Relation Management

The term relation is used to describe the relations between files in your database.

IMatch supports three kinds of relations:

Buddy Files

You should set up the buddy rules before you start to process images in IMatch. IMatch ships with a set of pre-defined buddy files rules which work for most standard cases.
To check and change the buddy rules, go to Edit > Preferences > Relations

See Buddy Files for detailed information.

Some cameras and applications store additional information about an image in a so-called buddy or sidecar file. These files usually have the same name as the image file, with a different extension. Buddy files are located in the same folder as the image file, or a sub-folder of that folder.

Examples for buddy files are XMP files, the JPEG file your camera may produce for every RAW file, an audio file containing voice annotations or a video file.
Often, applications store editing instructions and settings for RAW files in sidecar files, too. You may produce other buddy files yourself, e.g., by storing a PDF file, some kind of report document and/or an HTML page with each image.

When you rename or move an image it is very important to keep the image file and all buddy files together. If you copy the image to another folder, the buddy files must also be copied. The same rule applies to tasks like moving or renaming images.
If the buddy file becomes separated from the image file you may lose information or your image editing application may not be able to render the image file correctly unless buddy files are kept together. IMatch uses a set of rules which tell it which files belong together and applies these rules whenever you perform file operations in IMatch.

If you rename, move or copy image files in Windows Explorer or other software, buddy files may be left behind or relations may break.
It is hence important that you always perform file operations in IMatch.

You can configure the rules used to identify buddy files under Edit > Preferences > Relations.

Versions

Versions are an advanced feature in IMatch. The way IMatch handles relations between files is very flexible and can be adjusted to match almost all workflow schemes in use today.

See Versioning for detailed information.

Versioning allows you to automatically replicate metadata, ratings, labels, categories and IMatch collections between images. IMatch uses a set of rules you specify in order to identify master files and versions of these files. A typical case would be a RAW file as the master, and one or more DNG, TIFF or JPEG files as versions.

Whenever you make a change to a master file, IMatch replicates these changes to the versions you have created before. You always stay in full control over which and how much data is copied. You may, for example, decide that you only want to copy keywords and categories from the master to the version, but keep the rating and label assigned to it.

Before you start with versioning, you should sit down and think a short while about how you work with your images.
Although versioning is, in principle, very simple, it may become a bit more involved when you have a complex workflow already. As with many things, simpler is better when it comes to versioning. IMatch has all the tools to set up very complex version rules and interdependencies - but simpler versioning schemas are usually better.

Questions you should ask yourself are:

• Do I need versioning at all?
• Which applications do I use with my image files?
• Which type of derivative images do I create from my original files?
• Do I use DNG files in my workflow?
• Do I have to produce different outputs of the same original, e.g., for web site usage and printing?
• Do I deliver different outputs of the same image to different clients or customers?
• Which data to I want to copy from the master to versions?