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Extensis Portfolio Standalone what prog can import its catalogs and replace it ?


BoBman

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Hello,

I have been a user of Extensis Portfolio standalone creating thumbnails, keywording them, using its custom fields such as Location, People names, Car Type, Aircraft Type etc which help in reminding me just what the exact name was I applied last time. Now that I am contributing to Alamy I can embed these into the image before uploading to Alamy and these become Alamy tags. That aspect is important.

 

However Extensis have discontinued Portfolio standalone, the price for Portfolio server is well beyond most individual users pockets. It still works on Win7 and 8 but there will come a time it may not, so before procedding with a vast backlog of cataloging and wishing to get away from the practice on non camera taken images, of placing the same image into different subject matter folders, duplication triplication or worse not being good practice !   I need to rethink my approach with a new program, using it on all my raster images.

 

One prog (Phase One Media Pro SE) mentioned as an alternative is not able to embed edited metadata to JPEG or TIFF files in the same way that Portfolio was able to,  so thats no good !

 

What is there I can use to import the Portfolio catalogs and continue to do this ?  To have to re-thumbnail thousands of images and apply their keywords all over again is out of the question ! This move by Extensis is soul destroying. I am hoping to also use the same program to take over from WhereIsIt which again is discontinued, it made thumbnails of every image,  vector file, video etc I had on all my removeable media and allowed me to search on folder and file names and find where a file was. These thumbs one didnt keyword by the way, it just used the file and folder names., such caused me to do the duplication etc I mentioned.

 

The new program must allow other progs to take over should that prog go the way of Portfolio and WhereIsIt. Thumbnails and their keywords for the photo library must be able to be seen and work as before.

 

So either a prog to just replace Portfolio or also conveniently thumbnail and catalog all my files and folders.

 

I eagerly await your suggestions.

 

BoBman

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Most photographers seem to use Adobe  Lightroom nowadays. If you've keyworded your photos in the IPTC area with software such as Photoshop they should import without a problem and Lightroom will create its own set of thumbnails. One downside is that you'll have to use the export function to retain keywords added in Lightroom. I don't think the catalog automatically writes this data to file unless you specifically do so.

 

Many years ago I switched from Cumulus, a similar program, and was able to import my files to Lightroom without a problem. You can download a 30 day working demo from Adobe. Both the CC version as well as the stand-alone version are available.

 

fD

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Hi,

 

all keywords were applied with Portfolio, far better than photoshop as the lists are there to pick them from. Photoshop will only allow viewing of a few pics at a time and I would imagine application of keywords one image at a time., whilst I do many.

I have heard of use of Lightroom, though folk say not as comprehensive as Portfolio, but will Lightroom import the Portfolio catalogs, thumbnails and keywords ?

What do I need to do to get it to show me the thumbs and the keywords of all the files already cataloged and will it create and populate with the keywords the  Custom fields such as names, Car types etc that I had ?

 

I will also not do subscription as the pricing assumes its my main player of a program and as I use many progs the concept of subs is totally crippling and financial suicide, one never owns a single byte of the prog after many years. I will if it does standalone buy that instead.

 

Obviously Lightroom wont deal with all PC files but just raster images.

 

Cheers

 

BoBman

 

 

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Try Adobe Bridge and see if it suits your needs.  The price is right (free) and it allows you to keyword multiple images.  It will not store keywords for you though, but you could do that in another program.  Its pretty easy to transfer your keywords from an existing image to a new one in Alamy image manager.  Bridge is a handy tool to have no matter what.  I use it to review images at 100% before uploading. http://www.adobe.com/products/bridge.html

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  • 5 months later...

Hi,

Bridge,...I would want the keyword list in the prog though, select the image, select the keyword hit allocate, rather than hop between progs, also I want the prog ideally to also catalog my other files, CAD, Video etc. Msoft office etc.

ACDSee is best contender but crazily wont indicate which folders have had content added or amended, so they say, and we all open up raw files, edit them then save etc.

Portfolio did that, the need goes without saying in fact.

 

Lightroom , if anyone can shed light on the issues I found ?

my test notes say:-

doesnt support bmp unfortunately, as well as not doing 'non photos'.

Doesn’t indicate which folders are being shown,having all D drive folders listed when only one is (or was) looked at is confusing.

Finding original file... R/C preview no options, reduce to thumbs r/c show in explorer, launches explorer but image not picked out.

Colours same as Photoshop....NO, unable to see colour profile setup.

Interface...Unable to see folder names and subfolders full as unable to expand side window.

Just generally confusing as to everything !

 

What else is there to consider ?

 

BoBman

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I ran into the same problem with Portfolio but fortunately I am on a Mac and I keyword in Bridge.

My archives consists of .DNG, TIFF, or Photoshop files. I did all the metadata keywording and processing in Bridge or photoshop. Bridge can save the metadata and the processing data for each file in the header of each file. There is no big all in one Lightroom processing file, or Lightroom sidecar files using Bridge or photoshop. The metadata is embedded in the actual file. This means you can use the OS to move files around, and not loose your Keywording or processing data.

