Problems with selecting matching "Event"-metadata to form i iMatch

[Stenis]

Hi Mario

I´m doing a test of iMatch before an eventual migration from PhotoMechanic and trying to build a form that can host all my present data. Today I´m integrating PhotoMechanic Plus 6 with DXO Photolab 8.

Since both PhotoMechanic and Photolab have interfaces and forms based on IPTC in these applications and iMatch seems to use a mix of IPTC and XMP I have hard to understand what metadataelement I shall use in order to get data to be presented properly in iMatch when converting data.

The element that is missing in your Default form is "Event" that is part of a section in PhotoMechanic that is called "Event and Location". So where is the matching "Event" IPTC-element in Imatch??

 

[PandDLong]

Hi,

There are literally thousands of tags that iMatch can use and the default forms are just a selection of tags that meet most people's needs most of the time. IPTC is confusing as there is old (very old) IPTC metadata but there is also XMP IPTC metadata (which I find most apps are using).

You can add (or remove) any tag to a metadata panel in iMatch.  You just need to figure out which tag Photomechanic is using to store and display "Event".

There is a XMP IPTC Extension tag called "Event" - that may be it.   Add it to a panel and that will tell you if it is or not. The Help system in iMatch is quite good and it will step you through how to add this tag to a panel.

Alternatively, use an app that displays all metadata in a file with the tag name (I can't recall which one I have used from time-to-time) and then add that tag to a panel.

As iMatch uses exiftool under the covers to handle the read/write of tags to the file, I use the exiftool "catalog" of tag names as a resource   https://exiftool.org/TagNames/index.html   Apparently there is even PhotoMechanic specific tags, so clearly they use XMP as well.

I hope that is helpful.  Good luck with your deliberations.

Michael

[Mario]

iMatch seems to use a mix of IPTC and XMP

IMatch only uses the current "official" XMP IPTCCore and XMP IPTCExt in the Metadata Panel layouts. IIM3 IPTC (legacy) IPTC has been abandoned legacy 20 years ago. IMatch still supports it for archival purposes and automatically migrates legacy IPTC metadata into the modern XMP IPTC metadata during import.

There are about 300 IPTC metadata tags in XMP, and about 4,000 XMP tags in total.

When designing the default layouts for the IMatch Metadata panel, I went for the most commonly used tags in other software, archival systems, library systems etc. The "Default" layout is what works for most users, maybe in combination with the "6. IPTC Location" which comfortably allows to work with location created and location shown metadata.

Less frequently used IPTC tags like Episode or Event are not included in any standard layout.
As explained in Metadata Panel Layouts you can add any of the over 10,000 metadata tags supported by IMatch to an existing or a newly created layout.

There are 9 event-related tags in the IPTCExt namespace:

XMP::iptcExt\Event\Event

XMP::iptcExt\EventExt\ShownEvent

XMP::iptcExt\EventExtIdentifier\ShownEventIdentifier

XMP::iptcExt\EventExtName\ShownEventName

XMP::iptcExt\EventId\EventID

XMP::iptcExt\PublicationEvent\PublicationEvent

XMP::iptcExt\PublicationEventDate\PublicationEventDate

XMP::iptcExt\PublicationEventIdentifier\PublicationEventIdentifier

XMP::iptcExt\PublicationEventName\PublicationEventName

The ShownEvent and PublicationEvent are Tag Sets (Structured Tags), which means they are tags with multiple sub-tags and can occur multiple times in an image (multiple vents). To add them to a new or existing Metadata Panel layout, just select them from the drop-down list at the top:



Assuming that the tag the other software named "event" is actually the IPTC:ShownEvent, you can now see and edit event data in the Metadata Panel:



If the data does not show, try one of the other "event" tags available in XMP IPTC.

Tip: Switch the Metadata Panel to the "Browser" layout to see all metadata tags IMatch has imported from your files.

Tip2: The "List Metadata" preset in the ExifTool Command Processor allows you to see all metadata in your files and the tag names ExifTool (and IMatch) use for them.

What PM shows as "location" is unclear. Look at the "6. IPTC Location" layout in the IMatch Metadata Panel to find out if PM filled the location created, location shown or both tag sets. Different software is compatible with IPTC in different ways.

Then create your own custom Metadata Panel layout and add the tags you need in the order in which you want to see them. Maybe export the layout afterwards and add it to a post in the Metadata Tips board.

Note: Many of the IPTCExt tags are structured tags. You can add individual tags of a structure if desired, but it is usually better to add the entire structured tag. So, look at Tag Sets drop-down at the top of the Metadata Panel Layout editor first for the IPTC tag you want to work with and select it from there.

Ps: If possible, send me an image with complete Photo Mechanic metadata from your workflow (to support email address) for analysis.

[Stenis]

IMatch only uses the current "official" XMP IPTCCore and XMP IPTCExt in the Metadata Panel layouts. IIM3 IPTC (legacy) IPTC has been abandoned legacy 20 years ago. IMatch still supports it for archival purposes and automatically migrates legacy IPTC metadata into the modern XMP IPTC metadata during import.

Thanks for your reply!

