Imatch vs Photo Supreme - my impressions as a 1st time user of both

[Wow]

Hello,

In my search for a lightroom replacement it has come down to these two products. I expect biased answers here :-) but my initial impression is that imatch is the product that power users will love, and photo supreme is for those who are overwhelmed by imatch and don't need all the features. Does this sum it up well?

When I read a lot of debates on internet forums about this, I read a lot of people who felt imatch was confusing compared to photo supreme. Personally I actually find the interface much easier to follow, even though there is a lot more. There are also some UI touches I really like. For instance the attached screenshot instantly communicates to an astute first time user what the "folders" view really represents. A lot of photo programs are confusing on this point and don't make it clear whether you're looking at a real time folder view, or a database folder view.

I do wish it had a little cleaner view like photo supreme, but otherwise I can't find a single reason I'd want to use photo supreme. I wish I'd found this product a long time ago!

Thanks!

[Mario]

There are many DAM systems to choose from. Check this list (no affiliation):

https://www.capterra.com/digital-asset-management-software/

If you have never heard about IMatch, this link will open your eyes for the DAM market and the products available.

These DAMs are designed for different audiences: entry-level users, consumers, professional photographers, marketeers, corporate users, institutional users, scientific users, ...
Some are free, some are affordable, some will cost you several hundred US$ per user per month, with 5 or 6 digit setup figures.

I have worked with many, but not all. I never worked with Photo Supreme, so I cannot comment.
I think I recall that Hert (the (main?) programmer of PS) was an IMatch user once. Not sure.
Post a question at Amazon's dpreview.com for some insights from users.

IMatch is designed for a special, demanding audience.
Although it is used (more and more, often surprsing to me) by "Mom & Pop" users and casual users, the feature set is aimed at users who require robustness, performance, standard compliance, proper end-to-end metadata management, versioning and the ability to handle large image volumes (databases range between 100,000 and 2 million files currently). Among many, many, many other things.

IMatch does not aim at the Microsoft Photo or Google Photos market segment. Or at the entry-level image manager market. Or at the "Combined RAW editor with DAM" or "Combine DAM with RAW editor" market (Adobe does that already very successfully). And ACDSee. Corel. Or Photo Supreme, I think.

I'm modernizing the IMatch UI slightly in every version. But I don't modernize the UI just for the sake of modernizing it (see how well that worked for companies like Mozilla).
New features use more modern UI concepts (e.g, the People View or Event View) but I have no plans to alienate users who worked with IMatch for 15 years just to get a "modern UI" box ticked in a press review.

Sometimes, things that work don't need to change. I have no marketing department that demands constant change just to have something to produce press releases.
Each new IMatch versions is created based on the user feedback I get here in the community, via email and from the local tester groups. Not driven by marketing or shareholders.

Often, shiny and modern user interfaces just break down badly when the data volume gets bigger. What looks great in a carefully prepared ad or video may fail badly when a user tries it with 50,000 or 200,000 files... 
Or, what I call the "Apple way", you just limit the feature and option set to a level where you can produce a friendly GUI with a few shiny buttons. For all else, it's "If our software cannot do it, you don't need it".

If you want a simple IMatch, check out IMatch Anywhere.
The IMatch Anywhere WebViewer used by that product has been designed for simplicity and to embrace users from all skill levels. It is used at home but also in corporations and institutes to quickly allow users to access the powerful IMatch DAM from their web browser.

[Wow]

Thanks Mario. Yes, imatch is on my list to install. The ability to truly integrate DAM and sharing with outsiders would be incredible and save a ton of time.

[lbo]

@Wow:

Does Photo Supreme yet support "destination" coordinates in the map?

If yes. Does it display direction and angle of view?

Can it link dependent jpegs (e.g. derived from raw developer) to the source files and apply move and rename to them?

[Mario]

Can it link dependent jpegs (e.g. derived from raw developer) to the source files and apply move and rename to them?

You refer to what IMatch does via Buddy File relations?

[herman]

[...]
my initial impression is that imatch is the product that power users will love, and photo supreme is for those who are overwhelmed by imatch and don't need all the features. Does this sum it up well?