I have the entire archive on one 6 TB hard drive. In the mac OS I just do a search by keyword, or file name, or any other parameter, on the 6 TB hard drive. The mac OS opens a separate window containing OS generated real time thumbnails of all of the images that match the search parameters. It may be 10  or it may be 1,000 files. You can use the OS to make the thumbnails any size you want.

If I highlight a thumbnail and then give a <Command i> it brings another window that shows all of the metadata embedded in that file except for the processing information. I often cut and paste the keywords and captioning from this old image file, to brand new, just being keyworded files, if they are similar.

If I want to see the thumbnail enlarged I just highlight the thumbnail and then press the spacebar to see the image enlarged to full screen in the Mac OS. If I want to do further work or Keywording I just copy the file to a different drive and open it in Bridge or photoshop. When finished I move the file back onto the 6TB hard drive, The system asks me if I want to replace, I say yes, and the file, complete with changes, is back in the archives.

Remember all of this searching, thumbnail generation, copying keywords, is done in the Mac OS. You will need a fast computer. Depending how you have worked on your files, and the type of files, you may be able to also do this in Windows.  I think this is why they abandoned the stand alone version of Portfolio. There was no need for it.

 

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21 hours ago, BoBman said:

 

 

Lightroom , if anyone can shed light on the issues I found ?

my test notes say:-

doesnt support bmp unfortunately, as well as not doing 'non photos'.

Doesn’t indicate which folders are being shown,having all D drive folders listed when only one is (or was) looked at is confusing.

Finding original file... R/C preview no options, reduce to thumbs r/c show in explorer, launches explorer but image not picked out.

Colours same as Photoshop....NO, unable to see colour profile setup.

Interface...Unable to see folder names and subfolders full as unable to expand side window.

 

Just generally confusing as to everything !

 

What else is there to consider ?

 

BoBman

 

doesnt support bmp unfortunately, as well as not doing 'non photos'.

bmp - do you really need support for bmp files? 

 

Doesn’t indicate which folders are being shown,having all D drive folders listed when only one is (or was) looked at is confusing.

Not true. It highlights the folder being used.

 

Finding original file... R/C preview no options, reduce to thumbs r/c show in explorer, launches explorer but image not picked out

Not true on a Mac at least. Show in FInder finds the image and highlights it in the Finder.

 

Colours same as Photoshop....NO, unable to see colour profile setup.

Lightroom does some serious colour management but it is all under the covers mainly to avoid confusion which is so prevalent. It uses a colour space in the develop module very close to ProPhoto RGB  which is massive. You have no choice in this. When you open a raw image in Photoshop you choose in the LR Prefs which colour space to use for the conversion. 

 

Interface...Unable to see folder names and subfolders full as unable to expand side window.

You generally only see folders from which you have imported images. This saves a lot of clutter.

 

It's only confusing until you learn to use it properly. Then it is pretty excellent I think. But it is important to learn it properly. I did with the help of Martin Evening and Jeff Schewe books.

 

I used to use Bridge and it is horrendously clunky and slow as an image management tool in comparison. Bridge is a file browser so has to keep track of the actual files at all times and has a terrible propensity to lose cache. Lightroom is orders of magnitude more efficient.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi,

No one has suggested a prog yet that can import an Extensis Portfolio catalog.

How have ex Portfolio  users coped, what are you using now and how did you get the thousands of Images cataloged in Portfolio into the software ?

 

BoBman

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Thanks John,

I shall revisit.

my notes from testing last year had issues, but I need to ask support and see if they have answers :-

Primitive, cant see watch folders, need to ask. It asks for select folder as contact sheet when launches but having done so, where is this next time ?

Sharpness same as Pshop...CR2.. no, its quite bad .

Custom Keyword fields as in Portfolio  such as TownsVillages, EmotionTerms, Animals, can't see a way.

Keyword panel...cant see one at all.

Search on Keyword, need to ask as video shows it needing to be typed in, and as such it could differ from what was used.

 

Assigning KW's video on youtube looked very good.

 

BoBman

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33 minutes ago, BoBman said:

Thanks John,

I shall revisit.

my notes from testing last year had issues, but I need to ask support and see if they have answers :-

Primitive, cant see watch folders, need to ask. It asks for select folder as contact sheet when launches but having done so, where is this next time ?

Sharpness same as Pshop...CR2.. no, its quite bad .

Custom Keyword fields as in Portfolio  such as TownsVillages, EmotionTerms, Animals, can't see a way.

Keyword panel...cant see one at all.

Search on Keyword, need to ask as video shows it needing to be typed in, and as such it could differ from what was used.

 

Assigning KW's video on youtube looked very good.

 

BoBman

 

I have an older version of PM, which has issues, as you say -- e.g. sharpness definitely not so good. My needs are fairly basic, though. I haven't played around much with PM's more advanced features. Good luck.

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