Moving from IdImager Photo Supreme to iMatch

[peterpix]

Does anyone have any tips on transferring my database, heirarchy, photos etc from Photo Supreme to iMatch 2019?

Thanks in advance.

[Mario]

I have never used IDImager/PS so I cannot really comment.
But, from experience, I would do this first:

1. Make sure PS has written all metadata back into the files.

2. Create an IMatch database and index the same files you have indexed in PS

3. Use the The Metadata Panel and the The Keywords Panel to check which metadata is available in IMatch.

Tip: Switch the Metadata Panel into the Browser layout to see all data IMatch has imported from your files.

4. Switch to the Category View (with the tab on the upper-left) to see all categories IMatch has created automatically from the data in your files: @Keywords groups your files by keywords (based on the actual keywords in your files), IMatch Standard Categories groups your files on typical photographic metadata, IMatch Workflow Categories group your files by criteria like "missing title", "no keywords", "files with GPS data" etc.

5. The Timeline arranges your files by their date and time.

IMatch 'comes from' the professional DAM world and uses some concepts you might not know yet. I can only recommend to watch some of the free tutorial videos in the IMatch Learning Center and utilize the IMatch Help System to learn your ways around IMatch.

For a beginner, the Keyboard Cheat Sheet is very helpful, because it lists all frequently used commands and their keyboard shortcuts.

The Visual Index provides a great overview of all major IMatch features and function groups.

I'm aware that PS uses some kind of keyword hierarchy to avoid repetition and typing. In IMatch this is implemented in form of the The Universal Thesaurus, which manages your keyword hierarchies (controlled vocabulary, but also works for all other metadata tags (descriptions, stock titles, rights). It is accessed in the Keyword and Metadata Panel.

The Thesaurus can "fill itself" from the keywords in your files and also supports multiple import formats (in case you want to carry over your keyword list from PS).

That should get you going and busy for a day or two.
Feel free to post here if you have specific questions.

[peterpix]

Many thanks Mario

[Mario]

You're welcome.
Let us know if and which problems you run into. This will help other users in the future. And me, to make IMatch better, improve the help, add another tutorial etc.

[peterpix]

Mario thanks.

I have imported a test sample of files into the database, and the (heirarchical) keywords that were embedded into the files are showing up in the keywords panel.

But they are not showing up in the @keywords list in categories or in the thesaurus.

I can add (heirarchical) keywords to @keywords and to the thesaurus if I use the add to thesaurus command.

My first problem is that this is time-consuming as there are a lot of them. Is there a way to import the new (heirarchical) keywords (that are embedded in my files) into the @keywords list and into the thesaurus in bulk (all at the same time by one command)?

Also, I have a keyword in the thesauraus manager marked as Group Level Yes but it is still showing up as a flat keyword in the IPTC and XMP Keyword fields.  The file is not showing as needing to have data written (the pencil is blue not orange, and clicking it doesn't make anything happen).  Exclude in Flat Keywords is greyed out when Group Level is set at Yes, but even where I have them both set at Yes the keyword still persists in the IPTC and XMP Keyword fields and I can't make it go away.  I want the keyword to be in the database but not embedded in the file.  Also I would like all files to be changed at once for the same keyword when I change it to Group Level Yes, i.e. when I change Group Level to Yes I want the keyword concerned to be removed from the IPTC and EXIF of all files automatically, or at least have a bulk command to do this manually all at once.

I would be grateful for any insights into where I am going wrong here.

Peter

[Mario]

But they are not showing up in the @keywords list in categories or in the thesaurus.

Very strange. @Keywords is a data-driven category that is automatically filled from existing hierarchical keywords in the database.
It 'just works' usually.

Have you tried just closing and re-opening the database?
Or left-clicking the @Keywords category view and pressing <F5>?
Does the IMatch log file (log file) show any warnings or error messages?

For testing I have just created a fresh database and added a couple of hundred files with existing XMP keywords. They all show up in @Keywords - so this should work for you as well.

Also, I have a keyword in the thesauraus manager marked as Group Level Yes but it is still showing up as a flat keyword in the IPTC and XMP Keyword fields. 

IMatch applies your thesaurus settings when you assign keywords in the Keyword Panel or elsewhere.
It does not re-process all keywords in your entire database again when you make changes in your thesaurus.

Maybe these these keywords are already in your files? In that case they will not be affected by changes done later in the thesaurus.
Try to remove the keyword in question in the keyword panel and then re-assign it. This will trigger keyword processing in IMatch (hierarchical to flat keywords) and will apply the current thesaurus settings.
Or use the Propagate Keywords again command from the drop-down menu in the Keyword Panel (Gear icon).

Also I would like all files to be changed at once for the same keyword when I change it to Group Level Yes,

The thesaurus is a powerful storage facility for text fragments, for all metadata tags.
Changing texts in the thesaurus does not affect existing metadata (or keywords) in your files.

To re-arrange keywords in bulk, use @Keywords.
Or just select all affected files in a file window, change the keywords as needed and save. IMatch can change keywords for any number of files in batch.

(the pencil is blue not orange, and clicking it doesn't make anything happen).

