reading tags or ratings from breezebrowser

[md789]

I am thinking of moving to photo mechanic from breezebrowser since a few items in that other product no longer work (e.g. relating to inputting gps data).  However I have hundreds of thousands of images tagged and or rated using breezebrowser and it would be a huge effort to reproduce this manually in photo mechanic, is there any way to copy over the ratings and tagging (the ratings are most important).

[Kirk Baker]

I am thinking of moving to photo mechanic from breezebrowser since a few items in that other product no longer work (e.g. relating to inputting gps data).  However I have hundreds of thousands of images tagged and or rated using breezebrowser and it would be a huge effort to reproduce this manually in photo mechanic, is there any way to copy over the ratings and tagging (the ratings are most important).

If the ratings are stored in the Adobe-way in XMP, then they'll just work.  I have no idea how breezebrowser managed its tags so I can't say if we'll be compatible with your existing metadata.

Are you able to export a text file with filenames and the tag value, in tab-separated format?  If so then Photo Mechanic's Code Replacement features can be utilized to set/clear the tag checkbox in PM.

-Kirk

[md789]

The metadata is in .xmp file one per image (and is read ok by photomechanic), the tags and ratings are in .txt file one per directory which has the rating number or list of tagged files

[Kirk Baker]

The metadata is in .xmp file one per image (and is read ok by photomechanic), the tags and ratings are in .txt file one per directory which has the rating number or list of tagged files

That's really odd.  I wonder why Chris Breeze didn't just put that info in the XMP as well?  Can you post a sample text file?  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your file.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[md789]

Here are examples of the .txt files with the ranking and tagging information, there is also a .dat file that gives the order the images are shown in this can be important when generating web pages.

[Kirk Baker]

Here are examples of the .txt files with the ranking and tagging information, there is also a .dat file that gives the order the images are shown in this can be important when generating web pages.

The ranked files could be processed in PM to cause the images to become rated, but the tagged files data is just a list of filenames, and without massaging that data a little bit, there isn't a way to get the images to become tagged in PM.  You'd at least need to add a tab and a value of one (1) after each filename.  Then that could be turned into a tag via the Metadata (IPTC) Template.

If you want to do that, let me know and I'll give you a set of steps to follow to do the conversion.

-Kirk

[foto-K]

Hi md789 (and Kirk),

many years ago I was interested in BreezeBrowser but didn't buy it.

Go to their website,
then "Downloads & Support",
under the support page of "Browser Pro" you can find the manual as PDF,
read there on page 115 the chapter " Compatibility with Adobe Ratings ".


Maybe this will help you.

foto-K

[md789]

Thanks that seems to have worked, suspect it will take a while to be sure but it now seems to be showing the same rating in both bb and photomechanic.  I tried it on a large directory of about 13,000 files and only checked if a tiny fraction of them had worked. It is the ratings that are most important to transfer over.

It was interesting comparing how quickly bbpro and photomechanic displayed this large directory, photomechanic was faster BUT then had to read the metadata after, whereas bbpro read the data as it displayed the images so the overall time to have the images displayed with metadata was similar. The reason I am thinking of switching mainly to photomechanic is not the speed but that bbpro is starting to loose functions e.g. ability to get gps from google earth which I used to use quite a lot and that photomechanic seems to have started to develop further with the catalogue system.