I've been going on and on about choosing a system to manage my digital images.
I sorted through all the feedback and reading, and decided to test the evaluation copy of ImageMatch. It was frequently recommended by folks.
For 'shareware' it is a remarkably polished product, as well as remarkably capable. It's very robust, has an unbelievably thorough 'help' system (including especially useful 'floating tooltips' and 'coaching dialogs'), and has a lot of advanced image library functionality that I haven't used yet. This includes things like a scripting language and an ability to search for identical photos.
It's written by a single programmer, Mario Westphal, which gives it the more polished, thorough character. I think it also gives it some curious idiosyncracies, but these seem limited to a very paranoid registration system (35-character long, totally random id/password pairs name="jker,g73,adsfh&adfh3" password="3jfjaskdrw&e3823" etc [that user/pass pair is a fake, btw]). I can sympathize -- it's this guy's livelihood, and this is definitely would be a popular 'Warez'.
That's why I didn't mind plunking down $49USD to buy it -- seems cheap. (don't use American Express to purchase it -- took me several days to get it sorted out... use a Visa or MasterCard or something)
Anyway, I am using it now. Regrettably they decided to host their user forum on yahoo groups, which I think is the worst possible choice. I absolutely detest Yahoo. At any rate, I posted a question about the best way to implement the 'atomic' system I described in some of my other posts. Even if it is not possible, this product is so good that there will be some sort of feasible alternative. If there is another product that provides some functionality IMatch doesn't, I am confident it will cost substantially more than $50 and not be worth the marginal cost.
As an aside, one of the other candidates was this "Adobe Photoshop Album." The people on the Imatch support forum were not very impressed with the product, saying it was too simplistic and too targeted to the absolute low-end consumer user. It also sounded like it didn't even work well with Photoshop. Here is an exerpt I stole:
I followed the support forums at Adobe over the last few days, and many
people are requesting a refund and want to give PS Album back. Besides
some installation issues and ODBC database driver troubles, most users
seem to be annoyed of all the "simplicity" in PS Album because there are
too many limits (like only four top-level categories, which you can't
change, or the missing RAW support, or the maximum image size).
When I follow the forums, I see so many questions which I could answer
by "Yes, this can be done, but you need to use a real application, like
IMatch ;-)"
I think users expected too much from PS Album. If I see professional
photographers complain about the speed of the product after adding
20,000 images, or other problems, I think "He should have used a product
aimed at pros, and not a consumer product".
Anyway, PS Album is "Editor's choice" in the current online issue of PC
Magazine. We all know what PC Magazine is, so this is not surprising.
Anyway, IMatch wasn't even mentioned in this comparison, which means
that I have to do allot regarding marketing over the next couple of
months... ;-)
-- Mario
Hi --
I know that your piece on "Choosing IMatch over Photoshop Album" is really old (and is no longer accepting comments), but I thought I'd pass on to you what I wrote (before I discovered that the topic had been closed :)
----
I thought I'd throw in a quick update to your post:
While Adobe Photoshop Album 2 (now obsoleted) was a great product for those who need an absolutely simple and intuitive interface, there were a few items that made it a poor choice for the advanced amateur who was looking to grow their collection over a long period of time. Most importantly, there are the restrictions you mention plus some other critical limitations (eg. no ability to export your tagging efforts, and poor performance on large catalogs), which must be considered carefully.
Fortunately, Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 has addressed a number of these deficiencies, and has created a product that I feel will appeal to a wide percentage of the potential user community. The one feature that they got right (one that only a couple of other vendors have actually addressed yet) is the versioning support. For the consumer-level catalog user, having native versioning support is a necessity -- most of them won't want to have to worry about careful naming conventions, let alone scripting! I strongly believe that most of the other key players in the field will add versioning support very soon.
I also currently use IMatch, for a number of reasons (scripting, feature set, performance, open database), but it's always good to evaluate your needs and determine the degree of investment and importance you are willing to put into cataloging.
I have created a summary table of the current state of the cataloging products out there, and the issues related to versioning, etc. which some might find interesting:
http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/
Select "Cataloging"
Cal.
Posted by Nils Blutig at March 1, 2003 06:09 PM | TrackBack