MediaPro refugee looking for a new home for my DAM

A recent update to the current version, The DAM Book 3.0, addresses strategies and alternatives to Media Pro, specifically laying out a new workflow using PhotoSupreme

The website is: http://thedambook.com/

Peter Krogh has been the "go-to guy" for most of the professional photographers and photojournalists I know since at least 2005. His qualifications and a short list of consulting clients is here:

http://www.thedambook.com/downloads/Krogh_Qualifications.pdf

Thanks Rob!

This thread has come at just the right time for me. I've got a 500k/3TB photo collection, and have been looking for a DAM solution for ages. I'm now at the point where I've started writing my own to run as a web-based server app to run on my NAS, so I can realistically search all of those images by keyword to find specific images.

The workflow is:

1. Import photos into local app X
2. IPTC tag images in app X
3. Run sync to push images to the server
4. My DAM app (working name 'Damselfly') will index the images and metadata into a DB, and provide full free-text search by name, IPTC keyword, date, size, lens, camera etc, etc.
5. DAM app has a 'basket' concept where you select a bunch of images, into the basket, and can export them to your local computer to work on them in app X, or alternatively export them to Wordpress, Facebook, email, etc.
6. Once you've finished working on them locally, you re-sync them to the server, which re-indexes them.

Previously, 'app X' (used for local keyword tagging) was Picasa, and/or LR 6.14. I loved the simple workflow, and it worked really well. But my Mac keyboard finally died and I needed to upgrade, and my new Mac has come with Catalina, which means no more 32-bit apps, so no more Picasa or Lightroom. I'm also not interested in signing up to a subscription model for Lightroom.

So I'm going through the same hair-pulling exercise right now. I've installed most of the apps on your shortlist (possibly, more, can't remember). My problem is that the with all the apps I've tried, the workflow/UI/UX for keyword-tagging large batches of images can't match up to the simplicity of Picasa. My current shortlist is:

• Adobe Bridge
• Digikam

Everything else is either too slow, too clunky, dangerous to my photos (ACDSee's destructive non-destructive image editing is going nowhere near my library, for example). But even those two have their annoyances.

My DAM server-based app is making good progress, and will hopefully be in a state i can release it more widely in a couple of months. But I'd appreciate any recommendations for the app X in #1 and #2 that has the best tagging workflow....

For 1 & 2: (importing, culling, IPTC, rating and color tags) I use PhotoMechanic 6.

Webreaper said:

This thread has come at just the right time for me. I've got a 500k/3TB photo collection, and have been looking for a DAM solution for ages. I'm now at the point where I've started writing my own to run as a web-based server app to run on my NAS, so I can realistically search all of those images by keyword to find specific images.

The workflow is:

1. Import photos into local app X
2. IPTC tag images in app X
3. Run sync to push images to the server
4. My DAM app (working name 'Damselfly') will index the images and metadata into a DB, and provide full free-text search by name, IPTC keyword, date, size, lens, camera etc, etc.
5. DAM app has a 'basket' concept where you select a bunch of images, into the basket, and can export them to your local computer to work on them in app X, or alternatively export them to Wordpress, Facebook, email, etc.
6. Once you've finished working on them locally, you re-sync them to the server, which re-indexes them.

Previously, 'app X' (used for local keyword tagging) was Picasa, and/or LR 6.14. I loved the simple workflow, and it worked really well. But my Mac keyboard finally died and I needed to upgrade, and my new Mac has come with Catalina, which means no more 32-bit apps, so no more Picasa or Lightroom. I'm also not interested in signing up to a subscription model for Lightroom.

So I'm going through the same hair-pulling exercise right now. I've installed most of the apps on your shortlist (possibly, more, can't remember). My problem is that the with all the apps I've tried, the workflow/UI/UX for keyword-tagging large batches of images can't match up to the simplicity of Picasa. My current shortlist is:

• Adobe Bridge
• Digikam

Everything else is either too slow, too clunky, dangerous to my photos (ACDSee's destructive non-destructive image editing is going nowhere near my library, for example). But even those two have their annoyances.