Almost

Photo Supreme runs both on Windows and Mac.

IMatch is Windows only.
It can be made to run on Intel Mac hardware via Parallels or another virtualization layer, but it will not run on Apple silicon ARM processors because IMatch requires a processor with AVX support which the ARM architecture do not (yet?) provide.

So, when one uses Apple ARM-based hardware, there is no choice between Photo Supreme and IMatch.

[Wow]

Thanks Herman. Yes I noticed that single limitation! More and more these days software vendors seem to be writing their software for both platforms, so perhaps we'll see an IMatch for the Mac someday. I'm pretty OS agnostic these days, there are only a couple programs that tie me to windows, I guess now I might be about to have one more :-).

[Mario]

I have no plans to rewrite IMatch from scratch for the Apple universe. Much to restrictive, too expensive to develop for.

[birdbrain]

About a year ago, I tried ACDSee and recently evaluated Photo Supreme, Mylio, and IMatch.

My needs:

• Photos only, no other asset types
  Personal use only: <25,000 photos, no other tools or editing needed, one user, etc.
  All photos and metadata to be stored on my computer, no cloud
  A way for family to search & browse photos without a significant learning curve
  

Relative to my needs I find:

• Mylio: Great concept as it runs on Windows, Mac, and iOS and syncs among these devices. But it has several bugs which are fatal.
  ACDSee: Fatal bugs.  Example: Says it writes the metadata back to the file but it doesn't.
  Photo Supreme: I thought this was a winner. I found it easy to learn and effective for my purposes. But you must have a Google account for facial recog and map/geo features.
  IMatch: As Mario points out, it is intentionally designed for, and targeted to, professionals. I have decades of tech experience, but I find it is like building a clock when you want to know what time it is. Have not tried IMatch Anywhere yet.
  

My conclusion: Have not found anything simple to use, reliable, and private (non-cloud) for home use.
My plan for managing metadata is to try to get IMatch to work. For browsing & searching I am evaluating a tool called 'Everything' (an available-to-try alpha version is in development for photo metadata).

[Mario]

My plan for managing metadata is to try to get IMatch to work.

if you let us know where you have problems, we can help.
Usually, IMatch works out of the box for most users.

25K photos is that much. Typical IMatch users manage between 100,000 and 300,000 files.
Maybe look into Windows Photo or the free DarkTable DAM software?

But you must have a Google account for facial recog and map/geo features.

This is not uncommon. Adobe does the same, behind the curtain.

Mapping and reverse geocoding is best performed using a dedicated cloud-service. Impossible to hold and install all that data on every user's PC.
But since I believe in freedom of choice, I enable you to choose from Google, Bing, HERE and OpenStreetMap for mapping. Whatever you prefer.
I enable you to pick from Google, Microsoft, Clarifai and imagga for automatic keywording.
I enable you to select from GeoNames.org, Google and Here for reverse geo-coding.

Supporting multiple service costs me money and a lot of extra work (Oh yes!).
It also prevents me from making money from locking my user base into one vendor. You usually get rebates and kick backs from Google and others for that.

I do all this because I don't think that locking users into Google (or another service) is a good thing.
Not sure how many users value that now. But I'm sure many users will value that a lot in the future.
People are learning about the importance of privacy, dark patterns and lock-in - which is a good thing!

Mylio is a mix of DropBox/OneDrive and a rather low-end-ish (IMHO) DAM and image editor. And millions over millions of investor money spent on marketing.
It should work well for the masses, I believe. Google, Amazon and Microsoft fish in the same pond. I don't.

What Mylio does with metadata (based on tests I did six months ago) is so non-standard and abysmal that I would never let any of their products touch the metadata of my files.
One of my first support questions these days is "Did you use Mylio?", for good reasons.
This will end up in tears for users who switch from Mylio to something else. Not my problem, though.

I cannot comment on PhotoSupreme,because I never used it.
ACDSee is always on-sale - for a reason, I believe.

All of these products may work for you. It depends on what you want. Whatever works for you is good!
I don't want to sell anything. I want you to use IMatch because you value what it does.

