Meet IMatch
IMatch is a professional Digital Asset Management system (DAM). It enables you to manage your digital images and other digital documents efficiently in new ways. IMatch will become the central point of your asset management and archiving strategy. It integrates seamlessly into your existing workflow and cooperates with all your other software.
What Makes IMatch so Useful and Unique?
IMatch has been designed from ground-up to be open, cooperative, reliable, fast and flexible.
It combines an industrial-strength database system with a rich user interface and a large feature set. Built on experience and technology developed over the past decade, IMatch now serves thousands of users from over 70 countries.
IMatch can be used to manage file collections of virtually any size. Even with only a few ten thousand files, IMatch makes organizing and managing them much easier. But where IMatch really excels is when you have 100,000 or 500,000 files to manage. Where many other applications reach their limits, IMatch still allows you to manage your files effortlessly.
How It Works
IMatch creates an index of all folders you add to your database. During this indexing process, IMatch reads every file and extracts metadata, creates a thumbnail, calculates checksums, visual query data and more. The resulting data is stored in the IMatch database.
Optionally, IMatch performs additional tasks like automatically filling in standard metadata or running face recognition at this stage.
IMatch does not move your files into the database. It manages your files where they are. You do not need to change your file organization in any way. Files managed by IMatch remain accessible in Windows Explorer and other applications.
Once the files have been indexed, they are presented in the IMatch user interface and you can start adding keywords and descriptions, cull and rate your files, search for files, organize your files using categories and collections, work with GPS data, People, Events, open files in other applications etc.
Main Features
This list contains links to the help pages for the most important concepts and features in IMatch.
- During this step you add new files to your database and let IMatch create its index.
- Working with metadata like title, description, keywords, rating or label is one of the main purposes of IMatch.
It offers powerful features to view, modify and use metadata contained in your files, including XMP, IPTC, EXIF or GPS data.
The main features for working with metadata are the Metadata Panel and the Keywords Panel. - Finding any file in seconds using file name, keywords or other metadata is one of the key features in every DAM.
IMatch includes powerful search and filter features, e.g. the File Window Search Bar or the Filter Panel.
IMatch also enables you to find duplicate or visually similar files quickly. - The Viewer is the main feature for displaying and reviewing images. It provides a wealth of functions to display up to 8 files simultaneously.
The Quick View Panel displays the currently selected file in a convenient panel, which you can dock anywhere inside the IMatch workspace.
Like the Viewer, the Quick View Panel uses hardware-based image rendering for awesome speed, instant zooms and pans and high-quality and fully color-managed image display. - The File Window not only supports many ways to display your files, but also allows you to sort them by file name, folder, title, descriptions, keywords and hundreds of other metadata tags and Attributes.
- IMatch offers built-in functions for copying, moving, renaming and deleting files with automatic buddy/sidecar file handling. These functions go way beyond what you can to in Windows Explorer. IMatch makes it very easy to open files in other applications.
- The Smart Renamer allows you to you rename files in batch, with very easy but powerful rules. This tool also supports buddy/sidecar files, can create folders on-the-fly and move and copy files.
- Allow you to add metadata or update to single or sets of files. Metadata Templates can be run automatically while files are being indexed. A great time-saver.
- If you want to view your files on a Map, assign or edit GPS coordinates or perform reverse geocoding to lookup country, city and location, IMatch has all the tools you'll need.
- Categories allow you to organize, cluster and group your files either manually or automatically. This is one of the unique concepts only available in IMatch.
- Data-driven categories automatically categorize your files based on metadata. Categories which group your files based on camera model, city, country, artist, etc., are a snap.
- The special @Keywords category maintains files based on their keywords. Whether you assign keywords in the Keywords Panel in IMatch or another application, this category makes it easy to see which keywords you have used, how many and which files have a specific keyword etc. @Keywords combines regular keywords (tags) with the powerful category concept of IMatch. This special category is fully automatic and its results are used by several other features as well, e.g. keyword coloring.
- You can use category formulas to dynamically combine categories or to fill categories dynamically from folder contents, collections, queries, ...
- The Category Builder allows you to visually combine categories via drag and drop.
- Alias categories allow you to reuse the same category in different sections of your category hierarchy. This is ideal for things like family trees or scientific classification systems.
- A collection groups files based on specific criteria. IMatch automatically maintains collections for Rating and Label, Bookmarks, Flags, Pins and Dots. There are also collections which show the files you have recently added, updated or viewed. One collection keeps track of file versions and another takes care of annotations.
- IMatch Events allow you to organize your files by events like Joe's Birthday or Family Trip to London.
