I have been on the fence to purchase a separate DAM package for like 2 years and iMatch 2020 seems to be it. I know many PhotoLab users already work with it for a while. New features are mighty impressive and I am amazed how well they focus on “average consumer” user experience design for such a highly complex product (which DAM is period).
Major Enhancements in IMatch 2020:
Face Recognition - On your PC. No Cloud. No Privacy Issues
IMatch Events - Organize Files Using Events
AutoTagger - Automatically Add Keywords using AI Services
TimeWiz - Modify File Dates and Times Easily
Over 50 New Features, Apps and Enhancements
Improved Performance, Stability and Security
Downloading the trial now and will report back my findings.
This is also why I believe DxO should stay away from trying to be comprehensive DAM and focus on integration with these type of packages trough top notch interoperability. It is just too complex.
For the sake of balance: Photo Supreme V5 is a great alternative for Mac and Windows users. I have worked with it and generally liked it but I also had some issues with stability and it isn’t as feature rich as IMatch.
Does iMatch 2020 recognize DxO sidecar files? One of the things I like about Photo Supreme is that it will associate .dop files with the image file and use some of the adjustments in the sidecar (rotation, cropping, etc.) when generating a thumbnail. It also deletes the sidecar if you delete the image.
In short, as Floris said, for each file format, you can manually define buddy files, so yes, deleting the raw file will also get ridd of any associated sidecar files.
Regarding the previews, those are generated by the WIC codecs installed on your system, and if unavailable it falls back to LibRaw for raw decoding - but in both cases, the previews don’t take into account any adjustments made in PhotoLab (or Lightroom, for that matter, from what I have observed).
From the IMatch help site (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#rmh_config_appsettings.htm):
This is an alternative for processing RAW files using WIC Codecs which is used by IMatch as a fall-back when the WIC codecs installed on your system fail to process a RAW file. IMatch uses the awesome LibRaw software for this purpose. It supports hundreds of cameras and RAW variants.
As long as your raw files’ format is supported by either on of these options, you’re good. If it isn’t, you’ll only see the (very) low resolution jpeg thumbnails embedded in the raw files, as was the case for my CR3 raws until the release of IMatch 2020 (which included an update to the latest LibRaw release, now supporting CR3 files).
Thanks for including that. It is far more feature rich than iMatch for Mac users.
It does look fairly comprehensive but boy, I am not keen on spending another $129 just to manage my photos, especially if it has stability issues. I know this has been discussed elsewhere, but I wish PL3’s nascent DAM could be enhanced to address its basic shortcomings (like not locking metadata in the database).
It generally is stable. However, some operations often crashed the app (large metadata write backs) and especially the Google Vision integration was wonky for me (not a critical element but still, if you do it on a large set of images the app will crash both on Mac and Windows. IMatch has similar integration and so far I haven’t had a single crash and also way less spinning beachballs during large operations. I don’t like it when apps make the whole system unresponsive when they are doing operations, they should have load balancing so there is still some responsiveness at any point.
But I wholeheartedly recommend both IMatch and Photo Supreme. Best DAMs in town… and on the Mac Photo Supreme is your only good option.
I agree that they are not cheap but on the other hand you buy a perpetual license and I think you can easily use them for 2-3 years without a real need to upgrade. They are so much more efficient in handling and managing your photos that you quickly earn the money back with time saved. But it also depends on what workflow you want… if you want to edit in DXO, Photoshop or Affinity Photo I really recommend getting separate DAM software, with Lightroom and Capture One you need to see for yourself if you need all the extra bells and whistles. I can’t stand the Capture One DAM part for example.
Used IMatch for a year, but did not like it. Especially the metadata writeback times were awful. I also did not like the dependency on ExifTool, WIC and LibRaw. It also has frozen multiple times during writeback.
Returned to Lightroom for that task again, because I like simpler DAMs , that just work out of the box and use Adobe’s XMP way of storing hierarchical keywords (which is also true for IMatch). Lightroom never crashed here and saves metadata much faster.
Long term user of IMatch here. It’s an extremely powerful DAM and is designed to keep your metadata non-proprietary. Too many capabilities to list here including new additions with IMatch 2020, so see https://www.photools.com/ for more details. “With great power comes great responsibility.” So there’s some complexity along with the power. Depending on your needs, IMatch may be an excellent fit, but some users may prefer a simpler metadata management solution.
I think imatch is a great and feature rich DAM for those on windows.
But for us on macOS the Photo Supreme is outstanding and even if I have both the single user and server version of Photo Supreme, I tend to use the server version the most.
