwards we replace these placeholders with XAML markup that loads and displays images.
By using custom templates in file window layouts you can display arbitrary variables in exactly the format you want. By adding a bit of XAML code, you can also load images or use custom colors for text and background. See the IMatch help for more info on XAML markup supported by IMatch.
Use the techniques presented here to add custom indicators for all kinds of purposes. You can improve your digital asset quality management by adding visual clues right into the File Window. When you catalog images, you can use icons to indicate high-ISO files, files taken with specific cameras, by specific photographers. Or you use icons to highlight files with specific keywords or metadata contents.
The code to load and display the icon is always the same. You just vary the variables you use to determine whether or not to display the icon, or which icon.
Variables are a flexible tool for displaying custom metadata in features like File Windows, Viewer, Slide Show, Renamer, Batch Processor and elsewhere. The digital asset management software IMatch gives users access to over 10,000 metadata fields, from all relevant formats, including XMP, IPTC, EXIF, GPS, ID3, PDF and more.
IMatch uses a consistent naming schema for metadata variables, based on the native ExifTool syntax. For example, to access the frequently used XMP title and description tags via variables, you use:
{File.MD.XMP::dc\title\Title}
{File.MD.XMP::dc\description\Description\0}
Of course you don’t need to remember or type these rather long variable names. You can just pick them in the Tag Selector dialog. See the IMatch help system for details.
IMatch defines a set of standard tags, which include the most frequently used metadata tags from XMP metadata and other formats. The Tag Selector dialog presents these tags in a separate tab, which makes them extra easy to work with.
A second (and often overlooked) benefit of standard tags is that IMatch defines a shortcode for each of these tags which can be used in variables. The above example using shortcodes would look like this:
{File.MD.title}
{File.MD.description}
A lot cleaner and easier to remember. And when you work with complex sets of multiple variables, shortcodes can improve readability a lot.
Search the IMatch help system index for shortcode to find the corresponding topic which lists all 80 available shortcodes.
Sometimes you need to find all files which have no data for a given metadata tag. Maybe you need to find files without a description, or files which have no keywords yet. This can be easily achieved with the digital asset management system IMatch.
We use the Value filter for this purpose. Open the Filter Panel via View > Panels > Filter or the keyboard shortcut <F9>,<L>. If no Value filter is visible in the panel, click on the Gear icon in the toolbar and choose it from the drop-down menu.
In the Value filter, select the metadata tag to use. For this example, we used the Description tag. This procedure of course works with all 14,000 metadata tags currently supported by IMatch.
Enable the option Files with value. This tells the filter to search for all files which have data in the selected tag. It removes all files without data from the File Window.
Now enable the option invert the result. The filter now filters out all files which have data for the tag, leaving only files without data in the file window. And this is what we wanted: All files without a description.
As usual, the filter works on the current scope (what you ‘see’ in the File Window). To find all files without a description in a folder, select the folder. Or multiple folders. You can also select one or more categories, collections, time-line nodes…
To find all files without a description in your entire database, just select the Database node in the Media & Folders View or the @All category in the Category View.
[font_full1 title=”” icon=”info-circle” color=”light” size=”large”]If you need this filter often, save it. You can then apply the filter any time by just clicking it in the filter list in the Filter Panel.[/font_full1]