Posted by John Gardner on January 2, 2007 at 3:32 AM
Happy New Year to all.
Could folks post their thoughts on image cataloging? I've got hold of a copy of Portfolio 8 which seems to be widely used in the industry and I'm thinking of using this for cataloging my images. I currently have everything sorted in to folders structured by category i.e.
Main Folder BIRDS: Sub folder: Herons & Egrets Sub folder: Grey heron (then this would be split into RAW, TIFF & JPEGS).
This is fine for me and allows me to always find an image but I'm looking to use keyword searching and have a much more comprehensive search system that I hope ultimately to link to my web site.
Before I get too far down the line and then decide I could have done it a better way, does anyone have any suggestions? I'd really like to hear from anyone using Portfolio 8.
Portfolio 8 is very comprehensive and does a great job, you can set it up to pick up keywords from the path to the file so that your folders will become keywords, this is the system we use here at the museum for our archive, all finshed work goes into a watched folder and all the relevant info is picked up along the way.... you can then set a a similar system to your folder strategy by using smart galleries to pick up subjects etc...
Be careful though if you use Portfolio to write cds etc for clients... make sure you uncheck the option for portfolio to reference the files in their new location....
If I can be of any help you can mail me at P.Hurst(at)nhm.ac.uk
All the best
Phil
Posted by John Gardner on January 2, 2007 at 3:46 AM
Hi Phil
Thanks for the quick response, I particularly had you in mind when I wrote this question I'm struggling with Portfolio - it's kinda like PSCS2; unless you know what you're doing, it's a bit daunting.
Tom..... When our IT department decided we had to properly archive our work onto tape instead of our old system onto cd/dvd we needed to get a system in to keep track of where all our images were stored, our portfolio database is now up to 79,000 images containing some 600 gigs of data.
We needed a database that would allow us to do this with as little intervention from us as possible and the only one that gave us the options we needed was portfolio, its system of watched folders, smart galleries etc means that users can complete a job drop it into the archive folder and portfolio will then catalogue the images and add keywords from the folder structure.....
A typical file path is as follows...
Phot 5 (the archive folder, when this reaches 80gig it is written to tape and a new folder created)
- Palaeontology (the department)
- 6000 John Smith (req no. and client)
- Bivalves (brief description of subject matter)
- P2100.tif (the actual file named with the specimen registration number)
Portfolio picks up all the information in the path and assigns it as keywords, meaning we have very little else to do. So to answer your question Tom, using the watched folder system yes.
We also have a set of 'smart galleries' for each department in the museum, when you open one these galleries a search is carried out and the relevant files are added to it, these and the watched folder function make the program very powerful although to make the best of them takes a little probing in the manual.....
Hope that helps a little, if you haven't guessed I have found Portfolio 8 to be the best of a very good bunch of programs, we did look at IView and IMatch, neither could do what we wanted, but of course may be more than suitable for your purposes..
All the best
Phil
Posted by John Gardner on January 2, 2007 at 9:43 AM
I've had a word offline with Phil and i've been playing with Portfolio over the last couple of days and i think it will take some beating. BUT having said that, Portfolio is to cataloging what CS2 is to image manipluation, so for some it's capabilities will be way too much for their needs and there will be other products that are less expensive and less comprehensive but will still satisfy the majority of needs. Portfolio is, as I understand it, the industry standard and many agencies and libraries use it, so in theory it could be beneficial if you submit to agencies as your images will arrive in the correct format and make it easy for the recipient to view the slides.
The power of the keywording, auto collection of EXIF data, meta data etc is phenominal and of course you can use Portfolio in reverse as it were - that is to say you can move files on your computer etc, rename files and a whole raft of other things. It keeps track of images on remote drives, burned to CD etc and you can view these offline images at anytime as PF8 generates it's on low res previews.
It's a powerful programme and I think it's the one for me and now that I've settled on it I think the key thing is to think about how I want the catalog to be structured and get it right from square one. I've now decided to just have one huge catalog and lump everything together using masses of keywords to able me to find things to the nth degree, though Phil and his NHM chums try and avoid keywording.
It's going to be an effort getting it up and running and getting all the keywording in, but once done it should make my life a whole lot easier.
Of course both of these programs are heavyweights when it come to image databases, both have strong points, Tom you have found one of Portfolios.... as I said it can also add the folders within the path as keywords, this was one of the points that veered us towards it, with multiple users all dropping images in it helps us to keep track with little or no user effort and the items we need as keywords are all there including the location.
