Image / video managers, organizers & asset manager review

[Paulrus]

I posted to the Softimage mailing list about my quest to find a good piece of software to manage my approximate 37,000 textures, stock photos & videos. Since I just wrapped up a project and am waiting for some client feedback on another, I took my down time to research what I thought would be just a few packages.

Day turned to night, night turned to day, and I found myself with no real definitive answer. After posting conflicting reviews of ACDSee to the mailing list, I decided it'd be a good idea to consolidate everything into a single post. So here we go. Please keep in mind, this isn't a real "review". It's just my impression of each package based on installing it and trying to use it for what I need. YMMV

I wanted something that would let me organize, filter and sort through all the material on my server, would handle as many image formats as possible, would handle video and if possible would display OBJs as a bonus. (never found one that could do OBJs)

XnView was first on my list to test. It's freeware (donation) and I knew it handled a lot of formats and had some nice organizational tools. What I didn't know was that it either crashes or does not work with network folders. That alone made it useless for me.


XnViewMP is the enhanced version of XnView. You can tell it's enhanced because the icon is thicker. Them's the rules. I don't make 'em, and you don't have to like 'em, but you gotta live with 'em. And I'm pretty sure the only enhancement so far in the MP version is the icon, because it crashed every time I pointed it to a network folder.

Zoner Photo Studio 17's website felt like it was designed by a used car salesman's nerdy son, so I didn't have high hopes for it at all. It just seemed like it was the same level as those CD-ROMs you used to see for sale for $5 that would like you use "amazing clip art" to "create your very own postcards!". But after using it for several hours I can honestly say Zoner Photo Studio 17 is a serious contender.

First of all, Zoner is fairly fast, even when dealing with 37,000 files. It never crashed - not once. And, one feature I really liked was the ability to split the center thumbnail panel either horizontally or vertically and use it as a file manager. I don't know why nobody else does this! It eliminates the incidents where you are trying to drag a pile of images to a folder in a huge list of folders and accidentally bump the mouse and drop the images in the wrong folder as well as drag a folder inside another folder (something you figure out when an old client asks you to make changes to a project from 5 years ago and suddenly all the textures are missing).

Zoner did not choke on HDR's, which is something many other apps have done - including Bridge. I also had the opportunity to send in a tech support request and they were very prompt in their replies. So customer service seems fine.

Zoner Pro 17 costs just $90 and for another $50 you get a "Whole-Household License". I'm not sure what that means & couldn't find any info on their site. But based on my limited experience, I wouldn't have a problem recommending Zoner Photo Studio 17.

FastStone Image Viewer is free and comes with no crapware. Overall it's very similar to XnView in it's layout and functionality, but unlike XnView, it doesn't crash when you point it to a network drive. However, the big drawback to FastStone for me is, it does not seem to support any video formats at all. But when the price is free, you can't really complain too much.

ACDSee Pro 8 ($200) is actually what started this entire quest. I was watching a Feng Zhu YouTube video with my daughter and liked how he had so much reference material organized with ACDSee. So I downloaded it and gave it a try. At first it was all sunshine & lollypops. It seemed to be the professional tool I was looking for. And just like when you're beautiful daughter brings home her first boyfriend, ACDSee left me disappointed. It started crashing and locking up and crashing a LOT. It essentially became the dog that doesn't know the difference between "come here" and "sick em!" - useless.

Picasa is Picasa. It's free. It's ok. It's just not what I'm looking for.

Freshview is another free app, but must not have been that good because I have no recollection of why I removed it after installing it. I think the issue was, it's just an image viewer with a file browser built in and has no organizational tools.

Pictomio has one of those cool "Web 2.0" logos, so it had to be good, right? Well, initially all it did was crash, which probably was a good thing. Because once I managed to figure out the right combination of compatibility settings, chicken bones and goat's blood, I was rewarded with an interface that wanted to party like it's 1995. Pictomio essentially is some code wrapped around Internet Explorer. It couldn't see any network drives or folders at all and has banner ads at the bottom. NetZero is so jealous.

