Hello,
I’m evaluating DEVONsphere for my partner with a photography business. The goal I want to suggest is using DEVONsphere to index the metadata from over 20,000 images and, ideally, also index image catalogs by their attributes (date, location, project, etc.). To be clear, she doesn’t an image search with her tagging, but an index. It would be crucial to link to the image and show its thumbnail image. Could DEVONsphere handle this? Or should I look elsewhere?
thanks in advance,
Francis
Images are handled like unknown files and indexed by using Spotlight plug-ins. Therefore only generic information (e.g. author, comments) should be indexed but not e.g. photo specific ones like camera, exposure etc.
You’re missing a word here?
Anyway, if you want to work with image catalogs and metadata, you’re probably best off using software specialized for that purpose – especially in professional workflows.
My recommendation would be to check out Photo Mechanic Plus:
Thanks. “need” as in “…she doesn’ need an image search with her tagging””
OOPS!
Francis
Thanks. How are image catalogs, e.g., collections of metadata records handled? Looking mainly at Lightroom catalogs..
Francis
Late here,
as Troejgaard say, plus:
… check out Digikam and also xnView MP, if you have not finally settled.
Both are free, and in many circumstances (esp when you are not event / news photographer) are handling metadata as well if not better than PhotoMechanic (which just went for real steep subscription prices).
Main difference: Digikam works more like PM Catalog in a way; i.e. its faster/better to catalog ‘offline’ (unavailable) assets. XN is hell-blazing fast (equalling PM), and even more comfortable for keywording, customizing, viewing, IMO.
(Don’t be discouraged by xnViews initial Windows-90s look, btw. Iwas fooled for some time. After customizing toolbar w/ decent icons it is also an interface gem, highly customizable)
Regardless of anything else & all positives, DT will ultimately work against the traditional/established expectations of photo management, also bec it does’t have the combo-view for all items in folders plus its subfoöders. This is standard requirement in photo-management for a reason.
Good luck wherever you settle!
You need to take note that even btw professional photo cataloging software there is 90% chance that the way the utilize whatever mix of metadata systems (there is IPTC ‘legacy’ vs ‘extended IPTC’ vs newer XML, just to start the mess) is incompatible to each other. Meaning: high chance none will read what you do in another. So DevonSphere as non-photocentric app will not be a good bet jere.
Given what you describe, I would recommend Digikam actually.
Positives:
• free
• most capable of all in terms of customizing which metadata-schemes are read and written (independent setting for both); included in this: dedicated setting to read / write Lightroom-/Adobe metadata scheme, which is a little special in some aspects as to regular IPTC
• good cataloging features, inkl hierarchical metadata, geo-data & face-recognition (onboard)
• cataloging included, w/ versatile multi-catalog system (similar to how DT handles databases)
• similar image search (very handy)
• multilingual fields (if needed)
• fast & very usable advanced search & dedicated filter system etc
Some small minuses compared to XN:
• harder to transfer/cooy metadata between images
• no custom xml field capabilities
• some special EXIF/IPTC fields are only displayed but not searchable (though negligible in 95% of cases)
Basically you could use (free) XN wherrever Digikam falls short. Though latter one covers 95% of cases and is a speedmonster
PS: a newer, commercial option specialized for finding/reading metadata from different proprietary libraries/catalogs plus all image-internal metadata is Peakto from Cyme (@ 10€/month). It throws in a verbatim AI semantic search which is a) local, b) very good. Helps for some scenarios, but needs some getting used to in terms of UI logics.
Thanks for the details and suggestions. I’ll check out Digitkam and post an update. Just to note, the user just wants thumbnails and mainly uses keywords, project and dates to search. A link from a thumbnail to the source image and a link to the corresponding directory would suffice in her use case.
Good luck! And curious about your findings – esp. as relating to any tandem-effects w/ DT!
After quite some work with images + image-centric DAMs, I take special note of this maybe being a very light use case scenario. Good thing is DigiKam (and some others) cover this easily and smoothly.
But, just to mention, there is always a learning/mentality curve with woking with such specialized systems.
If it is really about a versatile thumbnail (image card) database w/ simple link, I just want to mention that in some cases – and highly depending on both: nature/use case of the collection; character of the user – it really suffices to use a standard note system, with derived/extracted metadata from images – and then insert thumbnails (as things like image batch conversion are easily automated) and a somewhat consistent link system. It´s not for everybody – but so are DAMs.
– And xnView and Photo Mechanic both allow very easily for batch extraction of (custom sets of) metadata into accessible text format.
For me, after having climbed all mountains (up to PhotoStation, Photo Mechanic and beyond), I do have a base reference library that works strictly on Bear notes and unique random but controlled ID´s. And then mirrors this in DEVONthink for more complex search/relational operations.
Works fantastique, too. Saves a lot of headaches.
And even brings some advantages in shallow use (ease of use; only domain understanding for Note-apps; free text uses alongside images; mobile availability w/o infrastructure load… etc etc.)
In my experience: DAMs really assume some form of image editing or metadata pipeline. Without that, just for retrieving (‘Findbook’) they are mostly/often oversized and superfluous.
Of course they still have some advantages in auto-thumbnailing large image sets, inter alia.
So… just leaving a note, that in a lot of shallow contexts these intrinsic advantages really do not matter, and the trade-off/buy-in into a wholly separate class of app(-logic)s might be “too expansive” or not helpful for a lot of people.
Other than that additional thought: curious what you will find as solution and find out!