The Timeline View

The Timeline View organizes your images automatically based on their creation date and time.

If the Timeline View is not visible, click on the Timeline tab below the main menu bar near the top of the IMatch window.

Time Source

When indexing a file, IMatch extracts the date and time the file was created. This timestamp is stored in the database and used for the timeline and a variety of other purposes. You can access this timestamp via the corresponding File Window Attribute and the {File.DateTime} variable.

To extract the creation timestamp, IMatch probes different metadata tags. Depending on the file format, IMatch looks at the ExifTool Date/Time composite tags, the appropriate EXIF date and time information, XMP, classic IPTC, PDF, Office and MP3 date and time metadata. If no usable date and time information can be extracted from a file, IMatch uses the last modified date and time as reported by Windows.

The Timeline View in IMatch displays files in a virtual timeline and locates them based on the timestamp extracted when indexing the file.

The Timeline View

The timeline arranges all files in the database in a hierarchical structure. By default it uses Years, Months and Days to arrange the files. You can optionally also arrange files by half-year, quarter and even week. The IMatch timeline uses the ISO week date system with a leap week calendar system that is part of the ISO 8601 date and time standard. This is also the standard in Windows.

Similar to categories and collections, each timeline node "contains" the files taken within the corresponding period. Please note that files are assigned to the day node, and all other nodes cumulate files from this node. A month contains all the files created on the days within this month.

You can dock the timeline also horizontally above or below the file window if this works better for you:

The Timeline View docked horizontally (running on Windows with a German locale)

Navigating

To expand / collapse timeline nodes with the mouse, click on the little arrows left of the name or double-click the node.

Cursor up	Go up
Cursor down	Go down
Home	Go to first node
End	Go to last node
Cursor right	Navigates to the first children of the current node. Expands the node if necessary. Hold down Ctrl to expand the node recursively.
Cursor left	Navigate to the parent node of the current node. Hold down Shift to also collapse the current node.
+	Expand the current node. Hold down Ctrl to expand the node recursively.
-	Collapse the current node. Hold down Ctrl to collapse the node recursively.
SPACE	Expand/collapse current node. Hold down Ctrl to toggle the node recursively.

Selecting

To select one node and to make it the current node, left-click on it.
To select multiple consecutive nodes, left-click the first node and then Shift+left-click the last node you want to include in the selection.
To select multiple non-consecutive nodes, Ctrl+left-click. You can also de-select nodes using Ctrl+left-click.

Expanding and Collapsing with the Mouse

To expand or collapse a node, left-click the small triangle on the left side of the node.
Hold down Shift and left-click on the triangle to toggle all nodes under the same parent (siblings).
Shift+Ctrl+left-click to toggle all nodes on the same level

Configuring the Timeline View

The Timeline View supports a range of options. To change these options, click on the Configure button in the Timeline toolbar.

The Timeline Configuration dialog

The Properties Tab

Timeline Nodes can have a custom icon and comment. You can select the icon and edit the comment for each node in the Properties tab.

Timeline Node property grid

The Filter Tab

This tab allows you to highlight (in a different color) all time line nodes matching a given search term. You can, for example, quickly highlight all Tuesdays or all nodes with comments containing a certain word. You can also filter out timeline nodes or hide nodes without any files.

The Filter Panel

Timeline View with a highlight filter on the word "Tuesday"

Thumbnail Tooltip

When you point the mouse cursor at a category, IMatch displays a tooltip with a preview of the timeline node contents. See Thumbnail Tooltips for more information.