Author Topic: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer? (Read 228278 times)

Dormouse · « **Reply #175 on:** April 01, 2010, 03:03 PM »

And that is when I discovered that there is nowhere in the program that shows me the size in pixels; the size that I can easily see in any other image organizer or editor in the world, and even in Explorer. I have asked about it at the forum, I have read and searched their Help file, and I have read all Parts of Mike Buckley's ebook on IDimager 5.

Do you happen to know where/how I can see that info within IDimager?
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

On the View menu, put it into 'View Details' mode. That gives a number of columns with simple info including Image Dimensions.

Dormouse · « **Reply #176 on:** April 01, 2010, 03:12 PM »

For the record I have about 60% of my images labeled now but it's such a complex process to do what should be a very simple task.
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

It is very simple. All you need to do is to Select All files in a folder and then drag them to the appropriate Catalog label in the Catalog Explorer. Or, if you have the Media Browser open too, you can simply drag the folder you want to the label and it will label all the images in it. Or if you happen to be looking at the images somewhere else, eg in Explorer, you can just select them and drag them to the label. There's lots of ways of doing it and they tend to be pretty fast (as you would expect); just tested it - took approx 5 seconds to labe 750 photos in one folder.

Dormouse · « **Reply #177 on:** April 01, 2010, 03:18 PM »

Why didn't anyone in the forum there say so? IMO the forum for IDimager is not very helpful. The developer doesn’t respond there and other users, well, you see what answers/suggestions I received there.
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

I have no idea about this; I was really surprised to read the responses to your questions. I'm no virtuoso with IDI, and I'd've expected some of those who are to have answered these immediately. I can only assume that because they do things a different way, they didn't know it could be done in the way you wanted. Or maybe, I've just misunderstood your questions, or what IDI does, and have myself got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

Very surprised not to see more responses from Hert (the developer) - he always used to respond in most threads. Just checked: he has contributed over 22% of all the posts on the forum, but his last post was on 22nd March - before most of your problems. I assume he is away.

Maybe the forums have changed; they used to be very helpful. I'll start visiting again, and also going back a bit to see how different they seem to me.

Dormouse · « **Reply #178 on:** April 01, 2010, 03:23 PM »

Unfortunately they have made it complex needlessly in many areas it seems. Category labels and keywords should not be that difficult to assign! And "synchronizing with XMP" is just crazy! Took the program three full days and nights to "sync" my ~20,000 images - and I don’t use the XMP format!
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

I'm not sure about needlessly complex - there are always people that want and are using the extra complexity or ways of doing things that the program allows. It is slow to get stuff in, but I've found that to be the case with most of these complex image programs (simple ones tend to be very fast) - but once it is in, it has always been pretty easy and fast to keep up-to-date. Once you know what you are doing and how to make it work the way you want. And that is a burdensome learning curve.

Dormouse · « **Reply #179 on:** April 01, 2010, 03:25 PM »

I guess that you can see I can't really discuss this program right now without getting frustrated all over again! Not worth the aggravation!
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

I really feel your pain. And feel guilty, since I feel I tipped you in the IDI direction at the beginning.

zevel · « **Reply #180 on:** April 01, 2010, 10:04 PM »

I really feel your pain. And feel guilty, since I feel I tipped you in the IDI direction at the beginning.
-Dormouse (April 01, 2010, 03:25 PM)

To be fair, you also mentioned IMatch.
Speaking of which, how does IDImager compare with IMatch (and others) in the context of cataloging and searching very large image collections?

J-Mac · « **Reply #181 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:51 AM »

And that is when I discovered that there is nowhere in the program that shows me the size in pixels; the size that I can easily see in any other image organizer or editor in the world, and even in Explorer. I have asked about it at the forum, I have read and searched their Help file, and I have read all Parts of Mike Buckley's ebook on IDimager 5.

