Main Concepts

This section describes the main concepts that you will use while working with Daminion.

Main Concepts Learn about customizing the interface. Learn about customizing catalog tags panel. Learn about customizing properties panel. Be acquainted with the thumbnail browser. Explore the tray function in Daminion.

Contents 1 Catalogs 1.1 Cataloging Overview 1.2 Creating a catalog 1.3 Adding media to a catalog 1.4 Removing media from a catalog 2 Tags 2.1 What are Tags 2.2 Assigning Tags 2.3 Renaming Tag Value 2.4 Reordering Tag Values 2.5 Mapping Tags to Metadata

Catalogs

Catalogs are the backbone of Daminon, which contains references to your digital assets and is the primary method of file viewing and organization

Catalogs Learn more about Catalogs in Cataloging Overview. Once you familiarize yourself with cataloging, proceed to creating a catalog. Learn about customizing properties panel. Once you have created a catalog, go ahead with adding media to a catalog. Finally, move to the removing media from a catalog section to remove a media from the catalog.

Cataloging Overview

Catalog is a database file where stores all the information about imported files. Daminion stores only links to the files, and during import actual files and will not copied or moved.
Catalog stores relative links to the files. It means that whenever you move your catalog to a new location all the links will be correctly point to your files.

For instance, you have a folder: “D:\Media\Photos” with photo collection. Supposedly, you created a catalog (photos.dmc for instance) in the same folder and imported your photos from D:\Media \Photos. Now you can copy your folder (D:\Media\Photos) to a new place, for example: E:\Photos.

Daminion will correctly see the files although the folder will be moved to a new location. This is highly useful when your catalog and photos are in removable drives. Some programs are unable to open the files after their database file is moved. This is because they store absolute paths to the files. Damnion also gives you the flexibility to opening multiple catalogs on different page tabs.

A thumbnail version of each file is created when you add files to a catalog in Daminion. Besides the thumbnail, Daminion also stores information about the file known as metadata, along with the file’s location. Keep a note of the following while working with your catalogued media:

• You can search, organize, and maintain catalogs even if your original files are not present. You can still view the thumbnails and information of such files in the catalog.
• As the original files are not embedded in the catalog, Daminion cannot display them in larger files if the original files are missing.
• You cannot recover files from Daminion catalog if you delete a file from the disk. A catalog contains only information about the file, not the file itself.
• Adding files to Daminion catalog will not move or modify the original media files.

Creating a catalog

Creating a catalog in Daminion is easy. To create a new Catalog, follow these steps:

1. Select File –> New Catalog
2. Type the Catalog name and select a path where the catalog will be stored. The catalog will be stored with a .dmc file format.
3. Click Save

Adding media to a catalog

To add media in a Daminion catalog

1. Daminion gives you the ability to add media to a new catalog after you create it. Once you

follow the steps in Creating a catalog, you will be given an option to import media to it.

1. Alternatively, select File –> Import Files or press Ctr+I to add media to the current selected catalog.
2. Click to add media to the current selected catalog.

Removing media from a catalog

To remove media from a catalog, do one of the following:

1. Select one or more items you want to remove from the catalog and press Delete. You will receive a dialog that will ask for confirmation of the removal. You can permanently remove the file from the catalog or move it to Recycle Bin. Alternatively, you can press Edit –> Remove from Catalog to do this.
2. You can also remove the files from the disk without moving it to recycle bin by pressing Shift+Del keyboard combination.
3. If a tag is selected, you will get a new option -> Remove. On selecting this option, you will be able to remove a tag from the file.

Tags

What are Tags

Tags are the easy way to classify and locate your media files.

Catalogs Learn What are Tags. Update yourself on assigning tags. Learn about customizing properties panel. Learn how renaming of tag value is done. Finally, you will update yourself on Reordering Tag Values and Mapping Tags to Metadata.

Tags are the easy way to classify and locate your media files. Multiple tags can be assigned to a single file without taking up additional space on your hard drive. Lists of available tags are shown on the left panel – Catalog Tags.

Compared to folders, assigning a file with multiple tags does not occupy additional storage space. Examples of tags are Rating, Title, Description, Place, Author, etc.

The tags have different behavior –

• Media Format, Camera Model are read only
• Keywords, Categories, People can be assigned as multiple tags for a file. These tags allows for hierarchial structure with unlimited nesting levels. These tags are mapped to metadata (IPTC, XMP) for JPEG, TIFF, PDF, PNG and some other formats that support XMP.
• Collection is not mapped to metadata. Therefore, if you delete the file that was assigned to a collection from catalog and later add it again, you will lose the information about collection.
• Rating: You cannot create a new rating or delete existing values. However, you can assign a rating to files.

Assigning Tags

Tags can be assigned doing one of the following:

1. You can drag one or more media files to the catalog tag panel
2. You can assign or edit tags by changing them in the Properties panel. You can assign multiple tags by separating them with a comma.
3. Some of the tags can be assigned using hot keys, such as Pressing 0-9 for Color Label and Ctrl + 1-Ctrl + 5 for Rating.
4. You can also assign tags by clicking the mouse on the thumbnail browser
5. To add new tags in the Catalog Tags menu, press Insert or right click on and select Add new Keywords

Renaming Tag Value

Tags can be renamed by doing one of the following:

1. Right click on one of the keywords from the Catalog Tags Panel and click Rename. Alternatively, you can press F2. Enter the name of the tag and press enter.
2. Right click on one of the keywords from the Properties Panel and click Rename. Alternatively, you can press F2. Enter the name of the tag and press enter.

Reordering Tag Values

To reorder tag values do the following –

1. Right click on keywords from the Catalog Tags Panel, choose Arrange sub-values
2. You can select either Ascending or Descending. Ascending sorts the keywords alphabetically from A-Z. Descending sorts the keywords from Z-A.
3. Alternatively, you can drag a keyword or the categories from the Catalog Tags Panel to rearrange the tags.

Daminion also gives you the ability to assign multiple tags such as Rating, Title, Description, Place, Author, etc. to a single file without occupying additional hard disk space.

The tags in Daminion have different behavior. For instance, Media Format and Camera Model are read only and cannot be changed. On the contrary, tags such as Keywords, Categories, People can be assigned simultaneously to a single media file.

Daminion also allows hierarchical structure with unlimited nesting levels. These tags are mapped to metadata (IPTC, XMP) for JPEG, TIFF, PDF, PNG and some other formats supported XMP.

- Collection - is not mapped to a metadata. So if you delete the file that assigned to a collection from catalog, and the add it again you’ll lost the information about collection

- Rating: You cannot create a new rating or delete existing values, but can assign a rating to files.

Mapping Tags to Metadata

Most of the tags are mapped into a set of metadata. For example, Place Tag is mapped into eight metadata fields:

• IPTC:Country, IPTC: State, IPTC:City, IPTC:Location
• XMP:Country, XMP: State, XMP:City, XMP:Location
  

Any changes to the Place Tag are reflected in the metadata. During importation, the Place Tag will be filled out from information extracted from the IPTC/XMP. Some formats are not supported metadata while others have a limited support. For example, you cannot save metadata to BMP format. But other formats like JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PDF are well supported. You can exchange data between different programs by metadata. For example, if you set rating 5 for a JPEG file, you can see this rating by Windows Explorer.