I know. I have been a developer using both Fotoware enterprise DAM and working with XMP-schemas and namespaces a lot during seven years integrating Fotoware DAM with SQL Server-databases and the last four years I have used PhotoMechanic Plus 6 four years+ privately for my own image archives of about 70 000 images. I have used DXO Photolab already when it was named DXO Optical Pro but it is just 2-3 years Photolab have had a metadata database using IPTC and XMP. I know both XMP and IPTC but I have to submit to how both Photolab 8 and PM Plus 6 works and as you probably know the user interfaces of these are what they are - especially in a consumer product as DXO Photolab.

Well as I already have stated I suggested to solve this problem myself after putting in a few hours more testing.

So far I´m very impressed by iMatch - both the functionality and how you have solved many things practically. I consider myselt having solved all I need to solve to be able to make a migration frpm PM to iMatch the day I decide to do so.

Since productivity is the absolute king for me there has been only two things that I see so far that don´t live up to my expectations. The first is how the updates are working. I have found them both slow and unpredictable when working in background. An update of 200 images took five minutes in iMatch that PM Plus fixed in five seconds.

When I Click the green V in the form I expect everything beeing updated on the spot - but it is not. It gets updataed when pressing Shift+Alt+S.

The other is the AI-driven keyword-system. I can get a lot of keywoord suggestions of the system but very few usable. I don´t see that this system will be able to help me all that much yet. Maybe it will be improved in version 2025.

PM Plus and iMatch are very different creations and I´m open for a switch of several reasons. I like the more modern interface in iMatch but despite I have worked with software (also as a developer of user interfaces) since the nineties and also have been a teacher for 10 years used to educational problems I find some of your user dialogs really difficult to embrace without putting in a lot of work and testing to understand how it works, so iMatch really have a learning curve even if I compare it with Capture One that is well known fot the one it has.

PM Plus is really old fashion and very little has happened with it these four years BUT it is extremely efficient and polished to make everything as fast as possible and the possibility to scale and use two, three or many database in the same search is unparallelled and just soo good and simple to use and understand. In Fotoware I could do the same by building separate so called "Union-indexes" - in PM you just tick the boxes of the different databases and of I go. I haven´t tried that yet in iMatch so i dont even know if it is possible.

BUT, the biggest reason I started to look at iMatch was that CameraBits like many IT-companies run by technicians has run into financial problems and probably got in the hands of venture capitalists that want to see economical results quickly so they have decided to increase the prices a lot and made the conditions far more unfavourable for the users. The same have by the way happened with both Capture One and FotoWare. I don´t like that. So then iMatch became a candidate to test and that is what I have been doing for a week or two now.

[Mario]

An update of 200 images took five minutes in iMatch that PM Plus fixed in five seconds.

Please show me the log file (ZIP + attach) from that session (see log file). 5 minute for only 200 files is ridiculous.
File size? 10 MB JPG or 500 MB TIFF files? Files on a NAS perhaps? Virus checker interfering?

Please note: IMatch not only updates XMP metadata but also synchronizes it back into native EXIF, GPS, IM3 IPTC etc. during write-back. This ensures that there is only one source of truth. Many applications skip this and perform only partial XMP updates in a sidecar file...

IMatch uses ExifTool to read and write metadata. ExifTool makes a copy of the original file, performs all the required updates, and when everything worked 100% correct, it replaces the original file with the new file.

On slow media like NAS storage, this produces a small overhead. But IMatch writes multiple files in parallel and this is usually never a problem. 95% of all "IMatch is slow" reports are now caused by virus checkers interfering. See IMPORTANT: Virus Checkers for more info.

When I Click the green V in the form I...

You mean you save your changes in the Metadata Panel?
See Metadata Write-back for how and why IMatch stores changes in the database (very quickly) but does not update the data in the file immediately.

The other is the AI-driven keyword-system. I can get a lot of keywoord suggestions of the system but very few usable. I don´t see that this system will be able to help me all that much yet. Maybe it will be improved in version 2025.

Which AI did you use? Google? Microsoft? Imagga? Clarifai?

use two, three or many database in the same search is unparallelled and just soo good and simple to use and understand. 

This "feature" still roots in the old days when their catalog sizes were limited to a few 10 thousand files and they had to offer a way for users to search across multiple of these small catalogs.

The typical IMatch user manages between 100,000 and 200,000 files. Small stock agencies, libraries and corporate users manage between 200,000 and a million files in an IMatch database. The largest database I know of (from telemetry) manages 6 million files on a very beefy workstation.

IMatch does not need to search across multiple databases - there is just no need.

IMatch uses may use a second database for risk-less testing. Or because they want to separate documents from images or something like that.

BUT, the biggest reason I started to look at iMatch was that CameraBits like many IT-companies run by technicians has run into financial problems and probably got in the hands of venture capitalists that want to see economical results quickly so they have decided to increase the prices a lot and made the conditions far more unfavourable for the users. The same have by the way happened with both Capture One and FotoWare. I don´t like that. So then iMatch became a candidate to test and that is what I have been doing for a week or two now.

We see this a lot these days. I "kinda" like it. The VC companies ruin established business by raising prices while reducing product quality and service at the same time - squeezing out the last buck. Customers don't like it and look for alternatives. More users find IMatch - a win for new users and the IMatch community