"OM Workspace" question

[Colin Franks]

I just downloaded the “OM Workspace” program, and intend on using it solely for culling after a shoot, as I have done with other Sony/Canon/Nikon “viewer” software.
Two little things that are making the viewing & culling process really slow & tedious with this are:

1) In the row of thumbnails at the bottom, you have to actually click on each file in order to delete it, and after you delete a file, it doesn’t automatically select or highlight the next file, you have to manually click on that one too (repeat ad nauseam).

2) When you do hit the delete key, you get an annoying confirmation (Yes/No) pop-up window which you then have to click, instead of the file simply being deleted by the delete key.

It sounds nit-picky, but it’s soooo much slower because of these two little things, and when you’re culling a lot of files, it’s frustrating. Is there a way to change one or both of those actions?

 

[Bobapingu]

When I review the files I will select all in the row to be deleted and as selecting hold the ctl key so multiple files get highlighted, then hit the delete icon. If there is a large section of the row to be deleted I highlight the file at one end and while holding the shift key then click the other end of the row, hit trash can icon.

Yes, I've been doing that too, but even that is slow because you need to remember/keep track of the odd one which is a keeper, and usually go back to make sure. It's tedious compared to other viewers.

I've sent an email to OM to see if they can make these changes in the next update.

In Lightroom, first of all, in the import dialogue box, one picks only those that are possible keepers and imports them. That's the first pass. Then go through them again looking at maybe 1:1 previews and pick the keepers. Then with Crtl+Alt+R all those not picked, are marked for deletion. With Ctrl+backspace those marked for deletion are goneski. That's the second pass. There's more but I won't go into that. It might sound difficult but it's muscle memory for me now. I just zip through it.

 

[skamaraju]

I just rate all the images to be deleted with a 1 star rating. Select all 1 star rated pictures from the Filter panel on Lt lower side and delete them at a single go.

 

[Bassam Guy]

Of course if you're shooting RAW then...

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NCTDW2W1BH8?hl=en-US&gl=US

 

[Colin Franks]

In Lightroom, first of all, in the import dialogue box, one picks only those that are possible keepers and imports them. That's the first pass. Then go through them again looking at maybe 1:1 previews and pick the keepers. Then with Crtl+Alt+R all those not picked, are marked for deletion. With Ctrl+backspace those marked for deletion are goneski. That's the second pass. There's more but I won't go into that. It might sound difficult but it's muscle memory for me now. I just zip through it.

Yes, but as I indicated, I don't have/use LR. I'm using CS6.

 

[gary0319]

Think the Bridge Review tool is pretty simple and intuitive - best I know of for sifting through an image set FAST.

Unfortunately my version of Bridge (CS6) won't display an image of the ORF file.

Same, CS6 only goes as far as the E-M1ii ORFs. Later cameras won't display w/o converting to DNG first.

OK, so I dumped a bunch of DNG files into a folder, and opened it up in Bridge, only to discover that the image quality is terrible on the large preview. (30" DELL). So I can't even determine which ones are sharp keepers and which ones are rejects.

Gah.

One advantage I have found to using workspace as my initial image viewer and culler is that the raw files will be exported with the same parameters as my camera when shot. I do quite a bit of shooting in monochrome, and of course the JPEGS are mono, but the raws are not, except in workspace where an exported mono/raw comes out as a 16bit mono tiff. Likewise, if I shoot part color my raws are converted the same as my JPEGS.

But, the overriding reason for me to use WS is because the resultant tiffs from the raws are much cleaner than the straight import into Lightroom or Photoshop via Adobe Camera Raw.

 

[gary0319]

I just rate all the images to be deleted with a 1 star rating. Select all 1 star rated pictures from the Filter panel on Lt lower side and delete them at a single go.

That works too. I just have waaaay more rejects than keepers so it's more efficient not to have to mark each reject.

 

[Colin Franks]

In the color filter control panel there is an icon (last on right) that is to select all images that have no color tag. This will select all your non-keepers. I choose the all images view and click/shift the first and last images to highlight them all, hit delete...double dare panel comes up, and all gone.

I'm not seeing that icon. Here's what I see:

 

[Colin Franks]

...or this:

 

[gary0319]

In the color filter control panel there is an icon (last on right) that is to select all images that have no color tag. This will select all your non-keepers. I choose the all images view and click/shift the first and last images to highlight them all, hit delete...double dare panel comes up, and all gone.

I'm not seeing that icon. Here's what I see:

Thats the panel below the main window. You want to turn on the filter control panel. Select "Window" from the top bar and then turn on "Filters". That gets you all the controls to select color tags and JPEG/Raws, etc.

 

[gary0319]

...or this:

That's the one. with the icon with the slash through it.

 

[Bassam Guy]

I thought like you too and like you, I've found WS, clunky. Perhaps we need more time with it but I can't be bothered and went back to my Lightroom workflow which I know well and it's snappy. If you ever work out a good workflow for WS culling, please let us know. WS does have that sharpness comparison tool which sound promising on the face of it but I don't trust it to make the choice I would have made.

I have used Workspace, Lightroom, and Bridge to sort through a batch of images. I don't like using Lightroom because I don't want the images in the catalog or being

You can remove images from the catalog but why don't you want them there?

forced to sync the folders.

You are never forced to synch unless you want to add something to the catalog that wasn't imported with LR. Do you use LR to import?

Bridge is working ok for me right now, and if you really need a closer look, you can open up the image in PS or Lightroom.

I find the LR workflow pretty smooth:

• Import
• Cull & delete the bad or redundant ones (99.999% for me)

Done. I looked into bridge but didn't see how that could improve anything because I only add images from SD card or scanned film photos. To me, Bridge seems most useful for people collecting media from many disparate sources.

