I use PhotoMechanic Plus and it works great with PL. You can use the PhotoMechanic for this too.
Use PM to ingest (copy files) to my HD from camera card and at the same time assign appropriate IPTC data.
Cull and assign star ratings to files I want to work with in PM.
Assign keywords and/or hierarchical keywords in PM.
In PL go to the folders you copied your photos to and set the filter to the star rating you want to work with.
PL recognises star ratings and all keywords defined by PM which are stored on .xmp files by PM and read by PL. Best not to mix normal keywords with hierarchical keywords as PL may get confused!
I have used the above management method extensively and it works very well.
I built an Automator script to copy my files from the SD card to a new folder, adding the date to the filename on the way, it even ejects the SD Card when done.
But don’t do what I did, I moved and renamed folders outside PL and now when I search I have multiple ‘The image cannot be processed since the source file could not be found’
I would like to clear the database down and start again, just waiting on DXO to tell me the best way to do it - I suspect de-install and re-install PL.
Or you could simply close PL and delete the database files, then restart. PL will rebuild it for you. But, if you use projects or keywords, you will lose all of those.
CAUTION: Depending on how you set sidecar management (settings: last tab), images return to their last edited state or adopt the default preset. Proceed at your own risk of losing all previous edits.
Files that have an associated .dop sidecar should suffer no loss - except for keywords and history.
For a new start of with a clean database, do the following (on Mac)
navigate PhotoLab to an empty folder
open PhotoLab settings (last tab) and delete the cache
quit PhotoLab 4
delete the /Users/…/Library/DxO\ PhotoLab\ v4/DOPDatabaseV4.* files (up to 3 files)
Start PhotoLab, check settings and make sure that the default preset of your choice is selected.
Quit PhotoLab and reopen it after a few seconds.
Point PhotoLab to a folder that contains (a few) photos and start working.
Thanks for all your replies and there was me hoping it would be easy, but as I use collections and keywords, I guess I will have to live with it…! Thanks again all and wish you all a very merry Christmas.
You wrote: “I moved and renamed folders outside PL and now when I search I have multiple ‘The image cannot be processed since the source file could not be found’”
Since you are seeing this inside PL, why not remove from PL anything creating that error message, then add those files again, with the proper location?
Before I run into the same situation, is it safe to move around any files that are being managed by PL, providing I make the changes while within the PL program? That’s what Lightroom requires. If I want to move or delete files, or rename them, or whatever, I always needed to do this from within Lightroom.
With one small exception, what you wrote is exactly what I’ve been trying to do. PhotoMechanic Plus puts the files in place, and allows me to delete “garbage” files. To be truthful, I used to delete all files except my “keepers”.
Thanks to Joanna and others here, I’ve decided to only delete the obviously bad images, because I think I’m better off using RawFileViewer to select the better images. I still need to track down if the images I’m viewing in PhotoMechanic are based on the raw file, or the embedded jpg. I hope to find that out today.
Bottom line, I will continue to do what you’ve just described, but until I learn RFV well enough to do that work on my own, I will continue to use RFV to learn and understand.
Mike: My work flow for the last 6 months was to import to a folder, edit/delete my images in PL and then outside of PL (can’t do it within PL) move the images into new folders within existing landscape/seascape/food/etc. folders. Not knowing that PL was indexing them each time, so each image has been doubled up in the PL database.
I might have to bite the bullet and create a new database.
Hi Mike,
this was a message to JohnGrindle assuming he is on Windows, but beeing in a hurry didn’t mention or ask further questions … and I dont’t know about Mac OS’s structure … sorry for that.
so long, Wolfgang
On my Win 10 system I use a little program called PhotoMove 2.5 to intelligently copy files from my SD cards to a hierarchical folder structure based on date taken. I then cull and index from within DxO.
I don’t take huge volumes of photos on any particular day and that approach works well for me. PhotoMechanic etc are overkill for my needs. I have learnt a lot from FastRawViewer.
Support from the author is very good.You can even run it as a batch process.
One more option for me to consider. For now, having already purchased PhotoMechanic, I plan to stick with it.
I called the tech support number a few days ago - I wasn’t getting useable embedded images from my Leica M8.2, and when I clicked on the magnifier to show them larger, nothing happened. I can post a more detailed response if anyone wants me to do so, but Andrew at PhotoMechanic figured out what it was - the Leica M8 series cameras create tiny embedded JPG images in the raw files. They’re mostly useless for anyone checking sharpness or detail.
Andrew had me transfer the photos from the memory card to a temporary file on my computer, using a built in tool designed to take the raw image and create a “standard” DNG image, with a large embedded JPG image that I could use for review. It works with any DNG converter, but I selected my Adobe DNG Converter since I already had it installed.
When that finished, I could run PhotoMechanic again, selecting the temporary folder as the source, then renaming files and folders as I usually do, and everything end up in place, with large JPG images for reviewing. After this, the temporary folder can be deleted.
It works like a charm, but I only need it for images coming from my Leica M8.2 camera, which is also the only camera I have that works with infrared.
Back to your post - Is PhotoMove 2.5 free, Open Source, or paid for? Does it also run on macOS? Oh, and welcome to the forum!!!
No problem, and thanks for the update. For a while, I was creating very long file names and folder names, but now I think they’re a pain to work with. I don’t think what you mentioned was a problem, but for sure it won’t be now.
I actually took a break from PhotoLab 4 for a couple of weeks now - I wanted to create infrared images, along with channel mixing. My only camera that captures IR is my old Leica, which isn’t recognized by PL4.
So, I started using my DarkTable once again (just as nice, and just as easy to use as Lightroom), and also Raw Therapee - very powerful, but for me difficult to learn.
I came back to PL4 a few days ago, and all but one of my images came out the way I hoped they would in PL4, but for one, which had no “pop”. I may post that image here later today or tomorrow, to ask what PL4 tools would make it look better without “overdoing” it. Maybe I’ll get to that tonight.
Tomorrow I plan to go back to visit my Peican friends, this time with a Nikon using a long lens, and set up auto-focus to follow the pelican in flight (I hope). I’ll post my favorite image here, for advice. I hope to create something that is at least as powerful at showing the Pelican in flight.
PhotoMove is paid for, but there is a free version to try it out and it will cost you all of $8.99!
It apparently works on Mac if you use Parallels or similar VM.