BonAView, like Zoner Pro 17, had a sleezy feeling website. It's big claim to fame is it's "3D Image Previewer" aka the carousel functionality they added to iTunes 10 years ago that nobody uses. BonAView I bid you Bon Voyage!

As I wrote on the mailing list, Phototheca is a piece of software that looks like iTunes and Lightroom had a baby. It doesn't have a browser, so you're forced to import footage (though like bulimic Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, it's not actually ingesting anything, it's just tasting it for it's database & then regurgitating.) But again I was disappointed to find it doesn't handle video, which is a must-have for me.

MAGIX Photo Manager 12 first made me angry by shouting MAGIX at me right in their name. The reason MAGIX is screaming at you is so you don't notice they have a very slimy, sleazy way of trying to trick you into loading your system with crapware - ALAKAZAM! Presto chango you get a TOOLBAR! Instead of asking you to UN-check the crapware you don't want, it says "Please check the 3rd party products you do not want to install" - completely the reverse of everyone else.

Not only does MAGIX feed you sleezy tricks, but they're using a method of accessing Microsoft Workgroups that I haven't seen since Windows NT 3.51. It was impossible for MAGIX to pull a rabbit out of it's own butt, let alone navigate my network.

IDimager Photo Supreme's logo set my hopes very low. They obviously are running their site on Wordpress (not that there's anything wrong with that) and the skeuomorphic icons are enough to make Jony Ive cry. But perhaps that's their diabolical plan.

Photo Supreme comes in 2 versions - a Server Edition and a Single User Edition. For now I'm testing the Single User version, but I am going to download and test the Server Edition next. The biggest negative so far with Photo Supreme has been the fact that it took 5 hours for it to build a database from my server. No other software took this long. I haven't had enough time to test it to know if there's a good reason for the long wait or not. But overall it seems to be a very impressive piece of software. It read all the metadata on my images and created a catalog with categories like People, Events, Places and then subcategories inside those.

Because it took nearly all day to go through all my images, I really haven't had time to put it through any paces. The interface is solid, well laid out, and I didn't experience any crashes. It has it's own scripting panel and it apparently runs Pascal. Seriously? What year is it?

It also has some neat features I didn't see in other apps. Specifically, it'll import data from Lightroom, MediaPro, and a bunch more. So moving from other apps is theoretically easier than starting over. Kind of like no-fault divorce.

Photo Supreme has basically all the organizational tools I was looking for, so it's one of my top picks.

DBGallery, like Photo Supreme, took several hours to go through all my image files. But unlike Photo Supreme, DBGallery does not have an attractive interface. Imagine if a C++ coder saw a picture of the the Quicktime player with it's brushed aluminum interface, watched a Steve Job's presentation and decided they could design an interface and you'd be imagining DBGallery's interface.

DBGallery doesn't seem to have an attached preview window, but instead a pop-up one. Unfortunately the popup also comes with a semi-transparent floating window next to it that says "DBGallery View Navigation".

I really wanted to like DBGallery, but after seeing how moving my mouse over the folders in the thumbnail view gave me a super-neat Pacman effect, I realized DBGallery is just too concerned with imitating other interfaces and not concerned enough with usability. It even has a nifty little "power off" button up next to where the normal X is to exit the program. Why?

I could be totally wrong. I haven't had enough time to really evaluate it, but my gut says DBGallery just is going to constantly have little issues that will slow down productivity because whoever is writing this software thinks they can both program and design user interfaces, that's just not normally the case. It's like asking Steve Wozniak to try to look like Brad Pitt... no can do.

Next, I was reading a photography discussion that's been going on for a couple of years about asset management & that lead me to give Daminion a try. It has 3 pricing levels: Team @ $999, Pro @ $199 and Home @ $99-149. But, to be totally honest, I was not very hopeful for Daminion, regardless of how many boxes it checked off. The developer of the software kept inserting himself in the thread on the photography board and came off like a jewelry store salesman in Glendale: "you try my software! Is good software! New version! You download!"

I went ahead and downloaded the Server/Client version rather than the single user version. It uses PostgreSQL for the database & seems to operate similarly to Alienbrain (which I've used for years). The installation cause a weird hiccup in my Deadline license server, but that was quickly sorted out by stopping PostgreSQL, restarted the Deadline server & restarting PostgreSQL.