 

[Bassam Guy]

Think the Bridge Review tool is pretty simple and intuitive - best I know of for sifting through an image set FAST.

Unfortunately my version of Bridge (CS6) won't display an image of the ORF file.

Same, CS6 only goes as far as the E-M1ii ORFs. Later cameras won't display w/o converting to DNG first.

OK, so I dumped a bunch of DNG files into a folder, and opened it up in Bridge, only to discover that the image quality is terrible on the large preview. (30" DELL). So I can't even determine which ones are sharp keepers and which ones are rejects.

Gah.

One advantage I have found to using workspace as my initial image viewer and culler is that the raw files will be exported with the same parameters as my camera when shot. I do quite a bit of shooting in monochrome, and of course the JPEGS are mono, but the raws are not, except in workspace where an exported mono/raw comes out as a 16bit mono tiff. Likewise, if I shoot part color my raws are converted the same as my JPEGS.

But, the overriding reason for me to use WS is because the resultant tiffs from the raws are much cleaner than the straight import into Lightroom or Photoshop via Adobe Camera Raw.

I occasionally export tifs from OWS, and when I do, I run this command:

magick mogrify -compress zip *.tif

because OWS does not compress tifs and without doing that they are a huge waste of storage space.

Download and install imagemagick if interested

 

[Colin Franks]

OK gary, I've got that happening - thanks so much. It's still nowhere near as fast as I could blitz through files with the Sony viewer, but much better than what I was doing before. Hopefully the people at OM will make the changes I requested, but that could take some time.

 

[gary0319]

Think the Bridge Review tool is pretty simple and intuitive - best I know of for sifting through an image set FAST.

Unfortunately my version of Bridge (CS6) won't display an image of the ORF file.

Same, CS6 only goes as far as the E-M1ii ORFs. Later cameras won't display w/o converting to DNG first.

OK, so I dumped a bunch of DNG files into a folder, and opened it up in Bridge, only to discover that the image quality is terrible on the large preview. (30" DELL). So I can't even determine which ones are sharp keepers and which ones are rejects.

Gah.

One advantage I have found to using workspace as my initial image viewer and culler is that the raw files will be exported with the same parameters as my camera when shot. I do quite a bit of shooting in monochrome, and of course the JPEGS are mono, but the raws are not, except in workspace where an exported mono/raw comes out as a 16bit mono tiff. Likewise, if I shoot part color my raws are converted the same as my JPEGS.

But, the overriding reason for me to use WS is because the resultant tiffs from the raws are much cleaner than the straight import into Lightroom or Photoshop via Adobe Camera Raw.

I occasionally export tifs from OWS, and when I do, I run this command:

magick mogrify -compress zip *.tif

because OWS does not compress tifs and without doing that they are a huge waste of storage space.

Download and install imagemagick if interested

You are right, the tiffs are big. But I’m a ruthless culler, and with 15 years of tiffs and associated JPEGS on an external hard drive I have not used 2 TB of space.

 

[gary0319]

OK gary, I've got that happening - thanks so much. It's still nowhere near as fast as I could blitz through files with the Sony viewer, but much better than what I was doing before. Hopefully the people at OM will make the changes I requested, but that could take some time.

It gets faster with more usage and you get to learn what works best for you.

 

[jim mij]

Two schools of thought....

I use it to cull out over 95% of my Bif JPEGS+ Raw images, 1500-2500 at a whack. However, I just click on a color code for my individual keepers as I go through. Workspace assigns the color code to both the Raw and Jpeg. I then just filter for the keepers and delete the remainder.

I just have an "select" mindset instead of a "delete" mindset.

Ditto, sort of

I press “1” (star) for those I don’t like when scrolling through the images, when I get to the end press the 1star icon to show just the baddies, control A, delete

remember to press the 1star icon again or you won’t see the other images (and panic)


--
Jim

 

[gary0319]

Two schools of thought....

I use it to cull out over 95% of my Bif JPEGS+ Raw images, 1500-2500 at a whack. However, I just click on a color code for my individual keepers as I go through. Workspace assigns the color code to both the Raw and Jpeg. I then just filter for the keepers and delete the remainder.

I just have an "select" mindset instead of a "delete" mindset.

Ditto, sort of

I press “1” (star) for those I don’t like when scrolling through the images, when I get to the end press the 1star icon to show just the baddies, control A, delete

remember to press the 1star icon again or you won’t see the other images (and panic)

That works too, but I have too many discards to tag each one, so it is easier for me to only tag the keepers, and then batch delete the others.

 

[Skeeterbytes]

That works too, but I have too many discards to tag each one, so it is easier for me to only tag the keepers, and then batch delete the others.

Just need to be really careful.

One addition please, OMDS: add a "save duplicate copy here" import option. Target an external drive and refer to it after an accident/emergency. One of Lightroom's better features.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[MNE]

OK, so I dumped a bunch of DNG files into a folder, and opened it up in Bridge, only to discover that the image quality is terrible on the large preview. (30" DELL). So I can't even determine which ones are sharp keepers and which ones are rejects.

Gah.

Yeah, that's what I hate about Bridge. No effective preview that keeps from having to open the file.

There are disappointments with Workspace, Lightroom, and Bridge. I haven't tried anything else.

 

[gary0319]

That works too, but I have too many discards to tag each one, so it is easier for me to only tag the keepers, and then batch delete the others.

Just need to be really careful.

One addition please, OMDS: add a "save duplicate copy here" import option. Target an external drive and refer to it after an accident/emergency. One of Lightroom's better features.

Cheers,

Rick

Although the batch delete works well, I find it more reassuring to create a second “selected” folder and save all my keepers to that folder for import to Lightroom. After I’m sure I don’t want to look for additional images, I trash the entire original folder from my desktop.