There is no blue pencil. The only blue pencil-like icon used by the File Window is the bookmark icon.
See Icons used in the File Window

[RobiWan]

I'm not sure if I understand corectly your Problem, but do you know - you can Export all Keywords from PSU and Import the list into IMatch Thesaurus?

Cheers Robert

[peterpix]

Mario

Thanks for the rapid response.

My main issue arises from the following from the manual in the Thesaurus page:

Exclude in flat keywords
Only available for keywords.
If this is enabled, IMatch will not include this keyword when mapping from hierarchical keywords to flat keywords.

Group Level
Only available for keywords.
If this is enabled, this element represents a group level element.

I may be using the wrong settings to achieve what I want to do.  Maybe there are soem other settings I should be using.

What I want is to have some categories/keywords in the database (e.g. which stock library the image is in, or WHERE) that are not written into the files.

I wrote these keywords into the files deliberately so I could bring them across from Photo Supreme to iMatch.  Now they are in iMatch (I confirm they do appear in @keywords after I add the files to iMatch) I want to (a) add them to the Thesaurus in some kind of bulk way if possible (but I can do it one by one if I have to) and (b) most importantly, set them up so that I can see that an image has that keyword (so e.g. I can see that an image is in a particular stock library, or has the top level category WHERE, e.g. WHERE ¦ USA, to distinguish it from Miscellaneous ¦ USA, so I know I still need to move that latter category into the former) but not have that keyword/category written into the file, and (c) as a once-only exercise, remove the keywords/categories concerned (stock library, WHERE) from being embedded in the files, as they were only embedded to get them across to iMatch and now I want to get them out of the files themselves (or their buddy files where applicable), hopefully in some automatic way.

In my dreams what I hope for is that I can tell iMatch that these say 50 categories/keywords are only for the database (so I can see them in iMatch) and not for writing into the file (so no-one else can see them), and then iMatch will automatically remove the categories/keywords from any files where those categories/keywords are currently embedded, and also in future when I assign the categories/keywords to a file they will appear in the database for that file but not be written to the image.

I had thought that the Group Level and/or Exclude in flat keywords settings might achieve this, but it appears not.

Also I am confused about whether meta-data is read and written at the same time and what the pencil icon means in this regard.  In other words does the pencil icon mean that there is data to be written and removed from files, or just written?

I am also unclear why all of my imported files are showing the pencil.  I haven't added data to them as they are newly imported.  Does this mean that the data in the files has not yet been imported into iMatch in some way (but the fact that the keywords are showing in @keywords suggests that the keywords have been imported.

Finally, I noticed this in the Thesaurus help item:

Use sub-elements
Only available for keywords.
If this is enabled, assigning the parent element automatically assigns sub-elements.
This means you can assign a whole batch of keywords by assigning one keyword in the thesaurus. If the parent element has the Group Level option set, only the sub-elements are assigned. This allows you to setup sets of keywords and add them (or remove them) with a single mouse-click in the keyword panel.

What I want is the other way around - assigning sub-elements automatically assigns parents, all the way up the tree, but the items marked for not being written to the file are just recored in the database for the file but not written to the file, e.g. I click WHERE ¦ USA ¦ Tuscaloosa, and USA ¦ Tuscaloosa and USA and Tuscaloosa are written to the file but WHERE is not.  Or I click Stock libraries ¦ Shutterstock ¦ Shutterstock accepted and none are written to the file (as all of these are excluded from writing) but I can see and search on Stock libraries, Shutterstock and Shutterstock accepted.

Not sure how to set that up.

Thanks in advance for your clarification.

Peter

[peterpix]

Robiwan, thanks.

Re "I'm not sure if I understand corectly your Problem, but do you know - you can Export all Keywords from PSU and Import the list into IMatch Thesaurus?"

I used the only export option I could find in Photo Supreme and generated what looks like a text file but has the file type .utf8.  It has all of the heirarchical categories/keywords, arranged in an indented manner, e.g.

Stock libraries
   Shutterstock
      Accepted
      Rejected
      Submissions
         2019-01-02
         2019-02-01

I tried to import this into iMatch but none of the import options I could find recognised the file or even sounded appropriate.

If you know the precise method please could you let me know.

Thanks

Peter

[Mario]

If keywords you have declared as group-level keywords in the IMatch thesaurus are already in your files (as you said above), IMatch will not remove them. There is no "strip keywords not in the thesaurus on import" feature or anything. IMatch applies the thesaurus settings (including group levels) when you actually change hierarchical keywords in IMatch, or when you use the "propagate again" command I described above in my reply to you. Did you try that?



Manually Propagating Keywords

You can fill the thesaurus from the keywords in your files (actually, from the keywords in the database). Choose the "Import from Database..." command in the Thesaurus Import from Database



The format you have produced in Ps looks similar to the flat hierarchical list format Lr produces for its keyword list.
Try the generic "Text Import" in the Thesaurus (Choose Import and in the file dialog select the "Text Format" in the format selector box at the bottom right).



See: Importing Text Format

[RobiWan]

Hi Peter,

If you know the precise method please could you let me know.

