Creating Albums

[MikeB]

I would like to know if anyone knows how to create Static Albums in IMatch. 
I would like to be able to put photos from different folders into multiple albums and have them in a particular order sequence.   
I cannot change the filename as a means to determine order as filenames need to stay as is for auditing purposes and might be a different sequence number in another album.

[Mario]

That's exactly what categories are designed for.
Categories enable you to automatically and manually group your images and other files in any way. An image can be in as many categories (albums) as you wish, without duplicating the file on disk.
Categories are fast to use, flexible, powerful and one of the core features of IMatch.

Did you read the help topic on categories in the IMatch help system yet? It explains about categories and shows you what you can do with them.

If you are new to IMatch: Check out the Visual Index in the help (right on the front page) to get an overview of all major features.
You can open the help at any time by pressing <F1> or via the Help menu.

[ubacher]

I expand on Mario's entry:

You can consider a category as an album. When you display the category you can set the display order to "custom" which
will let you arrange them in any order you like. The order will be stored together with the category so that it is not lost.

My suggestion: create a hierachical category tree - name the top ALBUMS.

PS: What is a category may be called  keyword or tags in other programs.
      KEYWORDS in Imatch are basically the same as categories except they are stored as metadata inside you image file.
      ( I won't go into the advantages/disadvantages of using keywords rather than categories here)

[MikeB]

I knew about categories, but did not know I could arrange their contents and have it stick in a particular order.  I will try out the "Custom" option.
Thanks much for all your help.   

P.S.  I really love all the features (especially the easy hierarchical tagging ability with the thesaurus).  It really gives me a way to organize the chaos.  I think its a great program Mario.  Well done.

[Mario]

You can manually arrange categories in a specific order using the custom sort order (Gear button in the Category View toolbar).
You can also manually sort files in file windows using the [Custom] sort order.

Using custom sort orders for categories needs some thinking, however. Even large scientific taxonomies use alphabetical sort orders for a reason. It just makes your categories easier to transfer and handle in other applications (export!) and makes them easier to find. IMatch allows manual reordering of categories and there are situations where this is required or helpful. For all standard cases, the plain "smart" alphabetical sort order is sufficient and more 'portable'.