My DAM server-based app is making good progress, and will hopefully be in a state i can release it more widely in a couple of months. But I'd appreciate any recommendations for the app X in #1 and #2 that has the best tagging workflow....

Click to expand...

Webreaper

Thanks for the reply.

DPR really, really would help a lot of us out if they would do a comprehensive review on the DAM market. It would save a lot of people a lot of time from wandering around in the dark woods. I realize that what some companies call a DAM (ahem Skylum) is different than what another one does. As all these wonderful people who have responded have made perfectly clear is that something that is great at ingest/quick cull/fast keywording (like PhotoMechanic) is only half the picture when it comes to DAM. It's good to know who does that well, but the "managing" part of DAM (handling finding it afterwards, what to do with versions or out of sync conditions between the database & the file, etc.) is important also.

I'd love to at least see a feature comparison (has a database or no, easy to throw it out to another editor or no, writes back to the file or only to sidecar, can easily handle large collections or dies a slow painful death). As is always the case, everyone's list of care-abouts/requirements varies, but it would be nice to not have to install them all or do hours of research to figure out who has what.

One follow-up question for you ... can you elaborate what you meant by "ACDSee's destructive non-destructive image editing ...." Is it not really non-destructive like it says is?

I had read a few posts about ON1 where people were saying that their metadata in their XMP's kept getting corrupted with large collections. I have no idea if that's a big problem with them or not but I saw a couple of posts from some people about it. Just something to look out for if you eval that. Corrupted metadata (especially if you don't find out right away) is the kind of thing that give a metadata geek like me nightmares instead of sweet dreams. :-(

Ellis Vener said:

A recent update to the current version, The DAM Book 3.0, addresses strategies and alternatives to Media Pro, specifically laying out a new workflow using PhotoSupreme

The website is: http://thedambook.com/

Peter Krogh has been the "go-to guy" for most of the professional photographers and photojournalists I know since at least 2005. His qualifications and a short list of consulting clients is here:

http://www.thedambook.com/downloads/Krogh_Qualifications.pdf

Click to expand...

Ahhhh, (insert monks chanting and incense burning here), the holy book of DAM. . I know of which tome you speak.

I had the original version way back in the day but didn't know the update had info about MediaPro migrations. (FacePalm) I don't know why I didn't think to look there. Double Doh!

Thanks for the pointer! I'm heading over to go pick it up now!

For the ACDsee thing, see here: https://forum.acdsee.com/forum/acdsee-pro/4371-non-destructive-really - when you make a 'non-destructive edit' what actually happens is that the photo is changed destructively, but a number of backups are put in a hidden folder. This creates 2 problems: if you edit a file temporarily, getting the correct original back in your collection is complex, and secondly if you re-sync your updated photos back to the cloud or NAS, if you aren't aware of this hidden folder you'll probably lose it, which means your original has been destroyed. For me, that was a non-starter and ruled ACDSee out immediately.

I agree, it's frustrating as there's thousands of threads trying to establish what the right options are for DAM. There's very few cross-platform server-based DAM solutions too, and those that are out there are extremely expensive. So when I get mine finished, it'll run on any server (Mac/Windows/Unix) and will be free.

One question for everyone in this thread - I've tried ON1, which looks really promising, but one thing it can't seem to do is to write metadata back to the EXIF IPTC tags in the original file. It seems to only save them in the sidecar, or the database. Anyone know if there's an option I've missed? If the IPTC keywords can't be written back to the original image (losslessly, obviously, so without the image data being re-encoded) then it's a deal-breaker for me.

Ellis Vener said:

For 1 & 2: (importing, culling, IPTC, rating and color tags) I use PhotoMechanic 6.

Click to expand...

I trialled that today, but whilst the IPTC tagging looks extremely powerful, it seems very unwieldy compared to the slick UI of Picasa or On1, where it's easy to multi-select images and tag them quickly. I may have misunderstood how it works, though.