Its exactly what Mario wrote "open Thesaurus Maneger, than Import Thesaurus, and select Textfile as fileformat". Woks perfect here.

Robert

[peterpix]

Thanks Mario and Robiwan

I was able to import the Thesaurus with correct heirarchy by changing the .utf8 filetype in the name to .text.

However i am still being defeated by very sticky embedded keywords.

I select an image (jpg) and delete a keyword, and it becomes crossed out.  However when I use either the green tick or the orange propogate arrow the keyword undeletes (no longer crossed out) and nothing happens to the embedded keywords in either of the three keyword fields in the image (XMP Lightroom Hierarchical, IPTC ApplicationRecord/25/Keywords - which has a little padlock by the side of it for some reason, and XMP dc/subject/subject/0).  Using the pen icon on the image after getting the crossing out of the keyword doesn't work either, even though the pen disappears (takes about 13 seconds just for one image, during which time I get the Windows whirling, circular, blue working icon, with no change at the end).

The embedded keywords seem to be super-protected from deletion and the same applies to the database keyword entries, which appear to "come back from the dead".

Is there something I omitted to do here?

Peter

[Mario]

IMatch automatically updates flat XMP and legacy IPTC keywords when you work in the Keyword Panel or with one of the other features dealing with keywords. IMatch hence disallows the user to manually edit these tags in the Metadata Panel.

When you change keyword or delete a keyword in the KW panel and then press the green arrow (or press Ctrl+S or move to another image), IMatch maps the resulting hierarchical keywords into flat XMP and legacy IPTC keywords. You say that this does not happen on your files? Please show us an  example of the keywords you set in the KW panel, the existing keywords in your files and also the thesaurus settings involved (group levels etc.). You seem to experience some truly peculiar issues with features which usually 'just work'.

There might be issues during write-back when IMatch encounters out-of-sync existing keywords in files (usually between flat and hierarchical keywords). Users can shot themselves in the foot badly when using software which does not properly synchronize the keywords or with excluding keywords when flattening keywords, but then not having the thesaurus to allow IMatch to re-map the flat keywords. This may cause keywords to re-apear after write back etc.

13 seconds to write back a single file is much to slow. ExifTool writes a 50 MB RAW file in about one second on a local disk. Where are your images stored, which file format do you use etc?
The IMatch log file (see ##llogfile) contains detailed information we need. Please always ZIP and attach a copy so we can see exactly what takes how long, which files you use etc. This will speed things up on this end a bit.

Also upload somewhere one of your images so we can see the metadata stored in it. I don't know what Ps writes to files, how it maps keywords. This also may depend on your settings in Ps and what you have configured in the IMatch thesaurus. Group levels are great but may be hit hard when the IMatch thesaurus you have created does not match the keywords you have produced in PS.

But then, changing the keywords for files in the KW panel in IMatch will always wipe out existing flat keywords and update them again, based on the hierarchical keywords and your thesaurus. That a deleted keyword comes back after committing changes in the KW panel is quite strange, so we would need your thesaurus zipped and attached too.

[peterpix]

Mario thanks again for working on this with me in Easter Sunday evening.  Much appreciated.

I've solved one issue and found another connected one.

Firstly, an apology.  I have realised that on writing to the file the file was removed from the main screen showing the images with that keyword, but I had so many versions of the same image (different file formats and sizes etc) I did not realise that one had disappeared from the search/screen each time I carried out the experiment, so what looked like the keyword reappearing in the Keywords and Metadata/Keywords panels was in fact the data from the next file in the series that moved into focus after the first file was removed from the main screen.

Secondly, having realised that, what I expect to happen is now happening, except that no matter what I do (apart from one thing below) I can't remove a keyword from the file in the IPTC::ApplicationRecord\25\Keywords\0 field.  I am in the Keywords screen of the Metadata panel, so I have three panels: Hierarchical Keywords, Keywords and Keywords.  It is the second one (IPTC::App...etc) that won't change.  The other two (XMP) do change.  Seems to make no difference whether I use the green tick or the orange propogate arrow.

But if I use the pencil icon on the image then the data in the IPTC filed does change.

Oddly using the green tick or the orange arrow works almost instantaneously, but using the pencil icon to change the IPTC field takes (now reduced to) 4 or 5 seconds.

I guess there's something different about that IPTC field that stops if behaving the same, but is there any way I can improve this workflow/speed so I can change all three fields at once and all quickly (instead of two quickly with one button and one slowly with the pencil icon)?

Peter

[peterpix]

Hi again

Now I'm focusing on a new issue that is not responding as expected.

In the Thesaurus I have marked a keyword as Yes for both Exclude in flat keywords and Group Level, btu when I select the keyword and propogate it appears in the three keyword fields, written into the file.  I expected it not to appear in the file, but only in the database.

So my question is please how do I mark a file with a keyword (for my own internal, admin purposes) but not have it written to the file?

Peter

[Mario]

Please attach the information, thesaurus and files I have requested above. Else we have no information to work with. We need to see which keywords are in your file, how you have setup the thesaurus etc.
It's impossible to reproduce the effects you are describing otherwise.