IMatch is not a software for professional users. I have probably more "Mom and Pop" users than professional photographers, image agencies, institutes or libraries among my user base.
IMatch is reliable, fast, robust, produces high-quality and compatible metadata and works very hard not to lock you into IMatch itself or a 3rd party service.
Which is something many users have learned to treasure.

[Jingo]

After trying out DAM's for years and years (and writing detailed reviews at my [now defunct!] DAM review website - DAMroundup.com), I settled on IMatch for my own collection of assets.  I've used just about them all.... from my original DAM, Thumbsplus to even helping the developer of Daminion, some products have worked while others are downright awful!   Photo Supreme has certainly grown from it's own humble beginnings into a more mature product (also from a single developer [though I believe Hert has a small team now]) but there are things that it doesn't offer such flexible workspaces (ie: moveable panels) and extensible API's for multiple 3rd party companies.

In the end, I always say... download a trial and use it with a subset of images for at least 30 days - create a script of sorts that handles the workflow you want to use (that is what I always did when creating my detailed reviews).  This helps you compare the software equally and should give you a clear answer on which products make the cut.. and which do not.  Enjoy!

[nwboater]

I've been a Photo Supreme user for about 6 months. It basically does everything I need for our 35,000 photos. I do have one very frustrating issue with it though. If I add photos to a file or make any changes they don't automatically show in PS. I first need to import or do one of a few different types of Verify on the folder or one of its parents. This is a real nuisance in that I can't just browse and look at the photos without doing an import or verify.

I think I read in a Forum that Imatch does not behave in this manner - please correct me if I'm wrong.

When I bought PS I had wanted to try Imatch but my ancient 2010 I7 wont run it. Later this year I plan to build a new photo editing PC so I will then try out Imatch.

Cheers, Rod

[Jingo]

I've been a Photo Supreme user for about 6 months. It basically does everything I need for our 35,000 photos. I do have one very frustrating issue with it though. If I add photos to a file or make any changes they don't automatically show in PS. I first need to import or do one of a few different types of Verify on the folder or one of its parents. This is a real nuisance in that I can't just browse and look at the photos without doing an import or verify.

I think I read in a Forum that Imatch does not behave in this manner - please correct me if I'm wrong.

When I bought PS I had wanted to try Imatch but my ancient 2010 I7 wont run it. Later this year I plan to build a new photo editing PC so I will then try out Imatch.

Cheers, Rod

Yes.. Imatch uses watched folders to automatically import new "supported" files into the DB if that folder/subfolder already exists in the database.

[nwboater]

I've been a Photo Supreme user for about 6 months. It basically does everything I need for our 35,000 photos. I do have one very frustrating issue with it though. If I add photos to a file or make any changes they don't automatically show in PS. I first need to import or do one of a few different types of Verify on the folder or one of its parents. This is a real nuisance in that I can't just browse and look at the photos without doing an import or verify.

I think I read in a Forum that Imatch does not behave in this manner - please correct me if I'm wrong.

When I bought PS I had wanted to try Imatch but my ancient 2010 I7 wont run it. Later this year I plan to build a new photo editing PC so I will then try out Imatch.

Cheers, Rod

Yes.. Imatch uses watched folders to automatically import new "supported" files into the DB if that folder/subfolder already exists in the database.

Hi Jingo. Thanks very much for the prompt and concise answer. 'Watched Folders' is a way better approach (to me anyway) than what I am faced with in PS. For many years I have used a media program, JRiver Media Center, that is primarily oriented toward audio and video and that's what we use it for. It also uses 'Watched Folders' which just seems so logical.

When I get my new PC built later this year I will download a trial of Imatch.

[Mario]

See the relevant section in the IMatch Help System for more info: Rescanning Folders

[nwboater]

See the relevant section in the IMatch Help System for more info: Rescanning Folders

Thanks for the link Mario. I looked at it as well as some of your other info/tutorials. I'm impressed with your very thorough help and documentation. Imatch is way better than PS in that area.

Imatch looks really good and is very feature rich, yet flexible. You are making me want to get the new computer sooner so I can run a trial. (My present one is too old and can't run it. )

Cheers,
Rod