IM5 Reflections

[Ranger1700]

Unlike many of you out there I have a quite modest database of a little under 11,000 images. During the public IM5 beta test I set up a test database of 10 to 20 images and played about with them.

With the release of v128 containing a converter, I decided to take the plunge and expand the test database. Mindful that it is still a beta version I copied my files into a new folder and set about converting. For me the v128 converter did not work, so I set about importing the categories manually.

During this process Due to the improvements in IM5 I decided to slightly adjust my folder structure and workflow, I was also able to correct errors that had accumulated over the years, some minor like spelling mistakes, lost consistency in naming convention, some images misplaced in the wrong category. I have found IM5 far easier to spot these inconsistencies than IM3.6.

This is now very nearly complete, but yesterdays enforced rest (2014 lockout) left me with time to reflect on IM5, and realise that at this moment my test database is more accurate, flexible and upto date than my IM3.6 database.

As a New Year wish, I hope that Mario has no need to make major changes which will prevent me from using my test database as the active one when IM5 goes live. I think like many on here, I am looking forward to the official release.

Tom

[Mario]

There is always the possibility that I have to make a breaking change in the Beta database. Can happen.

But what would you lose in this case?
The metadata like XMP, IPTC, EXIF is in stored the files (assuming you write back automatically or manually when you make changes to it in IMatch 5).
File and folder names remain untouched.
Categories can be exported and then re-imported into the new database. The same is true for Attributes.
In any case, you would not lose data done with IMatch 5 on your collection.

PS.: Please try the database converter shipped with the current build. Just for the fun of it. It should work for you too.

[Ranger1700]

Mario,

Ah! silly me  I had overlooked the fact that the data is embedded and thanks for letting me know, that by way of export/inport I can take care of the categories, I expected I would have had to reallocate them.

I was going to try the converter out of interest, but the priority was after completing the manual conversion, which I have now just completed.

Tom