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Image Management: IMatch Digital Image Management Solution

Last updated: 15 October 2007
Published in: Managing your digital resources |
Tags: delivery | digital collections | software |

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JISC Digital Media has surveyed a range of image management software developers to gather specific information about their systems. These are the responses from IMatch Digital Image Management Solution.

Please note: The following information has been provided by the system developer/vendor in answer to a detailed survey carried out by JISC Digital Media, but has not been independently verified. It is provided to help you identify systems to evaluate in more detail, but you are advised to check with the system developer/vendor to see if the system has changed or there are later versions available.

There are a wide range of different image management systems available. To help identify those most suitable, we would recommend you also look at our introductory papers on Systems for Managing Digital Media Collections and Choosing a System for Managing your Image Collection.

To compare this system's features with those of others, please see the full list of systems who have responded to our survey on the Image Management Software page.

Information supplied: October 2007

IMatch Digital Image Management Solution www.photools.com
We asked the system developer to use 50-100 words to sum up and promote their system to a very broad audience: IMatch is the Windows-based image management solution for professional photographers, serious amateur photographers, librarians and other users with complex workflows and large image collections. The development of IMatch is driven directly by photographers and corporate users from all over the world, in a continuing dialog with the developer of the software. It is known as a rock-solid, reliable, fast and flexible solution. And it's cheap.
Current version	3.6.0.50
Current version released	October 2007
Next version due (approx)	Continuous Development, Updates/Service Packs every three months approximately
Main sectors aimed at	Corporate or professional (private sector); Government (public sector); Home users
Main users aimed at	Professional photographers; Picture Library staff; Creative staff (e.g. illustrators, designers); Librarians; Archivists; Museum/Gallery professionals; Scientific researchers; Medical professionals; Home users
Type of system		Folder viewer/image browser
		Web gallery system
		Image/photo management system
		Digital asset management system (DAM)
		Musem/gallery/library/achive collection management system
		Virtual learning environment (VLE)
		Content management system (CMS)
		Digital repository system
		Digital library system
Open-source/Proprietary?	Proprietary but incorporates open/standard technologies
Complexity	Simple 'off-the-shelf' system - anyone can download/load disc and install
Maximum size of the catalogue (e.g. number of records or filesize)	About 500,000 to one million images per database, any number of databases supported
Handling of images
Image- object- or workflow-centric?	Image-centric - seperate record for each image
Adding images to system		Captures images directly from a scanner from within the system
		Captures images directly from a tethered camera from within the system
		'Drag and drop' into system
		Scans a computer for new images
		Scans external drives/memory devices for new images
		Scans network servers for new images
		Sets up automatically 'watched' folders
		Keeps system and folders in 'sync'
		Other:
File formats supported		RAW formats
		DNG
		TIFF
		JPEG
		GIF
		PNG
		JPEG2000
		PSD
		PDF (Supported via separate plug-ins)
		EPS (Supported via separate plug-ins)
		Flash (Supported via separate plug-ins)
		SVG (Supported via separate plug-ins)
		Audio formats
		Video formats
Where can images be located?	Can be anywhere on or offline (i.e. system keeps record of offline storage such as CD-ROMs)
Image management		Ability to manage original image files (e.g. move, copy, rename or delete) from within the system
		Ability to organise images into virtual 'folders', 'galleries' or 'categories' to aid management and retrieval
		Image versioning
		Rating system (e.g. star or numbers for best images)
		Automatic generation of thumbnails and preview images
		Ability to zoom image to 100% (full size) within data entry interface
Image editing provision	Basic editing provided by system along with ability to automatically open image in specialist editing software
Image editing provision	Edits are made directly to the original images
Specific image editing functions		Resizing
		Rotating
		Cropping
		Sharpening
		Red-eye removal
		Dust/noise removal
		Brightness and contrast adjustments
		Levels adjustments
		Curves adjustments
		Support for ICC colour management
		Creative filters
Other significant editing functions
Print templates
Auditing of who did what/when to image
Other image-related features
Handling of metadata
Metadata structure	Object-oriented database structure
Customising fields		Add new catalogue fields
		Delete catalogue fields
		Hide catalogue fields from data entry interface
		Re-label catalogue fields
		Re-order catalogue fields
Time saving features		Set up templates or defaults
		Clone or duplicate records
		Automatically catalogue images upon import
		Batch edit metadata
