Alternatives to Zoombrowser

[Dennis Deck]

I'm faced with finding a more stable alternative to Zoombrowser. It has been an efficient tool for me (1,600+ photo database) but I find it unacceptable that there is no way to recover the database or export all the titles/comments or folder assignment. Key features for me are:
- photo capture (A50 .jpg) with auto file naming
- ability to add titles/comments (either to image file or to database with export capability)
- organize photos in a hierarchy of folders
- browse folders and zoom on selected image or view filename and comments
- fast, efficient operation with modest memory requirements
I have separate tools for basic editing (IrfanView), advanced editing (Jasc Paintshop Pro), and web development (AceHTML).

I've scanned these posts and read what web pages I could find on the products posters mentioned:

a) Breezebrowser - looks like a reasonable tool to capture and view images but it doesn't appear to have capacity to organize the database or export data.

b) iMatch - looks comprehensive though I wonder about performance and the interface looks cluttered or redundant in screen shots. Unfortunately the requirements appear to rule it out -- I have an aging system with Win95.

c) ACDSee - appears to capture, browse quickly, and store comments in exportable form but it isn't clear what organizational capability it has.

Can anyone shed light on the relative capabilites and performance of these products? Thanks.

Also, I'm still looking for a way to extract the comments still in my partially corrupted ZB database if anyone has worked out a solution.

[vandevyver]

Dennis,

I'll describe my way of working, maybe that gives you some alternative ideas. (please share them)

Workflow :

1) upload images from camera or cardreader using breezebrowser's free tool (no generation of exif text files)

2) use breezebrowser to browse the loaded images.
A nice feature of breezebrowser is that you can drop folders from windows explorer onto the breezebrowser, the folder will be opened without going through the menus.

In breezebrowser I delete bad pictures, and add comment (this comment will be written inside the picture -exif-)

Once I have a folder ready for storage, I generate txt files for each picture with the EXIF contents in a seperated directory. I also generate 1 info.txt file with all EXIF information in 1 file to have an overview

Finally I create a directory with html pages and preview images.

The whole bunch of directories with original pictures, exif.txt files, html files stays on harddisk or is transferred to CDrom.

Up to now all information is always recoverable since it is not 'locked' inside a database.

The html pages make a nice presentation possible.

However, there is no way yet to 'search' through ALL the pictures.

3) To be able to search on several criteria, I use Imatch.
All prepared directories (see 2) are loaded in the database. The Exif information is extracted from the pictures again and can be used in search criteria. So the comment filled in in breezebrowser is stored in the Imatch database.

---
I know that I 'waste' disk or cdrom space, but working this way I will never be locked in by any application like Imatch. Note that the support for Imatch is great, I like the product very much, but I feel more confortable knowing that when things go wrong, I still have the basic information to start from.

Also I can take any cdrom and browse throught the pictures on it by using the generated html.

Mmm, best of both worlds?

Still there something I did not solve yet : what about edited pictures. The exif information seems to be lost when an image is edited. Anyone solved this?
---
Even more confused now, or does this made things a bit clear?

All remarks on this way of working are welcome :-)

Luc

[Dennis Deck]

Thanks for the thoughtful & informative response!
I just have a couple specific followup questions:

How long the comment field can be in EXIF? Can you use cr+lf or punctuation to distinguish say a title and further information?

So does iMatch store the comments and keywords/categories separately in a database like ZB?

[vandevyver]

I have no idea what the comment field length can be in exif.

I use my own convention inside the comment field :
who/what/where/info

who : people on the picture or blank
what : the event
where : place
info : other comment

the / is the separator is use consistently. Don't know if it ever will be usefull in the future.

I know that the author of Imatch is working on scripting possibility to handle exif data. So the / separator may become usefull in the future.

Imatch can load the exif information of the picture and store it in a 'property' in the database. This propoerty can be visible when viewing thumbnails and can be used in queries.

[Dennis Deck]

Good suggestion. This is exactly where I was going with the question.

You should be able to use a text editor to search and replace on the / delimiter to reformat the text file as needed for importing into later applications. My guess is that the move to XML (iMatch, FotoAlbum) will increase likelihood that the data can be imported and exported across future applications.

You've convinced me. Just found out today from iMatch author that it should run on my system. I now plan to work out a strategy to recapture my comments from partially corrupted ZB (probably will cut and paste individually from 1,600+ photos into Excel) and reformat for import into iMatch.

FYI - IrfanView is an extremely efficient freeware viewer and basic editor that I have found very useful (but haven't heard mention of it here). I use it to resize, crop, and move files from my directory of originals to my web site directory. It is limited but what it does it does quickly, well, and with modest resources (I can have ZB, IView, and AceHTML all open at once on my aging system). I'll check to see if it removes EXIF or not.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

vandevyver wrote:

Still there something I did not solve yet : what about edited pictures. The exif information seems to be lost when an image is edited. Anyone solved this?

Luc

In BreezeBrowser Tools>EXIF Copy will copy EXIF data from files in the currently selected folder to files in another folder that have the same name. You can slo use the Tools>Timestamp option to set file creation date to that of EXIF data.

Regards,

Roger

[dbookbinder]

BreezeBrowser will copy EXIF information to other JPEGs, but does anyone know of a utility that will copy EXIF information from JPG or CRW files to Photoshop or TIFF files?

Thanks,
David

[PanuWorld]

vandevyver wrote:

2) use breezebrowser to browse the loaded images.
A nice feature of breezebrowser is that you can drop folders from windows explorer onto the breezebrowser, the folder will be opened without going through the menus.



I am personally (still) looking just for a simple replacement for the ZoomBrowser. BreezeBrowser can be used as a simple browser for saved images but it requires using the Windows Explorer with it to view the folder hierarchy of the photo archive simuitaneously with the thumbnails. (And for doing copy/move operations with mouse.)

I wrote some shortcuts and registry entries to ease using BreezeBrowser & Windows Explorer as a simple image organiser. See http://www.panuworld.net/pc/bbfolder/index.htm

For persons using camera just for "fun" i.e. storing personal memories, I think that this kind of "tool" is enough for organizing photos. Instead of ZoomBrowser, you don't lose the Exif data, so you can switch to more professional tools later if you want.

BR,
Panu

[dbookbinder]

You might want to try iMatch. I, too, use it in conjunction with Downloader and BreezeBrowser. It is still, however, very much a work-in-progress, much like BreezeBrowser. Nevertheless, it was the best thing I could find when I evaluated half a dozen or so products a few months ago, and it's improved since then (largely due to the prodding of me and several other users). One of its best features is that it has a scripting engine, so it's fairly easy to expand it to do things that are not in the menus and icons.

- David

[joslawrence]

I know these are old posts but I have a small article on my site covering using BreezeBrowser to restore EXIF data after conversion or editing. The article can be read here http://www.creationview.com/Art-2.html