iView Media Pro
Thoughts on DAM software
07/22/2007 @ 06:23 PM Filed in:
Photography
DAM software meaning "Digital Assist
Management software". Some popular examples are Adobe's Lightroom,
Apple's Aperture, Microsoft's Expression Media (formally known as
iView Media Pro).
My current number one problem with all of these software titles is not one provides the ability to adopt it well. Say you are currently using iView Media Pro for your DAM software and Photoshop for your image editor. Then Lightroom is just released; the all in one package from Adobe. When you use Photoshop your record all your image adjustments to disk using Adobe's XMP files. Today you want to switch to Lightroom because you like some of the features and think it would be better to use a single software application to handle all your needs. Great. One question? How do you get your metadata out of iVMP and into Lightroom? Well iVMP will export metadata using XMP files. Awesome you say. One problem. Using iVMP to export the metadata to disk will overwrite your image adjustments that currently exist. All your hard work adjusting images will be all down the drain. What to do?
Great question. Who has an answer? I want to switch to Lightroom, please help. Email me here.
What amazes me the most about this problem is not one of the big DAM software companies produce such a mechanism to perform an easy and quick adoption. They seem to expect that photographers will have no problem dropping their current solution and pick there's up at a drop of a hat with no problems. No one has time to figure this out and certainly no one has time to solve this problem manually. XMP helps but without the ability to merge XMP files, it isn't a complete solution.
My current number one problem with all of these software titles is not one provides the ability to adopt it well. Say you are currently using iView Media Pro for your DAM software and Photoshop for your image editor. Then Lightroom is just released; the all in one package from Adobe. When you use Photoshop your record all your image adjustments to disk using Adobe's XMP files. Today you want to switch to Lightroom because you like some of the features and think it would be better to use a single software application to handle all your needs. Great. One question? How do you get your metadata out of iVMP and into Lightroom? Well iVMP will export metadata using XMP files. Awesome you say. One problem. Using iVMP to export the metadata to disk will overwrite your image adjustments that currently exist. All your hard work adjusting images will be all down the drain. What to do?
Great question. Who has an answer? I want to switch to Lightroom, please help. Email me here.
What amazes me the most about this problem is not one of the big DAM software companies produce such a mechanism to perform an easy and quick adoption. They seem to expect that photographers will have no problem dropping their current solution and pick there's up at a drop of a hat with no problems. No one has time to figure this out and certainly no one has time to solve this problem manually. XMP helps but without the ability to merge XMP files, it isn't a complete solution.
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