Strike one - I finally get it up and running, launch the client, and it asks me to log in (just like Alienbrain). So I log back into the server, load up the Daminion Server Administration panel, create a username for myself and set it to Admin..... and then, to quote Emeril, BAM, "role name not found". I can't make myself an admin, editor, viewer nor guest. The titles are in the drop-down, but the software doesn't recognize them as valid.

Rebooted the server and Daminion continues to give all sorts of problems. I get "class not registered" errors, and I'm still totally unable to create any users with roles. Trying to run the client on my server gives an even bigger pile of errors. "No soup for you!"

So I give up on Daminion for a while to give Photo Supreme's server edition a whirl. Unlike Daminion, who includes PosgreSQL with their server install, Photo Supreme's server edition pops a window up during the install and just tells you how you'd better already have SQLServer installed and configured or you will cry tears of a clown.

Now I have to download a 1.3 gig file and go through all that. Nuts to that! I'll post more on both server-based platforms another time.

There is one more package I wanted to check out, and it's called Evolphin, which is a true DAM and not just an image/video organizer. Someone from Evolphin joined in the conversation on the photography blog as well. The owner of the blog had the same concer that I have. Evolphin has no demo available for download and their website gives no pricing. Just a "contact us for a live demonstration". And, as little Donald Trump said when he got his first customer at his little lemonade stand, "if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it."

The rep from Evolphin claimed they have plenty of freelancers and small businesses using their software and have appropriate pricing, but would never give a clue as to what the actual price was. So, without any way to evaluate it, and no pricing information, I will have to follow Donny Trump's words of wisdom and stick to kool-aid.

So to sum things up:

XnView - http://www.xnview.com/en/ NO
XnViewMP - http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/ NO

Zoner Photo Studio 17 - http://www.zoner.com/ YES

FastStone Image Viewer - http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm MAYBE

ACDSee Pro 8 - http://www.acdsee.com/en/products/acdsee-pro-8 - NO

Picasa - http://picasa.google.com - MEH

FreshView - http://www.freshdevices.com/ - NO

Pictomio - http://www.pictomio.com/Default.aspx - NO

BonAView - http://www.highmotionsoftware.com/products/bonaview - NO

Phototheca - http://lunarship.com/ - MAYBE

MAGIX crappy crapware sleeze parade - http://www.magix.com/us/free-download/photo-manager/ NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

IDimager Photo Supreme - http://www.idimager.com/WP/ - YES

DBGallery - http://www.grrsystems.com/ - a very very weak maybe

Daminion -http://daminion.net/- MAYBE* It has a lot of potential. My problems could be entirely user error.

Evolphin - http://www.evolphin.com/ - NO* It could be great, it could suck, we'll never know.


Hopefully this is some useful information. I'll follow up on Daminion & Photo Supreme's server versions if I ever get them functioning.

-Paul

[Bullit]

Thanks.
Just to understand, you want an image browser that makes a picture database? What kind of specific functionalities you need?

Btw i found this in xnview dunno if might help or not your issue:
http://www.xnview.com/wiki/index.php/Xn ... e_solution
http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.p ... rk#p121905

[bb3d]

I use XnView since years now and find it very stable, also on network drives.

XnViewMP is enhanced, because it's re-written from scratch to be multi-platform (that's what the MP stands for) and it's also multi-threaded and therefore incredibly fast. Unfortunately it still has some annoying bugs, but hey, it's a 0.xx version.

If you need a software that can display images and 3D objects, the only software I know for this would be Deep Exploration from Right Hemisphere, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available anymore.

[FXDude]

I use XnView since years now and find it very stable, also on network drives.

XnViewMP is enhanced, because it's re-written from scratch to be multi-platform (that's what the MP stands for) and it's also multi-threaded and therefore incredibly fast. Unfortunately it still has some annoying bugs, but hey, it's a 0.xx version.

Don't know if it crashes or how enhanced it is, but I giggled when reading this (and other bits) :

"You can tell it's enhanced because the icon is thicker."

