convert a .lrcat file ?

[Joe Austin]

Someone has sent me a Lightroom keyword catalog that I would like to be able to import into Imatch.  I had hoped it would be in the common text format, but it is not.

I have no experience with LR, can their keyword catalogs be converted/exported into a format that Imatch can import?

[Mario]

lrcat is the binary database format used by IMatch Lightroom. A SQLite database I guess.

[Joe Austin]

lrcat is the binary database format used by IMatch. A SQLite database I guess.

So, should Imatch be able to import this directly?    I tried changing the suffix to the suffix that Imatch recognizes in the import dialog (.imchs , I think it was) and importing the catalog, but Imatch reported an import error due to wrong format.

[Carlo Didier]

I think that was a type from Mario. .lrcat is the database format for Lightroom, not iMatch.
And renaming a file doesn't change its content or type.

[Mario]

Yes. sorry. lrcat is the native binary format used by LR. It's undocumented and proprietary. IMatch cannot import lrcat files.

[Joe Austin]

Ok, thanks.   I'm going to see if my source can export their catalog in a common text format.

Thanks, Carlo.  Actually, I am aware that changing the extension doesn't change the format of the file, that change was simply to make the file appear in the Imatch thesaurus import dialog so I could try the import.

[Mario]

You speak of the catalog (which is the entire LR database) but apparently you are more interest in importing the keyword list you have created in LR?

There is a special export for that (Metadata >  Export Keywords), and the format resulting from that export can be read by IMatch into the thesaurus.

[Joe Austin]

No, I don't have LR, I was sent a keyword catalog (that's what they called it) created by some who does have LR.   I wanted to import that into my Imatch thesaurus.

I am hoping my source will be able to do the LR export.

[Mario]

The .lrcat is a standard LR catalog, with all the junk, previews and whatnot. That's not what you need.

Please refer to the IMatch help topic for the thesaurus for a comprehensive list of supported formats for import. The lrcat format is useless.

[Ferdinand]

LR has an option to export keywords (under the metadata menu).  I haven't used it, but I'm fairly sure that it produces a tab-delimited text file.  I can confirm that IMatch can certainly read this file format into the thesaurus. 

Of course this will just import the keyword structure into the thesaurus, no file assignments.  Keywords are embedded (either in the file or in the sidecar) anyway, so if you're looking to import file assignments as well (which is possible given that you were sent an .lrcat file) then if you have copies of the files in question that have had keywords assigned, IMatch should be able to read those keywords.  You could then populate the thesaurus from the in-image metadata.  However all this is irrelevant if you just want to import the structure.

[Mario]

I mentioned Metadata  > Export Keywords in my post above.

@Joe Austin

What exactly do you want to import?

- IMatch imports the keywords in your files automatically (if LR has written them to the XMP data in the file).
- You can fill the IMatch thesaurus from the keywords in your files (just run the command in the Thesaurus Manger)
- The @Keywords category will automatically organize your files based on the keywords they contain
- When your friend exports his keyword set via Metadata > Export Keywords in LR, you can import these keywords into the IMatch thesaurus.

[Joe Austin]

- When your friend exports his keyword set via Metadata > Export Keywords in LR, you can import these keywords into the IMatch thesaurus.

This is all I want to do.