- The timeline in IMatch automatically organizes your files based on their creation date and time. With a few clicks you can see all images taken on a specific day, within a week, month or year.
- The IMatch AI searches your images for faces and automatically links them to persons you have created in your database. All this runs locally on your PC, not in a 'cloud'. No privacy issues, no data is sent to 3rd parties.
- The IMatch AutoTagger enables you to utilize cloud-based AI services provided by companies like Google, Microsoft, Clarifai or imagga to automatically add keywords to your files. This can be a massive help when you start with a large file collection without any prior organization.
- Are a global concept unique to IMatch which combines buddy files (sidecar files), versions and stacks.
- Allows you to display full-screen automatic and manual slide shows. Great for presenting your images to clients or friends.
- Enables you to convert files into many different formats, with options to add text, watermarks, overlays, metadata.
- With the built-in Design & Print tool you can easily create contact sheets, prints, photo books, PDF files and more.
- IMatch includes many modules to import and export data in a wide variety of formats. Additional modules can be easily written as custom IMatch Apps.
- IMatch comes with everything required to write your own apps. You can use this to automate routine tasks, extend built-in functionality or add new features.
The IMatch Database
IMatch uses an industrial-strength database system to keep your data safe. All the information and metadata IMatch extracts from your files, the categories, attributes and other data you input is stored in this database. All database operations are automatically performed by IMatch, you don't need to maintain the database yourself.
See Creating the Database for more information.
The IMatch Workspace
IMatch uses different views to visualize different aspects of your database. Each view represents a different way to look at your files.
- Media & Folders View
This view presents the physical structure of the files you manage in your database.
Here you work with drives, media and folders. Very similar to Windows Explorer but with many additional features. - Category View
In this view you organize your images using the unique IMatch category features. - Collection View
This view displays the automatic and manual collections IMatch maintains for you. - Timeline View
In this view IMatch displays all files in the database along an automatic timeline. - Events View
In this view you work with IMatch Events and the files associated with these events. - People View
In this view you manage the persons in your database and view the images for each person. - The Dashboard
The Dashboard shows you everything that's important about your files and database in one place.
You can switch freely between these views by clicking on the corresponding tabs near the top of the IMatch window:
See The IMatch Workspace for detailed information about the IMatch main window and all the panels.
Tip: Command Palette
Press Shift + Ctrl + P to open the Command Palette.
The Command Palette gives you direct access to virtually all IMatch commands, features, settings and more, just by searching:
Usage Hints
IMatch displays usage hints for many of its features. These hints are displayed automatically and only for a short time. Here is an example:
Usage hints like this automatically vanish after a few seconds. Most of them are shown only once per IMatch session.
Move the mouse into the tip to keep it visible so you have time to read it.
If you don't want to see the usage hint anymore, tick the Don't show again check box.
The File Window
File Windows display the contents of folders, collections, categories or timeline nodes. They are also used to display the results of search operations. File windows display files in thumbnail or tabular formats and offer a wide range of customizing options, down to font sizes and a free choice of which metadata and attributes to show.
A file window in thumbnail mode
See the File Window for detailed information about the file window.
Searching
The File Window Search Bar is the most frequently used search feature. It allows you to search any number of files for file names, metadata and Attributes. The Search Bar supports simple and complex searches, Boolean and regular expressions etc.
IMatch also offers a set of specialized search functions to find duplicates/copies, files with similar colors, files matching a sketch or files located at specific GPS coordinates.
See the Searching topic for more info.
Filters
In addition to searching directly in File Windows, the Filter Panel offers additional ways to control which files you see. Rating and label, arbitrary metadata, size and dimensions, date & time, GPS data and locations and more can be used for filtering. Filters can be saved and recalled later.
The Filter Panel with a few of the available filters.
See the Filters topic for more info.
Panels
Most information about your files is displayed in customizable panels. Panels can be docked inside the IMatch main window, or floating, which allows you to move them freely around, even to a second monitor. See below for a list of available panels and explanations of what they do:
See the Panels for full details on each panel and general panel usage.
Favorites
Favorites are a time-saver feature. You can create favorites for your most important folders, categories, apps, applications, metadata templates and more. Favorites can be run with a single mouse click or a keyboard shortcut.
See Favorites for full details.
File Management
IMatch includes powerful commands to move, copy, rename, delete, rate, label, reject etc. files.
See File Management for detailed information.
See Renamer for information about the powerful file renaming feature.
Viewing Files
IMatch contains three features to display files for review and culling:
Apps
IMatch includes a number of apps for a wide range of purposes. And it contains everything you'll need to create your own apps, if you want.
See the IMatch App Overview for more information.
