Indeed you did mention iMatch Neil - I'd just overlooked that as I started writing that last post.
I'll leave the speed assessment to you - it's not such an issue, as I can let the machine do that db maintenance overnight easily enough.
I've got Portfolio seeing my cr2 fils now - just seems to be a question of installing the patch at the right point.
I should say something about the way i work and organise things at present. Everything is downloaded into year_month_day labelled folders within an images directory. The primary workflow is done in RawShooter|Premium (with rotate, crop and curves I hardly need any further editing tools now - just for re-sizing, where I'm using Photozoom Pro). So I have a basic chronological structure there, and processing. All I'm looking to do is keep a record of the collections with a database: so I need to know about sales, publication, prices, and also general categorisation of stuff outside of that - for instance, in one day this October I shot stuff that might go for stock, some stuff that was commissioned, and some stuff that might go into what I laughingly call my 'art' collection - oh, and a couple of dpc entries too. And also some personal stuff - both for and not for public consumption. I've also shot a friend's wedding this year, and of course stuff from the tours I've been on - again, some of which might get used 'professionally', and some of which is absolutely private.
So my concern is rather more with keeping track of a range of varieties of activity than with a simple keyword-oriented catalogue of my stuff.
I like iMatch's approach using Categories a lot - so everything seems to be able to have a hierarchical structure more easily. So stuff that might go into various collections - be it commissioned, printed, stock, project-oriented and what have you, can be organised simultaneously. I haven't spent long enough with Portfolio to try building that in yet, but I guess it must be possible. My choice is certainly coming down to a straight race between those two.
Onward! |
