PM changes file sizes

[Eldor]

I'm a new user of Photo Mechanic (4.6.2.1 on a WinXP system) and I'm frustrated that PM changes the file size of my images.

I have a directory of over 6,000 images, just about all JPEGs, and I regularly synchronize the images across a couple of computers.  When/if the filesize changes, my sync software thinks these are new images and it slows down the sync process quite a bit.

What do I have to do in order to make sure PM does NOT modify my file sizes?

(I am not editing or adding to my IPTC data, and under Preferences|Files, I have "Add tag, color class and rating to IPTC/XMP" set to "Never".  Yet my file sizes increase after having used PM.  I need to synchronize files between my notebook and desktop computers and when file sizes change it causes me extra problems and takes longer to sync.  I really do not want my files touched.  What do I have to do to ensure my file sizes don't change and my images are not touched?  I DO want to occasionally tag an image and/or maybe change the color tag.)

I sent an email to support Friday morning at 8:30am EST, but so far have not had any reply.  And until I know how to solve this, I'm forced to use BreezeBrowser Pro instead.

Thanks for any help...

[Kirk Baker]

I'm a new user of Photo Mechanic (4.6.2.1 on a WinXP system) and I'm frustrated that PM changes the file size of my images.

I have a directory of over 6,000 images, just about all JPEGs, and I regularly synchronize the images across a couple of computers.  When/if the filesize changes, my sync software thinks these are new images and it slows down the sync process quite a bit.

What do I have to do in order to make sure PM does NOT modify my file sizes?

(I am not editing or adding to my IPTC data, and under Preferences|Files, I have "Add tag, color class and rating to IPTC/XMP" set to "Never".  Yet my file sizes increase after having used PM.  I need to synchronize files between my notebook and desktop computers and when file sizes change it causes me extra problems and takes longer to sync.  I really do not want my files touched.  What do I have to do to ensure my file sizes don't change and my images are not touched?  I DO want to occasionally tag an image and/or maybe change the color tag.)

I sent an email to support Friday morning at 8:30am EST, but so far have not had any reply.  And until I know how to solve this, I'm forced to use BreezeBrowser Pro instead.

The tag, color class, and other data that you're changing has to be saved somewhere.  Otherwise it wouldn't be persistent.  When you instruct PM not to write it to IPTC/XMP then those changes (that you're explicitly making with PM) are written to the end of the JPEG file.  If the data weren't to be saved in the file itself then when you moved the file or uploaded the file to a server then the file would lose that data.

It's just not possible to have PM (in the case of JPEGs, TIFFs, PSDs, and DNG files) save edits (tag, color class, rating, crop, and IPTC captions) without modifying the file.

There is no way to 'solve' this issue.  If PM were to not modify the JPEG then your changes would have to be either shadowed in a different file that would have to be created and modified, or those changes would have to be kept in a database.  Either way, if you were to transfer only the JPEG image somewhere else, your edits would be lost.

-Kirk

[Eldor]

Thank you Kirk, for the prompt reply.

So that's how it works.  I'm coming from years with BreezeBrowser Pro and while it lacks the ability to color tag an image, when you do tag it, it simply adds the filename to a text file called "tagged_files.txt" WITHOUT changing anything in the file itself.

Different philosophy I guess, but if I have an image tagged in one directory, if I copy/move it to another directory, I usually do NOT want it tagged there, so I really like the way BBPro handles this issue.  And I would never have considered tagging an image to be an "edit" of the image.

The other issue, at least for me, is that I often upload images to sites with very strict file size limits.  When I produce a JPG file for those sites, I strip all the exif and iptc data (when I create the file) keeping only my copyright info and make the file the highest quality possible within the given size limit.  To have space added to a file simply because I've tagged it with PM inflates the size when I'd rather not do that.

With this in mind, is there an easy way (or any way) to revert the file back to the original size stripping out whatever PM might have added to it?

Thank you.

[Kirk Baker]

So that's how it works.  I'm coming from years with BreezeBrowser Pro and while it lacks the ability to color tag an image, when you do tag it, it simply adds the filename to a text file called "tagged_files.txt" WITHOUT changing anything in the file itself.

Different philosophy I guess, but if I have an image tagged in one directory, if I copy/move it to another directory, I usually do NOT want it tagged there, so I really like the way BBPro handles this issue.  And I would never have considered tagging an image to be an "edit" of the image.

The image data (the pixel elements) are not modified in any way.  Even if you rotate the image, the pixels are not modified.  We call these types of edits 'soft edits' since they do not modify image data.  Many people would be discouraged by the loss of their tags, ratings and color labels.

The other issue, at least for me, is that I often upload images to sites with very strict file size limits.  When I produce a JPG file for those sites, I strip all the exif and iptc data (when I create the file) keeping only my copyright info and make the file the highest quality possible within the given size limit.  To have space added to a file simply because I've tagged it with PM inflates the size when I'd rather not do that.

With this in mind, is there an easy way (or any way) to revert the file back to the original size stripping out whatever PM might have added to it?

Yes.  You can use the 'Delete Metadata' command on the Tools menu to strip off Photo Mechanic's image preferences data, among other data like EXIF.

-Kirk