The first thing I typically want to do when I first import files into my catalog is to write various creator and copyright information to the files. I see that I can create metadata templates and then I can specify a template to be applied at the time of indexing. My question is, what if I don't always want to apply the same template? I occasionally import photos taken by other members of my family into my catalog. In those cases I would want to apply a different template (basically the same template just with different data entered in the tags). Is there any way to do that without going into preferences before doing the indexing and changing the template in the indexing tab?
I would just run the correct template after indexing to correct the data which was entered by the template which is run
automatically.
If you run a metadata template during the indexing process, it will be run always. There are no conditions.
The only condition is that you can run different templates on read-only files. This allows photographers to flag files as read-only in camera and then automatically assign different metadata when in ingesting the file. A functionality frequently used by photo journalists or event photographers, for example. They mark keepers as read-only while chimping, and then IMatch puts in different metadata on import.
If you don't want to run different metadata templates on import, you have to run them manually after IMatch has imported the files.
Tip: Recently added or updated files can be found in the corresponding collections in the Collection View.
Or you make your template smarter.
IMatch variables allow you to check conditions, and to do different things based on these conditions. If you check for example the photographer name in the metadata or the camera model, you can insert different metadata based on that. See the Variables help topic for detailed information how IMatch variables work, what you can do with them, which functions are available for processing data, converting data, for conditional processing etc.
Tip: The Var Toy App in the App Panel allows you to work with variables and try things out interactively.
It all depends on how much effort you want to put in and how often you import files.