What Matt said re. stacking. I just checked and cr2 is a supported RAW type, and as long as that's ticked, they should have imported. Not sure why they didn't.
Matt said:You can fill the date field in the program from the filenames, but we don't write EXIF tags (other than rotation).
I really wish you would add EXIF timeshifting. I've wanted it for so long now, and as my marathon "scan our old photos to digital" task never seems to end, I keep other software installed purely for this task, also, every time the clocks change, I always forget to set the clock on my cameras and they end up an hour out for months afterwards!!
InflatableMouse, MC as an image manager really is brilliant. MC12 got some great image library improvements which basically gave us what we have today, but there's not been much love since then. The only initial drawback is the tagging. My advice is to play for while, think about what works for you because we're all different. Things like file and folder settings are bread and butter to MC, so forget about that, instead, concentrate on finding an easy workflow based around how you import your files. For example (I can only talk about my personal preferences and experience, but you never know, might help)
MC comes with stock image fields such as, but not limited to, "People", "Places" and "Events". I spent much time working with these fields, using pane tagging, which is so, so, good for image tagging, only to ditch them all in the end for a single nested keywords field. Everything I have is in that one field. I set the pane down the left, one pane, and it holds everything I need. Maximum real estate for both pane and image, minimum scrolling. The really clever part is that when you expand a keyword branch, MC attempts to keep the opened branch within the pane.
I drop all my new images into an incoming folder, weed out the rubbish, tag, caption etc. then move them to their final resting place in my pictures folders, all from within MC. You have to get a little creative with this approach, because if limited to only the new images, the keyword pane is empty as nothing is tagged, so, I make sure my incoming images working view contains all my photos as well as the new ones, but group them using a custom field that puts all the finished images in a "Tagged" group, while the new images get grouped at the top, ready for tagging. All the keywords are present in the pane so just select the image(s) and tick the boxes.
I've thought about this recently, because for Theater View usage mostly, having gotten all of this info into the keywords field, I now find myself wanting to extract data from there to use in theater view views. MrC helped out with some RegEx stuff that lifts my image ratings out of keywords into a field I called Score, People into a field I called Population, Places into a field I called Location... I'm sure you can see where I'm going here...
The question being, is it really worth the legwork when I could just use the default MC fields and be done with it? I've decided the answer is yes. Tagging in a single nested field so simple and so quick, once all of these things are set, MC then takes care of them and they require zero maintenance. I'm happy, my girls are happy too because they get the Theater View views they asked for.
I have some playlists in Theater View that do picture slideshows to music, and they are so good.
Finally, and probably most importantly, you have to try it for a while, find a work flow that suits, give it a chance, and then commit to it or ditch it. Before moving our photos to MC full time I tried so many different applications, all of them, without exception, promised to make image management like magic... so simple, intuitive interface that gives you exactly what you need where and when you need it, and so on and so on... I gave them all a fair trial, eventually running the Adobe's Elements as MC just didn't cut it back in the v9.1 - v10 days. When stacks came along I examined them closely as I used them extensively in Elements, found them to be solid in MC, made the switch and have never looked back. The amount of time now invested in my MC image library along with the neat things it can do, mean I won't consider an alternative any time in the future unless J River drop the ball in some cataclysmic way or other, which is highly unlikely.
We need more people entrusting their images to MC... perhaps we can then start a "Photophile" lobby for some new features, these audio and video nuts have had enough dev time over the past years already
-marko
Author
Topic: Images in MC - noob questions (Read 1840 times)