The other major point was of course the watched folder function and the fact that there is an upgrade path to a server version which we are looking at at the moment.....
Oh and another great selling point Portfolio has proved itself to be very very robust.
It is important to remember that all the features of these programs may not be essential to all end users, prior to portfolio our db was managed by the shareware version of Thumbsplus...
To answer your other question Tom, the Keywording is constrained by the file system that we have imposed which means that we can search on those criteria, the picture Library uses standard industry keywording for its files.
Have you a link or some documentation you can share on this... or is it simply taxonomical?
The worst about this type of investiment is it doesn't give you the ability to charge more, just the ability to respond faster and potentially more accurately with the view to getting more £ per minute - or in my case some of my evening back and a few grey memory cells liberated
PS I cannot find if you can 'rate' the image in Portfolio - is it there?
I was playing with IView again tonight and it can take Keywords from the Directory structure - force you to have a restricted keyword vocab and, although probably more powerfull, suits me a tad better - simply because I can also script in it and it allows the star rating in Capture One and Lightroom to be transfered .... wait to you see the Darkside (MS), its new owners, mess it all up in ExpressionMedia
Posted by John Gardner on January 2, 2007 at 6:19 PM
interesting thread. Had a quick look at the Iview/Portfolio review but I'll stick with portfolio now as there seems to be little between them as far as a muppet like me is concerned. not sure what you mean by a restricted keyword vocab - I'm just giving it big licks when it comes to keywords and banging in as many as I can think of that are relevant to the image. I'm no good with script, not got a logical brain and too old to learn that kind of stuff so this is not an advantage for me.
John
Posted by Elliott Neep on January 4, 2007 at 9:04 AM
Very interesting thread!
For what its worth, I've been trialling iView and Portfolio to replace my iMatch system. I imported several thousand images into three catalogs. First I tried Portfolio and, although obviously very powerful, it didn't appear to be particularly intuitive. I found many of the wordy dialogues confusing. However I really liked the watch folder, sync folder systems, keyword from filename/path. The web publishing and remote browsers are excellent features, but more than I require.
When I first started iView, I found the operation much easier and far more intuitive and practical. It appears to be far more streamlined than Portfolio and quicker to import/sort/preview images. Okay its not as customisable with regards to appearance but for what I need (single user) it appears to do everything I need and quickly. A particularly nice feature is the Vocabulary Editor and Annotations associations. Fancy words for adding synonyms and atonyms to keywords. Adding one word from the vocab automatically adds similar words according to your design. Nice. iView also has a handy Alamy plugin to streamline submissions - useful if you're a member
Discussion
12 repliesCould folks post their thoughts on image cataloging? I've got hold of a copy of Portfolio 8 which seems to be widely used in the industry and I'm thinking of using this for cataloging my images. I currently have everything sorted in to folders structured by category i.e.
Main Folder BIRDS: Sub folder: Herons & Egrets Sub folder: Grey heron (then this would be split into RAW, TIFF & JPEGS).
This is fine for me and allows me to always find an image but I'm looking to use keyword searching and have a much more comprehensive search system that I hope ultimately to link to my web site.
Before I get too far down the line and then decide I could have done it a better way, does anyone have any suggestions? I'd really like to hear from anyone using Portfolio 8.
TIA
John
Portfolio 8 is very comprehensive and does a great job, you can set it up to pick up keywords from the path to the file so that your folders will become keywords, this is the system we use here at the museum for our archive, all finshed work goes into a watched folder and all the relevant info is picked up along the way.... you can then set a a similar system to your folder strategy by using smart galleries to pick up subjects etc...
Be careful though if you use Portfolio to write cds etc for clients... make sure you uncheck the option for portfolio to reference the files in their new location....
If I can be of any help you can mail me at P.Hurst(at)nhm.ac.uk
All the best
Phil
Thanks for the quick response, I particularly had you in mind when I wrote this question
Standby for (lot's of) mail
John
This is something am am really interested in at present.
I had downloaded IView and was probably going to use that.
Can I ask what additional benefits Portfolio 8 has over iView?
I don't wnat to start down one road and then have to switch
Phil, will Portfolio 8 imbed all the metadata in the keywords file if I simply drop the image into a folder in a directory tree.
Does the NHM use any form of constrained vocab when keywording?
Also take a look at IMatch
cheers
Sean
Tom..... When our IT department decided we had to properly archive our work onto tape instead of our old system onto cd/dvd we needed to get a system in to keep track of where all our images were stored, our portfolio database is now up to 79,000 images containing some 600 gigs of data.
