Thank you for the feedback.
The file naming can get, a bit complex. I believe there are some DAM products that are more geared towards multi-user use which have check-out/check-in features where you can annotate what you've done. IMatch offers so much more in other ways that such a feature is a lower priority to me. Maybe this would be a good use of custom file attributes. Still without annotation or some system like the file naming it's difficult to remember what you've done.
In situations where I shoot both RAW and in camera JPG, the JPGs usually don't have a big use. Sometimes they are used if something needs to be done quickly and other times they serve as a reference when processing problematic or tricky RAW files. I'll often just use them for comparison through the process of RAW conversion. Being a digital pack rat, I'd like to keep them part of the image set. The problem I ran into when I just made them a version and not a buddy as well had to do with the associated XMP file generated by IMatch. If I didn't buddy them, and changed the name of the RAW, IMatch would change the name of the DxO sidecar and create a new XMP with the new filename also leaving the old XMP file as well. If you then tried to rename the file back to it's original name, IMatch wouldn't let you because of the existing old XMP file.
You seem to have duplicated your buddy relations. You have one for JPG versions in the same folder as the master and another for versions of various filetypes in a subfolder one level down. I don't see why you need the one just for JPGs. Assuming that these definitions are otherwise the same, then you should only need one of these as one level down also includes the folder of the master file, i.e. zero levels down. I.e. you shoull be able to have a link expression that covers the OoC JPGS and the converted files.
My mistake in configuring this stuff. All the files (RAW, JPG, PSD, XMP, DOP, etc) sit in one folder. There is no need for me to have IMatch look either up or down for the related files. I originally had all the buddies and versions in one definition, but then thought it might be useful to have the camera JPG for display which means you need to split it up. If linking the camera JPG's in this way provides no useful utility, I can easily modify one of the regular expressions.
It's probably wise to proceed cautiously on propagation, since it's easier to repropagate later than it is to unpropagate.
There isn't an option to propagate geocode information specifically that I can see, so you'd need to propagate either XMP or EXIF, depending on where the geocode data is stored.
I'm still not getting the propagation thing. As is shown, I set it to propagate all categories with no other options set. I went and assigned keywords from my thesaurus to the RAW (master) file which then automatically creates @Keywords categories. After choosing the option to "propagate data to versions," it didn't appear anything got assigned to the associated JPG file. I'm guessing this is because @Keywords aren't real whereas {File.MD.XMP::Lightroom\hierarchicalSubject\HierarchicalSubject\0} are real and would require propagating some subset of XMP which wasn't part of what I allowed. It would certainly be nice for keywords to propagate without fear of unexpected results.
On a another matter, does anyone know which Regular Expression standard IMatch uses? I'm guessing it might be Perl due to the reference to it in the help documentation. Seems like regular expressions aren't highly standardized.
That's a good point that I didn't raise but I wondered about. On mirrorless I shoot JPG and RAW, because the embedded thumb in the RAW in the cameras that I've used is only about 50% or less of the pixels of the RAW. So shooting JPG is the only way to check for sharpness accurately in the camera. But I mostly don't need them afterwards, so I usually delete them. Sometimes if I need an image in a hurry they're convenient, and once in a while I delete the RAW, but mostly I delete them. (The advantage of Fuji X series cameras is if you want a camera-created JPG, you can always put the RAF back on a card and do an in-camera conversion.)
That is a very nice feature of the Fuji X. Makes it easy to throw away the JPGs without fear of tossing something which might be useful some day. Doesn't appear my Panasonic GM-1 or Olympus OMD-EM5 can do that in camera. I'd have to test this a bit more, but it seems like shooting RAW+JPG is actually faster than RAW alone on the Olympus. Probably has something to do with their image processing engine. It also appears you do get slightly more detailed previews when shooting both.
