one of the problems for me was that if, for example, I wanted to run a quick slideshow of all the baby photos on the TV while there was music playing, "[people]=vada" wasn't cutting it because of runs of 13 photos of "baby in high chair eating chocolate" or similar = boring.
or it would trot out both the original version along with any edited versions of the original file. = boring and irritating.
Possible solutions:
Only import those files you wish to be displayed via MC. Not an answer for me. I've struggled for too long trying to maintain a photoshop elements and an MC image library and I've had little to no success in finding a good workflow for that system. The closest I got was a tag within elements called 'exported to MC'
The solution needs to be able to handle all of my images, not just a select few. So, because of the plus-points mentioned below, I thought I'd have a go at getting MC to do these things with my images too. I think I'm quite close to it. I'll try to find time to knock up all the details of what I've done and post them. I made some notes along the way, as it wasn't all plain sailing, involving many blind allys, some of which I didn't discover 'till a long way up them. I've thought I'd nailed it a few times, only to discover another thing I hadn't thought of, if you know what I mean
I was hoping to pique the interest of others that are caught between the two to see if perhaps I've done some things the long way round or have missed out something pretty fundamental or important. I can tell you right now, viewing 'Version Sets' using MC's library browser (the meerkats above) beats Elements "right click > version set > reveal items in version set", or "find > all version sets" hands down. No contest.
Some of the things I like about Elements:
I really like the fact that I can send a photo(s) to photoshop from Elements via a hotkey press, and that the photo arrives in photoshop with it's new name, ready to save, and when it's saved, Elements automatically links the original and its edited version, but only displays the edited copy. It also passes tags down the set, so if I apply a tag to the displayed, edited file, it is also applied to the original file. You can right click on a 'stack' or a 'version set' and have Elements 'flatten' them. Which means all but the visible file get deleted. So simple. So effective.
Captions applied to images in Elements are written to IPTC tags, whiich can, in turn, be read by many other applications.
Elements allows you some creativity with regard to creating things like online
photo albums, slideshows, VCD's etc.
Elements is not so good with actual file naming and location management, with just basic move/copy commands.
Elements does 'close' matches, which are rather good. it means that if I ask for all the pictures of Vada, it gives me them, just those with her alone in them, but also gives me 'close matches' that include photos of Vada with other people in them. (MC wants this one real bad
)
Some of the things I don't like in Elements:
Tagging in Elements is done mostly via drag 'n' drop, either photo(s) to tag or tag(s) to photo(s). Sounds simple enough, but for some reason, it doesn't cut it for me. MC's panes win hands down in this department.
Finding files in Elements feels cumbersome compared with MC. You can tick a tag(s) for Elements to filter by, or right click and ask elements to exclude a tag from view. There's a 'find' option which is actually not too bad....
it just feels too far removed. that's the best I can explain it really. Finding things in the tag pane is a real pain too. It can get quite long and scrolling up and down all the time is tiresome, MC's Tag Info window can be a bit like that at times. Again, for me, MC wins hands down here too.
What does MC require?
I'm not too keen on those kind of questions to be honest. Everyone and his dog has their own opinion as to "what MC requires", and generally speaking, I prefer to keep mine to myself and just deal with what MC has at the time. I'm constantly lobbying for improved image support though, I trust that the team is well aware of what's needed and will take whatever's on offer.
Here goes then, on this occasion, I'll try an answer...
I would like for MC, (hoped for 11 --> 11.1 --> maybe 12?) to step up to the plate and take on my image library like it did for my audio. In some places, it's so close it's painful.
We can upload html albums using MC and this is great, but we can't specify a field to be displayed either beneath the thumbnail or the main image, and after clicking a thumbnail to see the full size image, the only way back to the thumbnails is via the "Back" button, but there's nothing to indicate that. (seems obvious, but my Mum needed to ask me!) Imagine how good it would be if MC could manage an index page of photo albums... You'd only need to share one link and everyone would have access to all uploaded albums!
e-mailing images... MC can only create a simple email with the file as a regular attachment. The simple email is created with an advert for MC. While that is pretty standard practice, I don't like it and always remove it. I would like for MC to
also (not everyone likes html email) be able to create an email with the pictures in the message body, with our choice of field as a caption.
Previewing images in MC is pretty much a non-starter, but agian, is painfully close. So, with music playing while you work, you want to preview some recently aquired photos. I've found the best way to do this in MC is to use an 'always on top' windowed view. Works great... untill you hit an image that needs fixing. My desire is to tag it as such, red eye, crop, brightness, whatever, and move on to the next image. Not possible though. It's like running into a brick wall at full tilt.
Check out
Doof's Captionator plugin thread... imo, that should be a default image viewing option within MC with full access to the Tag Info window. I think it would work very well indeed.
those are some of the things MC needs to be taken seriously with regard to image management/handling, (imho, of course), you'll notice I didn't venture anywhere near things like access to EXIF data... we'll leave that for another day.
For tagging, searching, organising and viewing (on TV) nothing comes close to MC. It's just too rough around the edges atm with very little else possible once all that's done. Unlike audio, which is largely shackled by the RIAA and their ilk, photos are largely for sharing, and sadly, MC doesn't offer much creativity in that dept. The only reason I'm willing to invest some time bending MC to my will, is that MC supports global drag and drop. So I can open up, say a DVD slideshow creator, and drop images from MC directly into it, which is handy. The only bind being that nothing out there can read the proprietry MJMD tags, so I have to retype all the captions etc.
-marko.
Author
Topic: mimicing PS Elements' stacks and version sets... (success) (Read 8499 times)