Previews and Metadata

[louismccullagh]

Hi
When I adjust a RAW image in photoshop should  that change the image I see in the contact sheet or do I need to set an option in the preferences. If yes do I need to close the contact sheet to get the preview to change.

I am working my way through 10's of thousands of images and I am a bit unsure about metadata. I am a long time user but just ignored this aspect!  Are keywords info that goes into the metadata and is the best way to update theses by using the keywords panel.

How do I look at all the metadata of an image?

Many thanks from a longtoothed metadata 'newbie'.

[Odd Skjaeveland]

...should  that change the image I see in the contact sheet...

The simple answer is no, PM will not show the edited image. (I wish you had spelled out the type of RAW-image, all RAW-files are not created equal)

A typical image file contains more than one set of pixel data, and sets may even be different image formats.
RAW is ambiguous these days, some people tend to think a  DNG-file is always also a RAW-file.

A typical RAW-file contains multiple sets of "preview" images in addition to the raw image. PM displays preview images embedded in the raw file. PM can not display the raw image data. Well, PM could, but you would not see what you expected. Raw pixel data must be "developed" into a viewable image. PM does not do that, and there is no need as the camera already did and embedded the results in the RAW-file.

To make edits visible to PM, your image edit software would have to replace the embedded preview images. My old trusty Nikon Capture-NX2 actually did that, and Nikon was peppered with comments on slow software. Today's software take pride in never changing the RAW-file. It is the non-destructive-edit paradigm.  If the RAW-file never changes, you will always see the same previews in PM, right?

DNG-files make the exception. Some RAW-file processors allow you to update embedded previews in DNG-files.

If your RAW-files are not DNGs, your best option is to save a jpeg file that reflects your edits and put it along the RAW-file. Make sure the name of each jpeg file matches the name of the corresponding RAW-file, except for the file name extension. PM recognizes image file pairs of one RAW-file and one JPG-file and lets you decide if the contact sheet should display the RAW-files (embedded preview), the JPG-files (with your edits) or both.

I hope this helps.
   

[louismccullagh]

Thank you.
I used Canon for years but now Fuji.

[Stenis]

A RAW is a RAW but you can get changes made to DNG-, JPEG-, TIFF-files appear in PM too but in order to make that happen you have to rescan that folder containing these updated images with "Scan to catalog". It is a manual operation and nothing automatic. Other DAM-systems might make that happen automatically but PM Plus is not one of them yet.

[ahoward]

A RAW is a RAW but you can get changes made to DNG-, JPEG-, TIFF-files appear in PM too but in order to make that happen you have to rescan that folder containing these updated images with "Scan to catalog". It is a manual operation and nothing automatic. Other DAM-systems might make that happen automatically but PM Plus is not one of them yet.

This is not really correct. If you edit a JPEG or TIFF, or a DNG with your editing software set to update the embedded JPEG, Photo Mechanic will see this the next time the Contact Sheet is scanned. Re-scanning can be manually initiated (command+/ or ctrl+/), or an automatic operation that occurs every time you switch back to Photo Mechanic from another application.

However, the proxy stored in the catalog (for use when the source image is not available) does not get updated when the source image is updated, but that doesn't actually get updated when you do a Scan to Catalog of the folder either, so I'm not sure what Scan to Catalog would do here. Perhaps you mean Rescan from the View menu?

[Stenis]

That is not my earlier experience. My experience is that I have always ended up in a new Scan to Catalog in order to get an update to happen in the contact sheet.

In fact I posted a long time a request to you where I suggested you to implement a constant automatic monitoring of the indexed images in PM (the catalog-indexes), monitoring all changes made to these images.
This is the way bigger corporate DAM-systems work. Why not PM?
If it is because of speed issues I can assure that these other systems don´t suffer from speed either when searching, scrolling or when updataing.
I new image popped up after a couple of seconds at the next index refresh.

Has this problem discussed here with these settings below to do?
From what I can see now it is impossible for me to click the button to use the built in "Renderer" for what that means.

Can you explain this and my question about an auto update/refresh like other DAM-systems have?

[ahoward]

That is not my earlier experience. My experience is that I have always ended up in a new Scan to Catalog in order to get an update to happen in the contact sheet.

Then it sounds like it would be best if you got in touch with us directly to figure out why the functionality that I described is not working for you.

This is the way bigger corporate DAM-systems work. Why not PM?

Do those corporate DAMs own the files on a server or do they catalog files that are on your computer or on network shares that you access?