Edit: Actually, it's better than I thought, after persevering. Still prefer the ON1 flow, if there's a way to save the keywords back to the original image.

Webreaper said:

Ellis Vener said:

For 1 & 2: (importing, culling, IPTC, rating and color tags) I use PhotoMechanic 6.

Click to expand...

I trialled that today, but whilst the IPTC tagging looks extremely powerful, it seems very unwieldy compared to the slick UI of Picasa or On1, where it's easy to multi-select images and tag them quickly. I may have misunderstood how it works, though.

Click to expand...

It can do far more than those two programs; the strength of it's bulk metadata entry is actually using stationary pads/metadata template, usually at the point of ingesting images.

For simple keywording, the keyword panel is best. But it's flat keywording. It's more like the simple keywording in say Picasa where you just look at a short list of say a hundred or so terms and click what you want.

For more complex keywording, use the structured keyword panel, which does hierarchical keywording. But it's designed for those of us with really large keyword sets, or controlled vocabulary lists. So not a simple click-and-go solution.

I'd say in general for those not doing really heavy metadata entry, especially in bulk with repetitiveness (like lists of team members, locations, frequently used keywords or controlled lists like wildlife or plant names, etc), it's overkill.

But if you want to dive in again this gives more info (since PM's documentation is meh): https://www.photometadata.org/META-Tutorials-Photo-Mechanic-Applying-Keywords

Webreaper said:

Edit: Actually, it's better than I thought, after persevering. Still prefer the ON1 flow, if there's a way to save the keywords back to the original image.

Click to expand...

It does have a learning curve. And as one accumulates more and more metadata, it's utility becomes more apparent.

I can't help with the On1 issue, but I don't know of a DAM that writes IPTC back into a raw file. Exif for timestamp change, and sometimes GPS, but stuff like keywords, etc, no, unless it's a DNG. In general they just leave them alone for good reasons. Hence sidecars. But does On1 use sidecar files that contain normal IPTC data that can't be read by other applications?

robgendreau said:

It can do far more than those two programs; the strength of it's bulk metadata entry is actually using stationary pads/metadata template, usually at the point of ingesting images.

For simple keywording, the keyword panel is best. But it's flat keywording. It's more like the simple keywording in say Picasa where you just look at a short list of say a hundred or so terms and click what you want.

I'd say in general for those not doing really heavy metadata entry, especially in bulk with repetitiveness (like lists of team members, locations, frequently used keywords or controlled lists like wildlife or plant names, etc), it's overkill.

But if you want to dive in again this gives more info (since PM's documentation is meh): https://www.photometadata.org/META-Tutorials-Photo-Mechanic-Applying-Keywords

Click to expand...

Great, this is really helpful. I think the main thing here is that it's not 'better enough' for my use-case to justify the much higher cost.

robgendreau said:

I can't help with the On1 issue, but I don't know of a DAM that writes IPTC back into a raw file. Exif for timestamp change, and sometimes GPS, but stuff like keywords, etc, no, unless it's a DNG. In general they just leave them alone for good reasons. Hence sidecars. But does On1 use sidecar files that contain normal IPTC data that can't be read by other applications?

Click to expand...

I'm talking about high-res JPGs. I don't shoot raw (if I did, my collection would be 30tb insead of the 3tb it is now.

Further testing shows it can write to the files, but not automatically. However, that'll do - and the simple json format of the .on1 sidecar files means it would be trivial to add support for my DAM app (the one I'm writing) to read them (and even write them into the JPEG files as it indexes, if ON1 can't do that automatically. So at the moment, ON1 is way ahead in terms of features I need vs price.

...

Webreaper said:

Previously, 'app X' (used for local keyword tagging) was Picasa, and/or LR 6.14. I loved the simple workflow, and it worked really well. But my Mac keyboard finally died and I needed to upgrade, and my new Mac has come with Catalina, which means no more 32-bit apps, so no more Picasa or Lightroom. I'm also not interested in signing up to a subscription model for Lightroom.

