John Shaw Nature & Digital Photography Workshops Click here for locations and dates
				Mexico's Colonial Heartland March 17–24, 2007
				Horses and Icons of the Wild West August 26–September 1, 2007
				Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 7–21, 2007
				Australia Wildlife November 1–20, 2007

Back in the film days I had a system for finding individual photos. Every slide had a unique inventory number, a letter–number–letter system that denoted the category where the image was stored and its physical location within that category. I then logged this information into a database. Much of the time, however, I didn’t even have to search this database in order to find a specific image. I was so familiar with my files—and here I mean the actual physical four-drawer filing cabinets full of slides in plastic pages—that I could open the correct drawer and, within a few moments of searching, pull out the exact image.

Well, everything changed when I started shooting digital. I could no longer literally put my fingers on an image. Digital files started piling up at an alarming rate. Without some organizational system, keeping track of images became a nightmare. I needed software that was easy and intuitive to use, yet powerful enough that I could continue to use it as I added more digital images. And I needed a system that would let me search files and folders that resided on off-line drives. I tried different approaches and different software, until I found the solution: iView Media Pro. In my opinion this is the best cataloging software available for the digital shooter.

Notice that I said it is “cataloging” software as opposed to “browsing” software. This is an important distinction. A browser reads the information from files each and every time you open a folder, but it does not store this information separately. It indexes files on the fly. A catalog stores the file information in a separate file, distinct from the photographs themselves. Cataloging software has these advantages:

• It's faster—much faster—when searching for specific images.
• It offers many different search options.
• It allows you to make virtual collections of images. You don't have to move orginal files around for organization.
• It keeps track of where files are supposed to be, and tells you if there are any discrepancies.
• It allows you to work with images that are off-line (writing image captions, for example, or making collections of images). A browser has to have access to the original files at all times.

Media Pro has all these advantages and more.

I don’t intend to give you complete instructions on using Media Pro. Their web site, www.iview-multimedia.com, has lots of information about the program. You can download a trial version, for PC or Mac, plus a slew of pdf reference files. But here are some of the ways I use the program in my workflow. I rename my files as I download, using Downloader Pro from www.breezesys.com. I’ve set up this program so that each day’s shoot automatically downloads into a separate folder, which in turn is automatically named by the shooting date (hint: always set your camera’s clock to the correct local time!), in year-month-day format, such as 2006-10-25. I do no further sorting of the original files whatsoever.

I’m running Photoshop CS2, so I open the images in Bridge, edit pretty tightly, and then convert the RAW files in Adobe Camera Raw using batch commands as much as possible. I believe that if an image is worth keeping it’s worth converting, but I don’t do any Photoshop work. When I’ve finished with a folder of images, I drag the folder to the Adobe DNG converter.

And this is when Media Pro comes into play. I point it at the folders I want to catalog and it creates thumbnails of the images. Since these are DNG files, with all the Camera Raw adjustment information embedded in the file rather than held as a XMP sidecar, the thumbnails appear color corrected in the catalog. I can then organize these thumbnails any way I wish, by defining criteria for images and then dragging and dropping the thumbnails into these sets. An image can be placed in as many sets as desired. For example, suppose I have a shot of an elk, taken in Rocky Mountain National Park, in autumn color, on a foggy day. This single photo could be indexed into multiple categories including elk, mammals, national parks, RMNP, autumn color, fog, etc. All this can be done with the original image remaining off-line. And it’s this “off-line” bit that appeals to me. I can refine my catalog in my spare moments, anytime and anywhere. I just copy the catalog file to my laptop, refine the catalog, than copy it back to my desktop computer replacing the older catalog file. The catalog file itself is quite small compared to the drive which is cataloged. A 250 GB drive—entirely full of images—results in a catalog file of roughly 150 MB. I have a catalog of each of my image hard drives, plus a master catalog of catalogs.

Here’s what I see when I open the catalog of my most current hard drive.

The thumbnails displayed just happen to be the last ones I looked at, some images from an Oregon harbor. A folder tree displays the contents of the drive. Here I will open the folder from this summer’s Provence Photo Safari to see the sub-folders by date and the number of images that I’ve kept from each day.

I’ve cross indexed these Provence shots all sorts of ways; here are the first few listings.

I can add information to standard IPTC fields including captions and keywords, still while working off-line, and sync this back to the original files when I connect the drive. For that matter, if I wanted to work in Photoshop’s File Info, I could sync the information the other direction, from original file to Media Pro, but I find it easier to work as much as possible in Media Pro.

I make web pages for clients directly from my catalogs. Remember these are corrected DNG files so that the images have a “pretty good” large preview embedded in them. Media Pro has web gallery templates included, so I post jpegs for clients to make initial selections before I spend any time making final Photoshop corrections. When I need to reference a specific original file, Media Pro shows me the exact path. I spin up that hard drive, and open the file directly from Media Pro into Photoshop.

Just in passing I’ll mention that Media Pro automatically keeps track of dates and file types of cataloged images.

I’ve touched on only a few aspects of iView MediaPro software. The more I use it, the more I like it. I give it my highest rating.

Announcement: John's latest book, John Shaw's Photoshop Guide, has recently been updated and expanded. This is an eBook on CD, with step-by-step instructions on producing

	John Shaw

the best digital files. The new version is available only from John's website: www.johnshawphoto.com