From what I can see now it is impossible for me to click the button to use the built in "Renderer" for what that means.

The feature is not available for anyone. The work was begun on the feature but there were issues with implementation and it was never completed.

[Stenis]

A RAW is a RAW but you can get changes made to DNG-, JPEG-, TIFF-files appear in PM too but in order to make that happen you have to rescan that folder containing these updated images with "Scan to catalog". It is a manual operation and nothing automatic. Other DAM-systems might make that happen automatically but PM Plus is not one of them yet.

This is not really correct. If you edit a JPEG or TIFF, or a DNG with your editing software set to update the embedded JPEG, Photo Mechanic will see this the next time the Contact Sheet is scanned. Re-scanning can be manually initiated (command+/ or ctrl+/), or an automatic operation that occurs every time you switch back to Photo Mechanic from another application.

However, the proxy stored in the catalog (for use when the source image is not available) does not get updated when the source image is updated, but that doesn't actually get updated when you do a Scan to Catalog of the folder either, so I'm not sure what Scan to Catalog would do here. Perhaps you mean Rescan from the View menu?

No I mean a "Scan to Catalog", that is the only thing that have worked with these old DNG-files before. Look at the image below.

The first image to the left is the original DNG converted from a NEXT 7 ARW-rawfile. It is too dark so I decided to reexport all of them and found that I could not get PM Plus to update them in the cache and Contact Sheet even with "Scan to Catalog" that use to work for this job.This was impossible even after having reexported them as DNG from version 7.02 of Photolab. Then I started to investigate because I didn´t consider that as normal. I then downloaded the latest DNG-converter and deleted the the virtuel folder in PM where these have been stored. I then "Scan to Catalog" and finally it worked.

The second image in these two sets are the newly exported DNG-files as they are intended to look after an update in Photolab.

The third images in these sets are the JPEG-files made from these new RAW-files.
As you can see, they are practically identical which is strang since the are no possibilities to export any particular ICC with these DNG in Photolab which is far from the control you can have with DNG in Lightroom.
The JPEG-files are 4K images exported with Display P3 ICC.

[Kirk Baker]

Stenis,

A RAW is a RAW but you can get changes made to DNG-, JPEG-, TIFF-files appear in PM too but in order to make that happen you have to rescan that folder containing these updated images with "Scan to catalog". It is a manual operation and nothing automatic. Other DAM-systems might make that happen automatically but PM Plus is not one of them yet.

This is not really correct. If you edit a JPEG or TIFF, or a DNG with your editing software set to update the embedded JPEG, Photo Mechanic will see this the next time the Contact Sheet is scanned. Re-scanning can be manually initiated (command+/ or ctrl+/), or an automatic operation that occurs every time you switch back to Photo Mechanic from another application.

However, the proxy stored in the catalog (for use when the source image is not available) does not get updated when the source image is updated, but that doesn't actually get updated when you do a Scan to Catalog of the folder either, so I'm not sure what Scan to Catalog would do here. Perhaps you mean Rescan from the View menu?

No I mean a "Scan to Catalog", that is the only thing that have worked with these old DNG-files before. Look at the image below.

The first image to the left is the original DNG converted from a NEXT 7 ARW-rawfile. It is too dark so I decided to reexport all of them and found that I could not get PM Plus to update them in the cache and Contact Sheet even with "Scan to Catalog" that use to work for this job.This was impossible even after having reexported them as DNG from version 7.02 of Photolab. Then I started to investigate because I didn´t consider that as normal. I then downloaded the latest DNG-converter and deleted the the virtuel folder in PM where these have been stored. I then "Scan to Catalog" and finally it worked.

The second image in these two sets are the newly exported DNG-files as they are intended to look after an update in Photolab.

Search tabs are not going to update to show images that are not in the catalog.  This is expected based on the way Photo Mechanic Plus works.  You can use Scan to Catalog or Catalog Sync to make the catalog pick up your newly created images.

These corporate-DAM systems that you described earlier, do they catalog images on your computer or do you have to upload them to the DAM system?

-Kirk

[Stenis]

This is the way bigger corporate DAM-systems work. Why not PM?

Do those corporate DAMs own the files on a server or do they catalog files that are on your computer or on network shares that you access?

These systems handle all sorts of files, not just images but in this particular DAM-system I have worked with (FotoWare) images were were just sent into an automation hub (FotoWare ColorFactory (which was by the way a strange name because it did all sorts of smart things between receiving those images and storing them after processing them). They need in fact just a topfolder to start a certain index and then the system will automatically store all the images people threw on it creating new folders for every tousand of files in order not to get too big and slow folders when filesystems had to handle them.