Click to expand...

I'm confused. I saw what you said about Lightroom but when I looked. on my old computer (not running Catalina), the Lightroom there says it's 64-bit (when I do "About this Mac" -> Applications). It's 6.14 and I DO NOT do the subscription model. I haven't tried moving it to my new system running Catalina b/c I'm trying to do an Adobe cleanse and find a new editor. My priority is finding a DAM first though so I might run out of time before my busy season to move to a new editor and DAM so installing Lr on my new system is my fallback position if I do run out of time.

Can someone clarify please? Is the non-subscription based, last one available to buy,Lightroom version 6.14 on a Mac 32 or 64-bit?

Shutter-bu said:

...

Shutter-bu said:

Previously, 'app X' (used for local keyword tagging) was Picasa, and/or LR 6.14. I loved the simple workflow, and it worked really well. But my Mac keyboard finally died and I needed to upgrade, and my new Mac has come with Catalina, which means no more 32-bit apps, so no more Picasa or Lightroom. I'm also not interested in signing up to a subscription model for Lightroom.

Click to expand...

I'm confused. I saw what you said about Lightroom but when I looked. on my old computer (not running Catalina), the Lightroom there says it's 64-bit (when I do "About this Mac" -> Applications). It's 6.14 and I DO NOT do the subscription model. I haven't tried moving it to my new system running Catalina b/c I'm trying to do an Adobe cleanse and find a new editor. My priority is finding a DAM first though so I might run out of time before my busy season to move to a new editor and DAM so installing Lr on my new system is my fallback position if I do run out of time.

Can someone clarify please? Is the non-subscription based, last one available to buy,Lightroom version 6.14 on a Mac 32 or 64-bit?

Click to expand...

Lightroom 6.14 is a 64-bit app, but the installer isn't. Apparently it will run fine in Catalina as long as it's an existing installation. You can't install afresh it on a Catalina+ system though.

If you have to reinstall for any reason, then it won't work.

Obviously it's a bit of a time-bomb waiting to happen, so I'd suggest it's probably worth considering your exist strategy sooner rather than later.

robgendreau said:

Webreaper said:

Ellis Vener said:

For 1 & 2: (importing, culling, IPTC, rating and color tags) I use PhotoMechanic 6.

Click to expand...

I trialled that today, but whilst the IPTC tagging looks extremely powerful, it seems very unwieldy compared to the slick UI of Picasa or On1, where it's easy to multi-select images and tag them quickly. I may have misunderstood how it works, though.

Click to expand...

....

Click to expand...

robgendreau said:

I can't help with the On1 issue, but I don't know of a DAM that writes IPTC back into a raw file. Exif for timestamp change, and sometimes GPS, but stuff like keywords, etc, no, unless it's a DNG. In general they just leave them alone for good reasons. Hence sidecars. But does On1 use sidecar files that contain normal IPTC data that can't be read by other applications?

Click to expand...

On1 Photo RAW allows embedding metadata into TIP, PSD, PSB and JPG images. The default for metadata is sending in XMP sidecar files (which you must do for RAW files).

Jim in Hudson said:

On1 Photo RAW allows embedding metadata into TIP, PSD, PSB and JPG images. The default for metadata is sending in XMP sidecar files (which you must do for RAW files).

Click to expand...

Yep. It would be really nice if there was an 'automatically write metadata to EXIF, instead of having to use the Photo->Embed Metadata menu option manually.... but that's only a small sticking point.

Andy Hewitt said:

Andy Hewitt said:

I'm confused. I saw what you said about Lightroom but when I looked. on my old computer (not running Catalina), the Lightroom there says it's 64-bit (when I do "About this Mac" -> Applications). It's 6.14 and I DO NOT do the subscription model. I haven't tried moving it to my new system running Catalina b/c I'm trying to do an Adobe cleanse and find a new editor. My priority is finding a DAM first though so I might run out of time before my busy season to move to a new editor and DAM so installing Lr on my new system is my fallback position if I do run out of time.