Do you happen to know where/how I can see that info within IDimager?
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

On the View menu, put it into 'View Details' mode. That gives a number of columns with simple info including Image Dimensions.

-Dormouse (April 01, 2010, 03:03 PM)

Now see, I am not seeing that here... On my system that just opens a "Details" pane at the bottom right of the window and that doesn’t show much actual detail at all. And it definitely does not show the image size anywhere.

One other thing I should check: Maybe the columns are too narrow to see or some other problem like that. I have already come across a few similar weird issues in IDimager Pro so far. E.g., double-clicking a thumbnail, as in most image/photo apps, opens a window with a larger view of that image. This worked the first few times I used it but then all of a sudden I was getting what appeared to be a blank window - no image at all showing in it. After I stopped muttering all kinds of unkind words to the program (Yes, I do talk to programs when they drive me to it!) I noticed that the window was actually a "recipe" window; turns out that whenever you open a large image view like this it usually has a recipe sidebar (for lack of a better way to put it) on the right-hand side. Well for whatever reason the blank recipe window (since I have created no recipes) had taken over that whole window, squeezing the actual image window down to about 2 pixels wide. Once I grabbed the left edge of the blank recipe pane with my mouse and drug it over to the right I could see the image. Why did it do that? Who knows - I certainly had not even clicked in the window before, nor dragged any edges around. For some reason IDimager just decided to expand that recipe window over the image window. Maybe something like this is happening to hide the image size column. I'll take a closer look - but I am getting weary of having to look for things that the program decided to hide!

Thanks!

Jim

Dormouse · « **Reply #182 on:** April 02, 2010, 07:38 AM »

Now see, I am not seeing that here.
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 12:51 AM)

This is what you should see:-

Dormouse · « **Reply #183 on:** April 02, 2010, 07:53 AM »

Of course, that is when you do the View Details view.
Further down the View menu, there is Show the Image Details, which brings up the whole EXIF panel on the right hand side - which does include the dimension details amongst a host of other stuff if you have the Full Exif or with just a few bits of basic info if you have the Exif Summary. This only applies to the chosen image of course - but it comes up very fast.

You can also sort the image display by dimensions (amongst many other choices), if that would be helpful.

Dormouse · « **Reply #184 on:** April 02, 2010, 08:05 AM »

E.g., double-clicking a thumbnail, as in most image/photo apps, opens a window with a larger view of that image. This worked the first few times I used it but then all of a sudden I was getting what appeared to be a blank window - no image at all showing in it. After I stopped muttering all kinds of unkind words to the program (Yes, I do talk to programs when they drive me to it!) I noticed that the window was actually a "recipe" window; turns out that whenever you open a large image view like this it usually has a recipe sidebar (for lack of a better way to put it) on the right-hand side. Well for whatever reason the blank recipe window (since I have created no recipes) had taken over that whole window, squeezing the actual image window down to about 2 pixels wide. Once I grabbed the left edge of the blank recipe pane with my mouse and drug it over to the right I could see the image. Why did it do that?
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 12:51 AM)

Not sure what is going on here. There's a lot of panels that open on the right side, but they have always stayed where they are put for me.

If you are having a few problems where the program isn't working normally (always difficult to know when it is a new program for you), then you would really need Hert to address it, and he does seem to be away at the moment. Even if you don't, I will keep an eye out for his return (after Easter maybe?) and then direct him to the relevant threads. I've always found himvery responsive (well, I've only made one request to him directly - asking for a feature to be added - and he had a script for it within a few days).

Dormouse · « **Reply #185 on:** April 02, 2010, 08:16 AM »

I tried to use the "Move to folder..." feature in the right-click menu but the resultant dialog said it was going to automatically resize the images in order to move them. Why?!?! And there was no way to deselect that - I could change the new size and/or the method used to resize it but I didn't want the damn image resized! So I thought that perhaps the image was too large for the program, that maybe the program has a size limit on images. (Though my images don’t generally exceed about 2272 x 1704 x 24 px).
-J-Mac (April 01, 2010, 02:06 PM)

I've just tried this with a much bigger image - no offer to resize at all; worked very straightforwardly.