When new images got stored and indexed they got accessible in seconds and even updates were updated automatically as well as deletes.

This particular system could even use indexes on for example "picture agencies" oven the Internet if they were other Fotoware-systems with the same kind of indexes. That way a company could hook up to these "agencies".

It works the way PM works too but you always have to remember to manually update when a new folder is going to be used, new files are appended or updated in a RAW-converter or so. The only thing that works beautifully automatically today is metadata updates and it works even bidirectional even if that isn´t really a good practice. The only thing we ned to do is activating XMP-synchronization. I think it would be very nice to have an automatic indexing system. That booth could update/refresh the preview cache and keep the metadata in synch even if the metadata gets updated from third party applications, so the PM-indexsystem have to monitor what happens with the files in the filesystem.

I also strongly suggest that Camera Bits starts to look into supporting not just image files but also other types of files like Corporate DAM-systems have done for decades now. Nothing prevents you from tieing XMP-sidecars to any type of files like Office-documnets PDF-files e.t.c.  There is a lot already in place to handle that in PM. For example, PM already can handle many different "templates" for different types of data. It only lacks ways to tie the templates used to a certain kind of data. You also already can handle many catalogs in parallell. That way your product could attract a far broader spectrum of users and not the least that all photographers that have loads of other types of files to handle too.

[Stenis]

I´m very aware of the conditions working with the virtual folder three in PhotoMechanic. I have found that Scan to Catalog is the best option for me.
Mostly after an update of the very images in my converter I delete the virtual folder in PM and recreate it with Scan to Catalog. I´m not interested in getting orhan indications since I never work of line or with external disks.

Kirk, in the case of corporate FotoWare DAM-systems they have a standalone product called Photostation that are intended both to be use on a local computer. It does everything needed - you can build schemas, and forms based on these schemas and these forms are used to enter metadata. It is more flexible than yours and they use XMP and not IPTC in the forms as in PM.  It even have a build in automatically indexing Index Manager.

The systems can be used from single computers to big corporate systems, so it scales really well.
In the later case Fotostation is used like a systemdesigner for XMP-schema design and forms design and even for some automation processes.
It even has a lot of built in macros in order to make the dialog with the system more efficient.

Then an Index Manager, an automation hub and a web-server can be installed to a common server too or the system can be scaled by adding more dedicated servers for each one of these services or so to meet the needs to scale and to address bottle necks in performance.

So I look upon PhotoMechanic today like one scale up level compared to the built in image libraries in Lightroom, Capture One or DXO Photolab and PM have worked fantastically well together with DXO Photolab for years for me personally. Since it´s far more efficient with a dedicated metadata tool than general solutions. This is why XMP is such a nice vessel of data because it is the same XMP-standard that is used even in the corporate solutions.

It is possible today to have a migration path from DXO Photolab to PhotoMechanic and from PhotoMechanic to a corporate DAM and I know examples that you might not know where PhotoMechanic is used as client software for people on the field that later feeds even FotoWare DAM with their images and metadata for downstream processing in corporate DAMM-systems. The reason have been in some cases that PhotoMechanic has be seen as a more effective client software in the "field" for FotoWare DAM-systems than their own Fotostation.

[Kirk Baker]

Stenis,

Kirk, in the case of FotoWare they have a standalone product called Photostation that are intended both to be use on a local computer. It does everything needed - you can build schemas, and forms based on these schemas and these forms are used to enter metadata. It even have a build in automatically indexing Index Manager.

The systems can be used from single computers to big corporate systems, so it scales really well.
In the later case Fotostation is used like a systemdesigner for XMP-schema design and forms design.

Then an Index Manager, an automation hub and a web-server can be installed to a common server or the system can be scaled by adding more dedicated servers for each one of these services.

And their automatic cataloging works with any drive, including network shares when you're running a standalone application (not server-based) ?

-Kirk

[Stenis]

Yes it works both on lokal drives and network drives regardless it Fotostation is used stand alone or as a client. It is the same indexing software really in both cases.
The only difference is the search path to the Indexing-system.

They also have a possibility to create so called Union Indexes that consists of several indexes.
In PM you have solved the same problem with your check boxes that gives us the possibility to query cross indexes.
Even their system handles millions of images very fast and efficient despite their indexing system constantly polling for new and changed data.

Good Night, it is 3:55 PM in Sweden now and I have to sleep some hours:-)