Can someone clarify please? Is the non-subscription based, last one available to buy,Lightroom version 6.14 on a Mac 32 or 64-bit?

Click to expand...

Lightroom 6.14 is a 64-bit app, but the installer isn't. Apparently it will run fine in Catalina as long as it's an existing installation. You can't install afresh it on a Catalina+ system though.

If you have to reinstall for any reason, then it won't work.

Obviously it's a bit of a time-bomb waiting to happen, so I'd suggest it's probably worth considering your exist strategy sooner rather than later.

Click to expand...

Indeed. I ran an app called Go64 which scans all your apps and tells you which ones won't work on Catalina. It confirmed that LR 6.14 is 64-bit, so I thought all was well. But when I (eventually - Adobe don't have make it difficult) found the download for my new MacBook Air, it turned out the installer is 32-bit. So annoying. I'm sure Adobe did this so that people who upgrade to Catalina won't complain, but so they can shaft people who buy a new Mac and force them to subscribe.

Frankly, I'm avoiding Adobe at all costs - no least because their Creative Cloud app/software is so annoying, intrusive and frustrating. If they had a subs model that was £10pcm with CC, and £12pcm without it, I might be temped. But it seems like On1 can do everything I need, and over the next 3-4 years will cost me $50, instead of $400 for Lightroom. No-brainer really.

David Mantripp said:

I was a MediaPro user from pre v1 in the early 1990s up to the point where PhaseOne shamefully killed it after milking the user base for all it was worth.

Photo Supreme is the closest alternative as far as approach/philosophy is concerned. However as another poster said, it has a completely different model and a very steep learning curve. Once you get to grips with it, it does everything MediaPro can do (except multi-catalog search) and quite a lot more (for example Stacks, and quite good integration with some Raw developers, including Adobe and CaptureOne).

It also has an active user forum and proactive developer.

(oh, and a MediaPro importer - https://www.idimager.com/mediapro-to-photo-supreme - although I haven’t tried it myself)

Click to expand...

Thanks David!

I've been evaluating it over the last few days and I'm very impressed. I have two general concerns though and I was wondering what you thought or how you get past those issues:

1) I'm getting the feeling from the forum over there that it's a one-man shop (Hert). It sounds like he does, everything ... development, support, documentation (or lack thereof). I'm a little concerned about that if it's true. So if he gets hit by a bus the software is done. Yikes!

I've used one-man shop kinds of tools before but more in a utility capacity, not one of the major anchors in my workflow.

I know there are no guarantees in life and any company could go out of business at any point ... it's just more of a possibility in a one-man shop.

Does he really do all of the development himself?

Does he keep up with bug fixes pretty well?

2) There is a good amount of "quick start" documentation for it but there doesn't seem to be a full up manual. I've read all of the quick start docs and I still have a lot of questions. Is there a good source of info somewhere other than having to ask on the forum? I just would rather try to answer my own questions before asking on the forum if possible. I searched for probably an hour and couldn't find anything. I read about a wiki and a "workbook" but it sounds like both of those have gone by the wayside.

Thanks

Andy Hewitt said:

Shutter-bu said:

...

Andy Hewitt said:

Previously, 'app X' (used for local keyword tagging) was Picasa, and/or LR 6.14. I loved the simple workflow, and it worked really well. But my Mac keyboard finally died and I needed to upgrade, and my new Mac has come with Catalina, which means no more 32-bit apps, so no more Picasa or Lightroom. I'm also not interested in signing up to a subscription model for Lightroom.

Click to expand...

I'm confused. I saw what you said about Lightroom but when I looked. on my old computer (not running Catalina), the Lightroom there says it's 64-bit (when I do "About this Mac" -> Applications). It's 6.14 and I DO NOT do the subscription model. I haven't tried moving it to my new system running Catalina b/c I'm trying to do an Adobe cleanse and find a new editor. My priority is finding a DAM first though so I might run out of time before my busy season to move to a new editor and DAM so installing Lr on my new system is my fallback position if I do run out of time.