But thanks a bunch for that very thorough(and fun) review!!

[Paulrus]

Here's a link to the photography blog I mentioned earlier.

http://www.bkwinephotography.com/techno ... -software/

Apparently Evolphin's offering is $700 per user plus maintenance.

[BenR]

Hey Paul, great stuff. Too bad there's no obvious winner yet. Please keep us updated.
Ben

[Paulrus]

Believe it or not, I apparently forgot a few that I had started testing.

I am totally ruling out Daminion Server for now. It just requires too much effort to be useful. It had issues with Chrome being the default browser on my Win 2012 server and when I set IE back to being the default, IE gave all sorts of warning messages after I reinstalled Daminion about things like chat rooms trying to be accessed. If you had a full-time team of artists of say 10-15+ and an IT guy on staff, then something like that might be worthwhile.

In the article I linked to, one of the guys says he's settling on PhaseOne Media Pro. It's one of the packages I'd downloaded but just didn't have a chance to play with it. At the moment it's scanning my texture library, but just scanning the interface (I like to make the 1980's Cylon sound while it scans) it seems to have plenty of ways to organize and categorize things.

[EDIT]
Media Pro finished scanning fairly quickly. One issue I've noticed it, the interface feels sluggish. I'm not sure if it's still doing some housekeeping in the background, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now. I noticed it also has a scripting window, but Media Pro runs VBS, which seems a bit more of a logical choice to me than Pascal. It also seems to have a lot of ways to organize & categorize things - keywords, labels, ratings, catalog sets, events, people, etc. It's certainly looking like an interesting option.

I also think I failed to mention iMatch5 from Photools.com Studios. It's honestly very good. It blows Zoner out of the water when it comes to being able to actually organize media into things other than folders or ratings. You can organize by catagory, timeline, and create collections. This is a big plus for me because I'd like to create collections of image maps, etc., on a client by client and project by project basis, and keep them all referenced to the server. It's $110 to buy, which isn't too bad considering all the features it has. I'm going to try to spend a bit more time with it and see how things go.

I managed to get Photo Supreme's server edition up and running as well. I originally complained it required you to run Microsoft's SQL server, but I was wrong. They have 2 editions. 1 runs on SQL server and the other runs on PostgreSQL, so you have a choice. The server edition is essentially the same as the local version, except you have a login screen when you start the client, obviously.

[Paulrus]

For the past 2 days I've been trying my best to get XnViewMP to work. It's been frustrating to say the least. It's - crash, crash, crash, corrupt database, work for a while, then crash again.

One of the things that sets it apart versus most of the other applications is, it includes a file browser. To me that's important because I don't want to have to drop down to Windows Explorer to move images around. If I buy some stock and it's sitting my download folder, I want to be able to move it to the appropriate folder on my server from within the application so I can add any tags I want, etc.

So far, IMatch 5 has been probably the most impressive of the bunch. If you've got OCD, you'll love IMatch 5 because you can organize things a thousand different ways. The biggest drawbacks I've seen with it are, the lack of any kind of file browser and it's very slow to load when you have a lot of images (even with an SSD). But once it's loaded, it's a really nice application to use. If you don't need an integrated file browser, it's probably worth a look.

Phase One Media Pro had the most promise and has been the biggest disappointment by far. It looked like it would be the clear winner. It has a file browser, it has tons of ways to organize, categorize, filter, etc., your files. AND, it supports tons of formats. But the problem is, it's slower than a 90 year old woman driving a Prius. The entire application is plagued with (Not Responding) messages, each and every time you do anything at all! Touch a drop down, wait 30 seconds for anything to happen. Click a button, wait another 30 seconds. It makes it completely unusable.

Phase One's argument would be that you should create lots of little databases instead of just one. But that defeats what I'm trying to do - have a central, organized view of all the stuff sitting on the server.

Not sure if any of this is helpful or not. Maybe I'm the only one who is obsessed with keeping things organized.

-Paul

[Bullit]

The Xnview browser has also a big advantage, you can click on show files in subfolder button. So all files can be shown even if we don't go deep in the tree.

