Marc Sabatella August 24th, 2007

Using Your Image Catalog

Hopefully, the process of entering your images into your system has made it clear how you might then be able to browse or search for images effectively. This essay is not intended to be a full tutorial on using ACDSee Pro. I am only trying to show you how you can use the tools to organize your image collection. What you then do with your collection is up to you! However, certain steps we took in our workflow were taken to facilitate some specific tasks, and I want to make sure it is clear how to take advantage of this.

Working With Your Catalog When Your Primary Disk Is Not Present

If, like me, your main computer is a notebook, then it is likely that you will often want to access your images when the external drive containing the buckets is not present. ACDSee Pro in general allows you to browse around even when you images are not present, and it will still show thumbnails for the missing files, but it will complain if you try to access the images represented by those thumbnails (for instance, to view them full screen, to edit them, or to print them). This is why I generate proofs and keep these on my local drive. When my primary external drive is not connected, I can set Filter By->Categories->Proof to hide the originals, so I do not even have to see the thumbnails for the files that are not present. Again, for most of the kind of work I might want to do with my images, these proofs are actually sufficient – the only time I need to access the originals again is to make large prints. But of course, you do need to turn off the filter when it comes time to import new images into your catalog.

Viewing Your Catalog On Another Computer Running ACDSee Pro

The external disk on which you keep your buckets can obviously be attached to another computer, but unless you take specific steps to transfer the database information, then even if the other computer is running ACDSee Pro, it will not be able to see any of the database information. It will be able to see the IPTC keywords and other fields, which in many cases may be good enough. But if you are trying to recreate your work environment on the other computer, then you will want to recreate the entire database.

If you export database information for your files into each bucket, then when you attach the external drive to the secondary computer, you can immediately import the database information for any buckets that have been added or changed since the last time you accessed them from this computer. When you do this, ACDSee Pro may complain that it cannot find the files – the pathnames may not be the same on the secondary computer as they were on the main one. But it will also allow you to tell it where the files are.

Instead of exporting and importing the database, you can try to recreate it by reading the information in from IPTC (via Tools->Batch Set Information, using a template that reverses the operations you performed when exporting the metadat). For proprietary RAW files, you will also want to import RPP files (via Database->Import->RPP Files) to recreate you RAW processing (this is not necessary with DNG, because the parameters are stored in the itself). When you recreate your database from the image files themselves, ACDSee Pro will not be confused about where the files are. However, ACDSee Pro may not always be able to recreate the database Category hierarchy correctly. It will help if you also periodically export the category hierarchy from your main computer (via Database->Export->Database) and import it on the secondary computer. But even if you do this, ACDSee Pro will get confused if you have multiple categories with the same name within your hierarchy.

Because of these issues, you may find you are best off relying on keywords as opposed to categories for representing any metadata you may wish to access from another computer. That is, if you are trying to decide whether to use a keyword or a category to indicate that a particular image is of a particular subject, keyword information is going to be easier to access when not on your main computer. This is certainly going to be true when accessing images from a computer that is not running ACDSee Pro. If you upload your images to a photo sharing site, or submit them to stock agency, or otherwise make your image files available to others, then the IPTC fields such as Keywords are going to be the only metadata that is available.

Conclusion

ACDSee Pro is an ideal tool for implementing Digital Asset Management. Adopting the workflow I outline will almost certainly require significant changes to your usual methods. But the reward will be an image catalog that is extraordinarily well organized and safely backed up. By using metadata such as the ACDSee Pro database and the IPTC fields of the image files themselves, you make it easy for you or anyone else with access to your images to search your catalog for images of interest. By adopting a consistent naming file and folder naming strategy, you make it easy to identify, locate, manage, backup, and (if necessary) restore your images. If you shoot RAW, ACDSee Pro allows you to quickly and non-destructively process your files, regardless of whether you are processing images individually or in batches. If you shoot JPEG, the workflow I outline provides a framework that makes it easy for you to edit your images without overwriting the original files. The ideas I present can also allow you to work with your catalog on multiple computers and to keep proofs of as many images as you like on an ordinary laptop hard drive. Throughout the process, use of ratings and categories in particular allows you to focus your attention primarily on your best images while ensuring that your other images are accessible as well. All in all, you will spend less time worrying about what to do with your images and more time enjoying them!

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