Can someone clarify please? Is the non-subscription based, last one available to buy,Lightroom version 6.14 on a Mac 32 or 64-bit?

Click to expand...

Lightroom 6.14 is a 64-bit app, but the installer isn't. Apparently it will run fine in Catalina as long as it's an existing installation. You can't install afresh it on a Catalina+ system though.

If you have to reinstall for any reason, then it won't work.

Obviously it's a bit of a time-bomb waiting to happen, so I'd suggest it's probably worth considering your exist strategy sooner rather than later.

Click to expand...

Are you flippin' kidding me? AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!! They are evil, money-grabbing scum pure and simple. I'm guessing it would take them all of 30 minutes to convert that installer to 64-bit but hey, that wouldn't line their war-chest more then would it.

OK, rant off. Sorry.

Flying without a net is not fun.

terrydev said:

Check out OnOne Photo Raw. I evaluated that a while ago and the DAM is pretty good I thought.

Click to expand...

Hi,

I've just spent hours looking at the forums on ON1 and the prognosis isn't good from a DAM perspective.

I started with their user forums and searched for DAM to see what their users were saying. At least for their 2019 version, ouch! Lots of users reporting ON1 PhotoRaw messing up their keywords (either not writing them or not deleting them or randomly capitalizing them, etc.). The latest version is 2020 so I posted on there to see if their users think it was improved in 2020. I'll let you know what if I hear anything back.

Also, their DAM functionality sounds fairly new and it's hard to get right so maybe in a few versions it will get stable. DAM has to be rock solid though.

Their functionality for DAM looked pretty good but that doesn't count for anything if it messes up the metadata or is unreliable.

Just thought I'd pass along what I was seeing on their forums.

Shutter-bu said:

I've just spent hours looking at the forums on ON1 and the prognosis isn't good from a DAM perspective.

I started with their user forums and searched for DAM to see what their users were saying. At least for their 2019 version, ouch! Lots of users reporting ON1 PhotoRaw messing up their keywords (either not writing them or not deleting them or randomly capitalizing them, etc.). The latest version is 2020 so I posted on there to see if their users think it was improved in 2020. I'll let you know what if I hear anything back.

Click to expand...

Interesting. Per earlier threads, I'm about to start using this 'for real' (I purchased it over the weekend).

I was going to use the 'Embed Metadata' function to write the keywords back to the image files, but on the back of your comments, I think I'll leave it to be written to the sidecars, and then have my server-side system scan the .on1 files and do the embedding of the keywords. That way I can write some validation to ensure that what's in the ON1 sidecar isn't corrupted and represents what we actually entered.

Once we start using ON1 in anger, we'll see what it looks like.

Shutter-bu said:

terrydev said:

Check out OnOne Photo Raw. I evaluated that a while ago and the DAM is pretty good I thought.

Click to expand...

Hi,

I've just spent hours looking at the forums on ON1 and the prognosis isn't good from a DAM perspective.

I started with their user forums and searched for DAM to see what their users were saying. At least for their 2019 version, ouch! Lots of users reporting ON1 PhotoRaw messing up their keywords (either not writing them or not deleting them or randomly capitalizing them, etc.). The latest version is 2020 so I posted on there to see if their users think it was improved in 2020. I'll let you know what if I hear anything back.

Also, their DAM functionality sounds fairly new and it's hard to get right so maybe in a few versions it will get stable. DAM has to be rock solid though.

Their functionality for DAM looked pretty good but that doesn't count for anything if it messes up the metadata or is unreliable.

Just thought I'd pass along what I was seeing on their forums.

Click to expand...

I'm a very new user of On1 Photo RAW 2020.1 so perhaps haven't used it enough to experience a bunch of problems. So far, I've not run into any issues with keywords (that I know of). I migrated from Aperture recently and used the sidecar creation and ingestion method recommended by On1 and it worked very well.