New to Me: Opening & Editing Photos from IMatch

[PandDLong]

I have been using IMatch since 2021 for family photos and have mainly loaded digitally captured photos with any editing completed before indexing into IMatch.  Pretty much exclusively JPEGs.

I am now scanning and cataloguing vintage photos (1920's to 70's) and most have quality issues - but only some are worth investing time to edit and improve.

I am looking to integrate a photo-editing step into my IMatch workflow where I choose to edit a photo after it has been mostly catalogued and with metadata added using IMatch (eg. where, when, who and what).

Based on a bit of experimenting, my questions are:

1. Do you complete a metadata write-back before opening the photo-editor?

2. From the photo-editor, do you save the edited file directly replacing the original or do you save the edited file under a new name and have both in IMatch? If both, temporarily or permanently?

3. Does your photo editor add or change metadata that you want to "undo" and do you automate that step (eg. my editor creates a legacy IPTC data segment that I want to remove)?

Thanks for your insights.

Michael


PS. I am using Corel Paintshop Pro - I chose it due to past familiarity, it is relatively inexpensive, it has the option for a one-time purchase and the quality of the results is "good enough".

[JohnZeman]

My answers probably won't mean much to you since you said you work with JPG images (while I work with raw images) but I'll give you my 2 cents worth anyway.

1.  Yes I always writeback metadata before the original raw file (or its sidecar file) is processed by ON1 Photo Raw 2025.

2.  No, I never save my edits to the original raw file (however ON1 stores my edits in their database).  Instead I'll export the processed raw image as a 16 bit tiff with a ProPhoto color space.  I then open that tiff with Affinity Photo to do my final editing finally saving the optimized file(s) as hi resolution JPGs with a sRGB color space.  The 16 bit tiff is then saved but is eventually discarded.

3.  Only IMatch (with ExifTool) modifies the metadata.

[sinus]

Mostly I work with raws (nef).
And therefore of course I do create a new jpg in photoshop.
Once created I do all stuff only with this one jpg ... because I can always create a new with my nef.

If I have only jpgs, what happens from time to time, then:

1) yes
2) yes, except if I do very "heavy" editing, and if the photo is quite important, then I create a second jpg, hold the first one.
3) not sure about this, because it works simply. I believe, photoshop does create only copyright, but here I am unsure. Because it works, I did never change something. At least, all metadata-stuff I do inside IMatch. 

[Mario]

I have not used Corel products for ages, but they are mostly aimed at "non-pro" users (which is not a bad thing, mind). 

I recommend an initial safety test.

1. Finish metadata for one of your files and write back.
2. Open the image in Corel, make a small edit, and then save the file to the same folder under a new name.
3. Let IMatch import the file.

4. Look at the images in the MD Panel in "Browser" mode, compare the metadata of both images.
Did Corel wipe any metadata, and if so, which?

5. Open the image created with Corel in the Metadata Mechanic and check for problems.

This should show you if your metadata is "safe" in the Corel application. Or which metadata will be lost.

[bekesizl]

Another thing to consider for metadata is, if you use face regions and crop the edited files, you need to assign the face regions again.

[Mario]

Another thing to consider for metadata is, if you use face regions and crop the edited files, you need to assign the face regions again.

Yes. The coordinates and dimensions of face annotations are specified relative to the image dimensions. Cropping an image after the fact will invalidate the face region coordinates. It's best to perform face recognition on final images, not on images which are still in the edit phase.

[Tveloso]

You might also consider using Versioning, and saving the edited file to a new name, rather than replacing the original.  Then propagation from the master will "fix" any metadata problems that Corel may have introduced.

So the workflow that Mario described in the test he suggested, could essentially become the permanent workflow you use.  An appropriate naming convention for the JPEG Master/Version will be needed to allow a concrete version rule to be configured for such a "same-format Version Set".

You could also have IMatch remove the IPTC data you know Corel has added, via a Metadata Template run at ingest...(or perhaps this would be best done via the ECP?)

[PandDLong]

Great advice from everyone.

Thanks.

I will do all of the tests suggested to land on my permanent workflow.


Michael

[Mario]

Forgot to mention the Metadata Compare & Sync app, which allows you to compare the original and saved by Corel image easily. Especially useful in your case.