[Paulrus]

True, but many of the others can do that as well.

XnViewMP has crashed 3 times today, which is just frustrating.

One thing I'm trying to understand is the relationship between WIC and generating thumbnails. I know you need to download some WIC codecs if you want to read RAW files, but one dev said you also need them to generate thumbnails from vector files like EPS or AI.

It's been an interesting learning experience so far.

[KMurat]

Hi Paul,

I've just stumbled upon to this post where you mentioned our Daminion. I am one of the developers of this product and will be happy to help you with installing and configuring the Daminion Server.

There were some issues in the early builds with the automatic PostgreSQL configuration. But in the upcoming Daminion 3.4 (1109) version with support for multiple shared catalogs all should be Ok.

If you'll drop me a private message we can arrange a TeamViewer session to solve all Daminion questions and probably arrange some personal trainings.

BTW if you need a digital asset management that need to be used on a multi-user or multi-computer environment I suggest you to avoid using any standalone programs including our Daminion Standalone version. These type of programs weren't designed for such things and can damage your database because most of them use standalone database engines.

BTW Daminion can manage SoftImage .xsi (as well as any other custom formats) files (via the "Catalog > Import Filters..." option).

Look forward to hearing from you soon.

[Paulrus]

Thanks for the reply. I can give you my specific run down of issues I see with Daminion.

First, the trial has a limit on the number of items you can import. But one of the issues I wanted to test was how well the application handles dealing with 35-40,000 files of different types.

Another issue I personally had with it was the lack of any sort of file browser. I want to avoid having to use both an explorer window and a 2nd application to deal with files. I want everything self contained.

Unless I'm mistaken, I could not find a way to get Daminion to import entire directories other than dragging them from an explorer window into Daminion. Again, personally I really dislike this workflow. I want everything to be handled inside the application.

I can't recall anything else at the time. Once I hit the file import limitation & lack of file browser, I pretty much crossed it off my list.

-Paul

[KMurat]

Thanks for the reply. I can give you my specific run down of issues I see with Daminion.
First, the trial has a limit on the number of items you can import. But one of the issues I wanted to test was how well the application handles dealing with 35-40,000 files of different types.

You can evaluate our Daminion Server edition that is much faster (with PostgreSQL in the backend). It is limited by time (2 months) but not limited with a number of files per catalog. The upcoming Daminion Server 3.4 version (will be released tomorrow) allows to create and manage multiple shared catalogs.

We have customers who use Daminion Server to manage more than 1.5 million of their media files. So we optimize the program to work with huge number of files.

Another issue I personally had with it was the lack of any sort of file browser. I want to avoid having to use both an explorer window and a 2nd application to deal with files. I want everything self contained.

There is the separate Folder panel that can be accessed via the "Window > Folders" menu



It allows you to display the list of imported folder in a separate list.

Unless I'm mistaken, I could not find a way to get Daminion to import entire directories other than dragging them from an explorer window into Daminion. Again, personally I really dislike this workflow. I want everything to be handled inside the application.

There are 5 ways to import your directories to the Daminion:
- Drag and drop
- Copy & Paste
- Rescan Folders
- Via Auto-Rescan Folders feature (works in the the Daminion Server edition only)
- Via the Add Files button

I can't recall anything else at the time. Once I hit the file import limitation & lack of file browser, I pretty much crossed it off my list.

Hope to resolve these problem soon

[Paulrus]

I appreciate the reply. I'll give it another try.

I was under the impression both the server and local versions had a file limitation.

[KMurat]

Below is the link to the latest Daminion Server 3.4 (1110) version:
http://daminion.net/files/DaminionServe ... 0.1110.zip

It contains both Client and Server parts that can be installed on the same computer.

BTW we can arrange a TeamViewer now to quickly solve all possible questions/issues. Drop me a message to our online chat now if you would like to take advantage of my offer.

[Paulrus]

Sorry to turn the Softimage Community to the Daminion Q&A community. I'll take this offline. But to be clear, this is what I see for the Folder view & is the reason I was under the impression there's no file manager. As you can see by my screen grab, there's no folders & no way to navigate anywhere.