We needed a database that would allow us to do this with as little intervention from us as possible and the only one that gave us the options we needed was portfolio, its system of watched folders, smart galleries etc means that users can complete a job drop it into the archive folder and portfolio will then catalogue the images and add keywords from the folder structure.....
A typical file path is as follows...
Phot 5 (the archive folder, when this reaches 80gig it is written to tape and a new folder created)
- Palaeontology (the department)
- 6000 John Smith (req no. and client)
- Bivalves (brief description of subject matter)
- P2100.tif (the actual file named with the specimen registration number)
Portfolio picks up all the information in the path and assigns it as keywords, meaning we have very little else to do. So to answer your question Tom, using the watched folder system yes.
We also have a set of 'smart galleries' for each department in the museum, when you open one these galleries a search is carried out and the relevant files are added to it, these and the watched folder function make the program very powerful although to make the best of them takes a little probing in the manual.....
Hope that helps a little, if you haven't guessed I have found Portfolio 8 to be the best of a very good bunch of programs, we did look at IView and IMatch, neither could do what we wanted, but of course may be more than suitable for your purposes..
All the best
Phil
The power of the keywording, auto collection of EXIF data, meta data etc is phenominal and of course you can use Portfolio in reverse as it were - that is to say you can move files on your computer etc, rename files and a whole raft of other things. It keeps track of images on remote drives, burned to CD etc and you can view these offline images at anytime as PF8 generates it's on low res previews.
It's a powerful programme and I think it's the one for me and now that I've settled on it I think the key thing is to think about how I want the catalog to be structured and get it right from square one. I've now decided to just have one huge catalog and lump everything together using masses of keywords to able me to find things to the nth degree, though Phil and his NHM chums try and avoid keywording.
It's going to be an effort getting it up and running and getting all the keywording in, but once done it should make my life a whole lot easier.
John
This is what got me started with IView... may be worth the read before you part with the cash.
IView V Portfolio
That read you are correct they have all the bells and whistles in the world...most not needed.
The trick apears to be in generating a keyword constrained vocab so you know what to type in the search box to get the images you are looking for.
Am playing with Portfolio now, I like the way it adds the file names to the keywords - with a taxonomy that could save a lot of effort.
Of course both of these programs are heavyweights when it come to image databases, both have strong points, Tom you have found one of Portfolios.... as I said it can also add the folders within the path as keywords, this was one of the points that veered us towards it, with multiple users all dropping images in it helps us to keep track with little or no user effort and the items we need as keywords are all there including the location.
The other major point was of course the watched folder function and the fact that there is an upgrade path to a server version which we are looking at at the moment.....
Oh and another great selling point Portfolio has proved itself to be very very robust.
It is important to remember that all the features of these programs may not be essential to all end users, prior to portfolio our db was managed by the shareware version of Thumbsplus...
To answer your other question Tom, the Keywording is constrained by the file system that we have imposed which means that we can search on those criteria, the picture Library uses standard industry keywording for its files.
All the best
Phil
Have you a link or some documentation you can share on this... or is it simply taxonomical?
The worst about this type of investiment is it doesn't give you the ability to charge more, just the ability to respond faster and potentially more accurately with the view to getting more £ per minute - or in my case some of my evening back and a few grey memory cells liberated
PS I cannot find if you can 'rate' the image in Portfolio - is it there?
I was playing with IView again tonight and it can take Keywords from the Directory structure - force you to have a restricted keyword vocab and, although probably more powerfull, suits me a tad better - simply because I can also script in it and it allows the star rating in Capture One and Lightroom to be transfered .... wait to you see the Darkside (MS), its new owners, mess it all up in ExpressionMedia
John
For what its worth, I've been trialling iView and Portfolio to replace my iMatch system. I imported several thousand images into three catalogs. First I tried Portfolio and, although obviously very powerful, it didn't appear to be particularly intuitive. I found many of the wordy dialogues confusing. However I really liked the watch folder, sync folder systems, keyword from filename/path. The web publishing and remote browsers are excellent features, but more than I require.
When I first started iView, I found the operation much easier and far more intuitive and practical. It appears to be far more streamlined than Portfolio and quicker to import/sort/preview images. Okay its not as customisable with regards to appearance but for what I need (single user) it appears to do everything I need and quickly. A particularly nice feature is the Vocabulary Editor and Annotations associations. Fancy words for adding synonyms and atonyms to keywords. Adding one word from the vocab automatically adds similar words according to your design. Nice. iView also has a handy Alamy plugin to streamline submissions - useful if you're a member