Single user version is mostly used while I’m traveling.
Both IMatch and Photo Supreme have a server edition.
The main differentiator is Mac vs Win (vs Multi-platform). Photo Supreme is the clear winner her. However, if you’re on Windows… I think IMatch is the most capable (and therefore also complex) solution. It has more features and is also more stable (based on my experience) testing out the latest version of each application.
But you can’t go wrong with either really and both are miles ahead of any editor integrated DAM solution.
I’m another long-time IMatch user. 2020 has some big updates that make it all the more powerful. It can be complex to get set up, but that comes from the flexibility it affords you in setting up your database. It’s been rock-solid stable for me for over a decade.
I do have my database set up with DxO .dop files as buddy files that are automatically associated with my raw files. Once I set it up years ago when using Optics Pro it’s been running fine. I haven’t thought about that in years–it’s just worked.
Large operations can take some time. Either I set it & go do something else, or throw smaller batches of operations at it. The program does try to run as much as it can in the background while allowing you to keep on with other tasks.
Thanks a lot for this discussion. I am using DXO as well and belive me …picasa for managing my files .
I know this is alittle bit stupid, but i like the face recognition…But as always…try new things. Right now the trial of imatch scans my terrybytes of files and im really exited about the result in regards of tagging/importing the faces. But after 24h only 20% are scanned …as i said…terrabytes Okay…my question: Is there are somewhere a nice workflow description of DXO with imatch ? I am searching for it.
And any good hints for a newby what to do with this Hugh amount of photos ( perhaps the best to delete the bad ones )
Regrads
Michael
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 15 Pro | iMac M1 | PL, FP, VP)
14
In the IMatch community there are topics about IMatch and DxO workflows. A recent discussion can be found here.
As for the (lack of) speed of image ingestion in IMatch: as a general rule have your database on the fastest disk on your PC, an SSD can do miracles.
Also, having image files on a NAS may slow down things as metadata may have to be written to the images and a NAS may not be the fastest solution.
In the IMatch community you will find numerous topics where these issues are discussed.
THX a lot !! The thread is really helpful. And before i search for myself …any ideas how big the database files be in general ( i know it depends) .Is there a limit ? Kind regards…Michael
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 15 Pro | iMac M1 | PL, FP, VP)
16
In your previous post you mentioned terabytes.
I presume that is the storage space used by your files.
IMatch does not care about that figure, basically it uses / extracts small thumbnails to represent the files, it extracts metadata and manages it all using a database.
It all depends on the number of files you want to manage, not on the storage space the files use up.
Frankly I don’t know what the upper limit will be, we have seen users managing several hundred thousands of files. As it is said sometimes: that is the order of magnitude a stock agency will run into, and that usually requires enterprise-level solutions with dedicated servers and corresponding price-tags.
I would suggest you start with a reasonable selection of files (several thousands maybe) and get a feeling for what the DAM can do for you. After that slowly increase the number of files you manage with the DAM until it becomes sluggish.
When you hit that point you may have to decide to change your workflow or your system.
Hi dear all. It is interesting. For me the combination of DxO and IMatch is ideal, and a great alternative, from a photographer side much more convenient than the combination Photoshop and Lightroom.
I prefer the simple (…) workflow, get raw files from the camera (NEF Nikon D780, ARW Sony RX10III and NRW my good old P7000. Plus JPEG or TIFF from PTGui for panorama’s). The simplicity is that DxO knows simplicity too, and leaves the basic file and adds Dop-file as a buddy file.
I use DxO for selecting and throwing away in my import directory, plus a first editing.
II used IMatch till 2016, then a period of making a mess, and am now in the process of getting to appreciate the huge improvements in IMatch, incl. getting all my travel and work photo’s from all around the world maps. Amazing: IMatch: give me all my photo’s with Leopards, and then get a map with Leopard sightings).
My problem: how do I get the buddy issue between DxO and IMatch sorted: I have read the issues in the Help files. But, I think it might toi difficult for me…
My question: who wants to help me to set it up in IMatch 2020?
My wishes: let DxO and Imatch work together to make a ‘zipper’ between the programs… Would be great,
Ruud Kampf
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 15 Pro | iMac M1 | PL, FP, VP)
19
What exactly is your problem here?
Is it the version definition in IMatch?
Something else?
You have to be more specific.
There are some IMatch users around here, so it should not be too difficult to get you going.
Does this answer on the IMatch forum not help you?
I gave you a buddy file relation rule for the DxO sidecar (.dop). You only have to edit the file extensions you have in your Library.
It works on my side as expected.
