General understanding of imatch features

[ben]

Hi everyone,

i'm just starting to work my way through all the imatch features.
I read through big parts of the help file, but couldn't find the answer to following questions. And Mario is quite busy at the moment.

• How can i add keywords while in the "Viewer" mode? It seems like, i can only choose from a subset of the generally available panels.
• Is it possible to integrate the "viewer" the same way like the file window (same position and look & feel)?
• Are there plans to implement a toolbar? So one could for example define buttons to hide/unhide panels without remembering the short keys.
  Working with custom workspaces is quite slow on my laptop. It needs several seconds to switch between two workspaces which is too long, just to quickly hide some panels
• Is it possible to dock a panel on the left side below the properties window? Whenever i drag a panel to the left it will always appear left or right of the properties/media panel, but never below it
• Is there a way to upload images into a webgalery, e.g. picasaweb, flickr, ..? The best would be if i could choose a category to always sync to the webgalery.


• 
  What's the right way to add keywords from my hierarchical-keyword-list to an image? I could either do:
      a) i can drag the keyword from the view "category" onto the image. But at the same time the file window will filter according to the selected keyword, which is not wanted
      b) i select the keyword from the panel "keywords -> thesaurus". But the thesaurus view is not tree like, which i would prefer. 
  

Thanks so much for your help,
Nik

[Mario]

1. The keywords panel is not accessible in the Viewer or the slide show. You can use the category panel and the @Keywords categories to assign keywords. Or Favorites. Or you just make the Quick Preview Panel (F9,Q) real big or un-dock it to move it to another monitor to see your files real big while having access to the file window and all panels.

2. Please see the Viewer help to learn how to switch the viewer into panel, workspace, window or full-screen mode.

3. No. Screen estate is expensive and it's usually easy to remember something like F9,<Panel shortcut>. Or, if you need to show a panel which you did not use for a long time, go to View > Panels to open it.

4. No. The "View panel" in each of the four major views is fixed. You can see all possible panel docking conditions while tracking  panel. Check the indicators shown on screen.

5. Not yet. Usually you can just drag files from IMatch to the "upload" screen of whatever online photo gallery you happen to use.  Most allows for simple drag and drop, which makes it quite easy to directly upload files from IMatch. One problem with writing custom connectors is that each of the major sites (Flickr, pbase, smugmug, Facebook) uses a different interface. And some even want money if you want to use their interface. IMatch has the technology to handle all that, but I will check which sites are requested most often before I implement anything in this area.

6. The proper way to work with keywords is the Keyword Panel. This panel has many productivity features which are not available elsewhere in IMatch. The @Keywords category hierarchy will mirror the keywords you add to your files automatically.  The thesaurus panel in the Keyword Panel has not been implemented as a tree because a tree with many levels becomes hard to handle, especially with thesauri with thousands of entries. As you will find out after a short time of use, the thesaurus panel with its horizontal alignments of levels is very fast to navigate for any thesaurus site, shows keywords and synonyms and also allows you to manipulate your thesaurus.

[photoken]

Is there a way to upload images into a webgalery, e.g. picasaweb, flickr, ..?

As a side note 
In the 1990's, the joke among developers was that no application would be considered feature-complete until it could do e-mail.

Plus ça change....

[Mario]

Being able to send files via email directly from within IMatch is a must-have for many IMatch users, especially for corporate users and scientists. IMatch thus has a very capable email function, with support for Windows MAPI, direct mail server connection (if gmail, hotmail or other services are used), support for templates and stationery, variables, HTML and text email, Batch Processing, etc.

For most other services, including photo sharing sites and FTP, a simple drag and drop from the IMatch file window is usually all you need.

[Canay]

Is there a way to upload images into a webgalery, e.g. picasaweb, flickr, ..?

As a side note 
In the 1990's, the joke among developers was that no application would be considered feature-complete until it could do e-mail.

Plus ça change....

In the 1990's I was upgrading my 20mb hard drive (yes mb) to a 30mb hard drive and my husband suggested I go to 40mb. I just looked at him and said "why would I ever need a hard drive that big?" He replied that he heard people were taking digital pictures and putting them on their computers and they would need more space. I wondered who would ever do such a thing!!!

[ben]

Hi Mario,

thanks for your suggestions.
Some of them work quite well for me, for others i might add a feature request.

1. The keywords panel is not accessible in the Viewer or the slide show. You can use the category panel and the @Keywords categories to assign keywords. Or Favorites. Or you just make the Quick Preview Panel (F9,Q) real big or un-dock it to move it to another monitor to see your files real big while having access to the file window and all panels.

I am working on a laptop without extra monitor :-(
Another solution would be if one could hide the file view window and replace it by the viewer.
Does this fit into the software architecture or would it be a big mess?

Thanks a lot,
Nik

[Mario]

If you need to combine the Keyword Panel, the Viewer and all that on a very small display, why not use a layout like this (see below).
You have a file window with all commands, large Viewer and the Keyword Panel and the Category Panel (and other panels too as needed).


PS.: Feature requests place always in the dedicated board. I do not remember or search the General board for feature requests. But I keep an eye on the feature request board.

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[ben]

if you need to combine the Keyword Panel, the Viewer and all that on a very small display, why not use a layout like this (see below).

That looks good, but has a drawback. When you run through the images in the file viewer, e.g. by the arrow keys, the Viewer doesn't get updated.
I tried the same with the QuickView Panel which does what i want. So that's quite good for me :-)

[photoken]

He replied that he heard people were taking digital pictures and putting them on their computers and they would need more space. I wondered who would ever do such a thing!!!

Yep, I suffered from "Kodachrome Arrogance" for a long time....