ImageIngester                  

New Version 3! Click here.

ImageIngester and ImageIngesterPro do more than just copy images from your camera or card to your computer: They automate tedious, but important, steps in your workflow that you'd otherwise have to do manually, every time you ingest. Steps like making a backup, verifying images, renaming image files and arranging them into folders, applying metadata, and converting to DNG. Note that as of Version 2.4, free ImageIngester is no longer available. If you have free ImageIngester Version 2.3.x or earlier, you may continue to use it, but bugs will not be fixed without upgrading to ImageIngesterPro Version 2.4 or later. Here's the whole list of what ImageIngester and ImageIngesterPro can do: Copying images from the camera or card to your hard drive. Choosing images from a thumbnail viewer, individually or by folder, date, or image type (DNG, JPG, CR2, NEF, etc.). Automatic ingestion and ejection of cards. Backing up images so there's a second, or even third copy, ideally on a separate device such as a FireWire drive. Renaming images to something more descriptive than, say, DSC_0123.NEF. Perhaps something like MJR_20061204_173802_0123.NEF (initials, date, time, and original file sequence number). Arranging images into folders, set up however you like. Perhaps something like 2006/12/04 or 2006/2006-12-04 or Commercial/Muriel's Wedding/01234-01399. Converting images to DNG, which is Adobe's universal raw format. You can choose most of the DNG options, such as full-size JPEG preview and embedding the original raw. Verifying images, to help ensure they got copied OK from the card. You can run DNG Converter without actually converting to check raws; the checker for JPEGs is built-in. Launching a viewer, so iView Media Pro, Bridge, or whatever you choose gets started as soon as ingestion is complete. Adding bulk metadata, so you can insert data that applies to the entire ingestion, such as your copyright notice, keywords, subject and location information, and even iView Media Pro catalog sets. (enhanced in Pro) Establishing Adobe Camera Raw settings, so that the images come up in ACR with your chosen settings already applied. (Pro only) Filtering by image type, which allows you to ignore unwanted files, such as JPEGs from a camera that insists on including a JPEG along side of each raw. Or, you can choose to include only designated files, which is handy when you're using ImageIngesterPro to re-ingest an entire folder tree on your hard drive. (Pro only) Tracking clients, projects, cards, and ingestions in a built-in SQLite3 database, which allows you to review the details of every ingestion you've made, including any notes you've entered at ingestion time. (Pro only) Handling multi-camera shoots so that files from different cameras can be renamed in time-sequence order. (Pro only) GPS tagging based on a track log generated from any GPS device, with optional time adjustment. Versions for Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 and Windows XP/Vista. See the Download page (link at left) for details. ImageIngesterPro (including ImageVerifier) is $40. Click here for details. ImageIngesterPro is based on methods in Peter Krogh's The DAM Book (link at left), but it's flexible and powerful enough to handle almost any raw and JPEG workflow. See the ImageIngester User's Manual (3MB PDF) for more information.     ImageIngester Version History Version 2.4.03 (Mac) A bug that prevented viewers from being launched on OS X 10.4 (Tiger) systems has been fixed. Version 2.4.02 (Mac) Volume mount events are now ignored during ingestion, to prevent IIP from generating an error. (This problem seems to have mostly affected Time Machine users.) Version 2.4.01 (Mac and Windows) [Incompatibility with version 2.3.x.] Version 2.4 and future versions will not run as free ImageIngester, and the Switch Mode menu item has been removed. The 25-ingestion free demo of ImageIngesterPro remains. Version 2.3.x will continue to be available for download at least until 1-June-2008, but no bugs in it will be fixed. (It's very stable.) Bugs, of course, will continue to be fixed in Pro-only Version 2.4.x and later, and features will be added. [Incompatibility with version 2.3.x.] Any macro beginning with "datetime" was treated as if it were "datetime". This caused erroneous macros like {@datetimeoriginal} to be treated as {@datetime}, when they should not have been translated. (The correct macro is {@exif.datetime}.) Check your macros and your file names carefully to make sure you weren't using incorrect macros starting with "datetime". The thumbnail chooser now has selections, with new buttons Select All, Select None, Invert Selection, Check Selected, and Uncheck Selected. All existing lists and buttons are retained. Mac only: Changes have been made to try to fix a bug that caused a crash after ingestion when a viewer was launched. (This bug affected very few users and I have been unable to reproduce it, but it may now be fixed.) Bug that caused a crash when ingesting files with missing or invalid EXIF datetimes has been fixed. Also caused a crash when the image was examined with Tools-Examine. Ingestions that completed without a crash were not affected. Two utilities shipped with ImageIngesterPro hve been updated. gpsbabel is now at version 1.3.5 and exiftool is now at version 7.25. These utilities are only used for GPS tagging. Win only: The thumbnail chooser now has a minimum size. Win only: Images are shown at the normal thumbnail size even if the number of images is large. (Earlier versions reduced the thumbnail size.) Also, scrolling when the number of images is large has been improved. Thumbnails for Fuji raw files (RAF) are now shown in the thumbnail chooser. Version 2.3.04 (Mac) Gives warning on an attempt to set a post-conversion backup without a pre-conversion backup. Version 2.3.03 (Mac and Win) Now extracts EXIF information from Olympus E-3 files. The fix probably helps with other new raw files as well. ExifTool (used for GPS tagging) has been updated from version 6.90 to 7.13. Among other things, it should now handle Olympus E-3 raws (and probably other new cameras' raws as well). On Windows, path names ending with a dot directory have the dot removed before being passed to the viewer. This used to crash Adobe Bridge. Now treats MOS files as raws. Version 2.3.02 (Mac and Win) Metadata is now optionally written to JPEGs (primary and both backup folders) so it's effective in Lightroom and possibly other apps. A new "Merge XMPs" checkbox on the Apps panel controls this feature. Note that Camera Raw/Develop presets are written into JPEGs as well, but they seem to be ineffective. Lightroom User Presets are now listed on the main window drop-down if they're in the User Presets folder. Other preset folders are not accessible from IIP, and neither are Lightroom built-in presets. A Quick Field macro (e.g., {@qf.city}) is now replaced with nothing if there is no corresponding Quick Field. In previous versions it was left as is, resulting in the macro showing up in the metadata. On Windows, there's a new checkbox, "Folder Has Spaces", that causes the folder passed to the viewer to be quoted. This was the default behavior in 2.3.01. It is now not only optional, but turned off by default. If you're having trouble passing the folder to the viewer, try both settings for this option to see if either helps. However, if you uncheck it, make sure the folder path does not have spaces. (Note that the viewer will probably not honor the folder if the viewer is already running.) This item does not apply to the Mac, which does not have this checkbox. The Mac has no trouble with quoted folders, and viewers honor the folder even if they are already running.