Dormouse · « **Reply #186 on:** April 02, 2010, 09:03 AM »

Speaking of which, how does IDImager compare with IMatch (and others) in the context of cataloging and searching very large image collections?
-zevel (April 01, 2010, 10:04 PM)

It's a few years since I gave IMatch a thorough trial, so I might be a bit out of date - though, on a quick glance, the program doesn't seem to have changed massively since then.

IMatch is more purely an image catalog program. IDI is an image catalog program with more extra functions that you might want to use if you are using your image catalog.

There is some difference in functions. When I was looking at it, IMatch didn't have a good ability to manage versions and this had been a frequent request and had been in development for some time with nothing emerging/ (not sure if it does now); this was a feature I wanted and so that relatively small point was one of the things that steered me away.

The biggest difference is probably in style. The UI works differently. IMatch is much more of a programmers program (the scripting forum currently has 8905 posts, the 2nd biggest on the board to the General Discussion with 12766; IDI has 2150 posts in its scripting forum, with 13042 in Product Related and 9962 in IDI Pro (and 7986 in Bugs & Problems; IMatch doesn't have a forum for Bugs).

It's a question of what suits you best. They can both handle large databases of large images very well.

superboyac · « **Reply #187 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:05 PM »

I was just thinking, if ACDSee didn't change their interface in the latest version, it would still be the one for me. but they changed it so that they have their 4 main modules in the upper right hand corner now. What used to take one or two clicks now takes 5-6 clicks and is slower doing so.

J-Mac · « **Reply #188 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:15 PM »

Dormouse,

Here's what I see in the Collection Viewer after clicking View>Details:

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

And here is the "Image Detail" pane at the lower right of the main window that I mentioned in a previous post:

[attachthumb=#2][/attachthumb]

I have to look for hidden columns somewhere I guess...

Thanks!

Jim

J-Mac · « **Reply #189 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:18 PM »

OK - here's a clue: Notice the scroll bar at the bottom? Tough to notice with the dark skin. I dragged it all the way to the right and got this:

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

So there are some "hidden" columns it seems...

Jim

J-Mac · « **Reply #190 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:47 PM »

I thought I would try changing the skin, or "style" as they call it, but each time I try the program uses 50%+ CPU and stays that way for over 10 minutes - at which time I kill it. I shouldn’t run into any issues running the program on this box; my specs are noted below:

Falcon Northwest Mach V
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+, 2200.0 MHz
4 GB RAM (PC3200 DDR-SDRAM)
Mobo: ASUSTeK Computer INC. A8N32-SLI-Deluxe
nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT w/ 512 MBytes of GDDR3 SDRAM
Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
Hard Drive 1 - Western Digital 80 GB SATA 7200 RPM HDD
Hard Drive 2 - Seagate 500 GB SATA 7200 RPM HDD
Hard Drive 3 - Seagate 500 GB SATA 7200 RPM HDD
Optical Drive 1 - LiteOn DVD-ROM iHDP118
Optical Drive 2 - LiteOn DVD RW iHAP422
Power Supply - Silverstone 600 Watt Modular PSU ST60F
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

Thank you.

Jim

Dormouse · « **Reply #191 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:51 PM »

So there are some "hidden" columns it seems...
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 12:18 PM)

Ah yes, I've never had that scroll bar because all my columns were showing. Maybe because that's because I've got a big widescreen monitor.
Another way (usually anyway) of seeing all the columns would be to use the zoom bar at the top right to zoom right out, reducing the amount of the screen that everything is taking.

