ste mc © wrote:
>> I've played around with Photoshop album
> I wouldn't say family orientated as such,
So why the photo of kids playing in the sand and all the cartoon like icons?
> but Adobe does describe it as consumer software, rather than professional software. But snobbery
> aside, I think it's excellent.
It does seem highly usable, but the distinction between consumer and professional is not snobbery.
There are certain features that professionals need and if a program doesn't offer those options then
it's of no use to them.
>> No display of the original folder structure
>
> Right click an image, and it tells you the folder location. You can even click the folder icon to
> open that folder. Easy!
Ugh! It opens the actual folder window! That's no good to me, I never use "windows" as such. I
browse all my images using ACDSee and do all my file operations in Total Commander. IMatch
allows you to browse your images by the original folders or by categories and by various types
of search results.
>> categories but no keywords
>
> I'm sure you can add keywords (they might be called 'captions?'), though I've not done this yet
> (so don't quote me on it), as I'm happy just using the categories (tags) for now.
No, captions are captions, keywords are keywords. Different things entirely. I believe captions are
stored in IPTC data fields, which album also doesn't support.
To quote IMatch;
"This section describes the support for IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) and
NAA (Newspaper Association of America) image information. The IPTC/NAA standard is a metadata model
for associating additional information with all types of digital media. The IPTC standard has been
widely adopted by the Digital Image Industry and within the Publishing and Printing Business."
>> no exif data display.
>
> Can't say I'd ever been bothered by this, professional, amateur, or whatever. Why is this a good
> feature, and why do *you* use it? I don't see how or when *I'd* ever need to find images that had
> a 1/250 sec shutter speed,or f8.0 aperture, or whatever. Am I missing something? Or is it just
> because you *can* do it *if* you need to.
I regularly look at exif data to distinguish different photos. As I've said, I often photograph the
same scene in different ways, using the same composition I may try different combinations of shutter
speed, aperture and film speed. Just looking at the thumbnails I can't tell them apart, so a quick
look at the exif data is necessary. For example one shot might be very grainy due to a faster film
speed, but I can't tell that from the thumbnail.
The time of day the photo was taken is also important to me, because of the angle of the light and
it can sometimes be very useful to check the settings used to take a good photograph in order to
repeat the effect. Often bad photographs are more instructive than good ones. If there's something
wrong with an image (blurred, partly out of focus, etc.) checking the settings used will tell me why
so that I can avoid making the same mistake next time.
IMatch says;
"Image files created with digital cameras store metadata along with the raw image data. This
metadata may be a valuable information resource for your image database."
>> Clearly not a program aimed at pros.
>
> It's not as such (from what Adobe say), but I think it's excellent,
I think it's very good too.
> and most importantly, it does the job.
For most people yes, for professionals no.
> Although they might be marketing it as an amateur/family product, I wouldn't read too much
> into this.
I would. It's not suitable for professionals.
> Do Adobe have a more professional photo cataloguing software? If so, I don't know about it.
Now that you mention it, why don't they? Perhaps they'll design one in the future, or perhaps they
won't bother since there are other good apps available.
>> However, the sorting that I'm talking about now is a different collection of images, those which
>> have been processed and reduced in size. I don't intend to index them in a database, I just want
>> to sort them in a manner convenient for personal viewing.
>
> Now you tell us!!!
I did mention this in my original post, but perhaps I didn't stress it strongly enough. No one else
seemed to notice either. I wrote;
"Obviously in a database I can use keywords and categories to put the same photo in multiple
locations, but I'm trying to decide where to physically store the files.
Not only that, but I'm redesigning my website with an area-based structure, so I also have to decide
in which area to put each photo on my site."
> Now I know you don't think Adobe Photoshop Album 2 is up to the task for you, but as well as
> having all the usual Tags which show the categories, there's also a 'Collection' tab along the
> top. I use the collections tab so I can sort out which photos are used for Photosig, Usefilm, etc.
> I could even have a collection called 'website' or 'alamy' 'calendar' or whatever.
Well I've looked hard for it but I can't find a collection tab or any mention of it anywhere.
But since you mentioned Alamy, don't you think it's important to include proper captioning,
copyright and keyword information with your photos, in the official IPTC and EXIF data formats?
Paul
--
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http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk
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