		Global find and replace
Controlled vocabularies		Create drop-down pick-lists
Controlled vocabularies		Support for theasauri (with broader and narrower terms)
Spell-checking/validation		Spell-checking
		Validation of terminology
		Validation of dates and numbers
Support for UNICODE (non-Latin characters)
Importing		Import existing metadata in standard delimited formats
Importing		Import existing metadata in XML formats
Exporting		Export of metadata in standard delimited formats
Exporting		Export of metadata in XML formats
Metadata interoperability (e.g. metadata harvesting, cross-searching)		Automatic exposure of metadata as OAI-PMH data
		Support for Z39.50 searching
		Support for search scripts
Embedded metadata support		Read IPTC metadata from within the image file
		Read EXIF metadata from within the image file
		Read XMP data
		Read other metadata from within the image file
		Write IPTC metadata into image file
		Edit EXIF metadata
		Write XMP data
		Write other metadata
Data-entry interface		Client-based/program-based data entry interface
Data-entry interface		Web browser-based data entry interface
Reporting/auditing		Auditing of who did what and when to the metadata
Reporting/auditing		Editable templates or scripts for generating reports
Other metadata-related features		IMatch supports also the old comment formats in JPEG and some other formats, proprietary meta data used by some companies/organizations is supported by custom-made scripts which are automatically triggered when new images are added or existing images are updated. The same can be done for writing custom meta data if required (rarely, because IMatch supports writing IPTC, EXIF, XMP out of the box already)
Delivery to users
Web browser-based end-user interface
Customisability of interface		System manager can customise interface
Customisability of interface		End-user can customise their view of interface
Publishing of images		Publish as static gallery to Web
		Publish as dynamic searchable Web catalogue
		Publish to CD-ROM
		Email images from system
Search/browse features		Browse collection by categories
		Search the collection
		Search via thesaurus
		Advanced search features (e.g. Boolean logic, wildcard or 'sounds like' searching)
		Content-based image retrieval (CBIR)
Zooming functionality
User interaction		Users can 'bookmark' or store images
		Users can annotate bookmarked images
		Users can upload their own images to the system
		Users can create slide shows
Security/Digital Rights Management (DRM)		Access control based on roles or profiles
		Access control based on individual usernames and passwords
		Compatibility with standard educational authentication services (e.g. Athens or Shibboleth)
		Built-in Digital Rights Management technology (e.g. watermarking)
Interoperability/interaction with other systems		Several scripts are available which allow IMatch to interface with common web gallery systems or public web sites like pbase or Flickr.
Other significant delivery functionality		The search functions contained in IMatch support simple searches and complex, customizable selections, which allow a user to combine any of the over 100 search attributes to create custom queries. These queries can be stored, and later used to drive many of the features in IMatch, from slide show, contact sheets, batch processing to web site generation. IMatch has a built-in slide show feature, but no dedicated self-running slide show on CD feature. There are plenty of packages for that on the market already. But many users prefer to let IMatch create a static slide show in HTML format, and burn that on CD. Such a CD can be viewed by anyone with a browser, without the need to install software. IMatch can add visible watermarks to output images in the batch processor, or other copyright and usage terms. Via custom scripts output images can automatically be transformed, watermark images can be applied and copyright and usage terms can be added to the IPTC meta data in the image.
Company and support information
Country in which system developers are based	Germany
Approximately how many UK users are there?	No response
UK office, representative or primary reseller	No response
Independent user-group for this system?		The IMatch user forum at http://ptforum.photoolsweb.com is a free user community with several thousand of users from over 60 countries. The IMatch Wiki at http://wiki.photoolsweb.com is a great source for How-To articles, FAQ's and hundreds of free scripts for all purposes.
UK-based training available?
System support		Support for IMatch is provided directly by the software developer via email and the IMatch user forum.
Other services available

Please note: The above information has been provided by the system developer/vendor in answer to a detailed survey carried out by JISC Digital Media, but has not been independently verified. It is provided to help you identify systems to evaluate in more detail, but you are advised to check with the system developer/vendor to see if the system has changed or there are later versions available.

To compare this system's features with those of others, please see the full list of systems who have responded to our survey on the Image Management Software page.

Last updated: 15 October 2007
Published in: Managing your digital resources |
Tags: delivery | digital collections | software |

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