Dormouse · « **Reply #192 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:56 PM »

I thought I would try changing the skin, or "style" as they call it, but each time I try the program uses 50%+ CPU and stays that way for over 10 minutes - at which time I kill it. I shouldn’t run into any issues running the program on this box; my specs are noted below:
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 12:47 PM)

That's more powerful than the system I'm running it on.
One way of trying to change style (not done that myself yet) without hitting the same CPU overhead would be to make a new database with one photo. Then try changing style while you are in that. Then loading your usual database.
I'm making the assumption that the CPU load is because the style changing is having to change the 'display' (seen and unseen) of all the stuff that's loaded in the database. I don't think it should be doing that, but can't think of another explanation.
I've just tried changing the style with my full database loaded. Virtually instantaneous.

Dormouse · « **Reply #193 on:** April 02, 2010, 12:59 PM »

Here's what I see in the Collection Viewer after clicking View>Details:
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 12:15 PM)

Looking at this, I think the column size for the File Name must have been expanded (a lot) at some stage. It's never come up like that for me by default.

J-Mac · « **Reply #194 on:** April 02, 2010, 01:02 PM »

So there are some "hidden" columns it seems...
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 12:18 PM)

Ah yes, I've never had that scroll bar because all my columns were showing. Maybe because that's because I've got a big widescreen monitor.
Another way (usually anyway) of seeing all the columns would be to use the zoom bar at the top right to zoom right out, reducing the amount of the screen that everything is taking.
-Dormouse (April 02, 2010, 12:51 PM)

Ahem..... 24" Widescreen monitor here - can't get that much bigger...

Jim

J-Mac · « **Reply #195 on:** April 02, 2010, 01:04 PM »

I cannot change anything in that column header bar - it doesn’t allow me to find the hidden separators between the columns - I don’t think they are there.

Jim

Dormouse · « **Reply #196 on:** April 02, 2010, 01:11 PM »

I cannot change anything in that column header bar - it doesn’t allow me to find the hidden separators between the columns - I don’t think they are there.
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 01:04 PM)

They have to be there somewhere. Unless the Program installation got corrupted by something.

If you haven't already done it, you can:
a) Try using the zoom trick to make all columns visible; that should give you the separators.
b) Use the scroll bar to go to the right where the other columns are. When you see the separator for File Name, move it to the left.

J-Mac · « **Reply #197 on:** April 02, 2010, 02:12 PM »

I cannot change anything in that column header bar - it doesn’t allow me to find the hidden separators between the columns - I don’t think they are there.
-J-Mac (April 02, 2010, 01:04 PM)

They have to be there somewhere. Unless the Program installation got corrupted by something.

If you haven't already done it, you can:
a) Try using the zoom trick to make all columns visible; that should give you the separators.
-Dormouse (April 02, 2010, 01:11 PM)

Doesn’t work - I cannot get all columns into the view no matter what I set it at.

b) Use the scroll bar to go to the right where the other columns are. When you see the separator for File Name, move it to the left.

This I can do but there are no column headers to drag the edges of - I have tried; nothing allows me to change the column widths.

Thank you.

Jim

Dormouse · « **Reply #198 on:** April 02, 2010, 03:05 PM »

As you say, this suggests the columns are simply not there at all.
But we know they should be. Seems very unlikely that it would be a setting change. But also seems unlikely that a corruption would produce such a defined behaviour.
Might it be a database issue?
I see some people in the forums using the SQLserver database rather than the SQLite one, because they seem to have had problems with SQLite. (Generally the reason for doing that is because it is more solid in multi-user work over a network).

Until we can find a solution to this, I don't know if sort by dimensions will help in conjunction with using the Exif Summary pane.

JavaJones · « **Reply #199 on:** April 02, 2010, 04:15 PM »

I don't have the program, but from j-mac's screenshots it *does* look like the display is slightly corrupted or something. Could be a wild goose chase, but so far nothing seems to be hitting the mark, so j-mac, are you using any theming or alternate shell systems? Do you have the latest drivers for your graphics card? Sorry if this seems too obvious.

- Oshyan