Huge images in Camera RAW, TIFF, JPEG2000, PSD, and BMP formats are now cached as JPEG previews and can be viewed at the same speed as regular JPEG images. This is especially noticeable when images are very large (more than 300 MB) or located on networks with lower bandwidth connections.
This option is turned on by default but can be switched off via program Preferences. When this feature is enabled, thumbnail generation and import speed will be slower, but the previewing of large images will be much faster and it will also reduce the CPU load of the Server PC.
To change this option, do the following:
For Local catalogs:
Launch your Daminion Standalone version
Go to the main menu: Edit > Preferences
Switch to the Accelerate Preview option
For Server catalogs:
Launch the Daminion Server Administration panel on your server PC
Go to the main menu: Administration > Preferences
Switch to the “Accelerate Preview” option
If the “Accelerated preview of large images” option is checked, Daminion will also store full-size JPEG previews of large images when rebuilding thumbnails.
You can limit the maximum size of JPEG images by turning on the “Limit maximal JPEG preview size” option. For example, with 100 Megapixels limit your JPEG previews can have maximal sizes of 10000×10000, or 20000x5000pх, etc…
Which media formats does this option work for?
It works for Camera RAW, PSD, TIFF, JPEG2000, and BMP formats only.
Where will my JPEG previews be stored?
For local catalogs: in the ~Thumbs\preview folder in the same folder as your local .dmc catalog.
For shared catalogs: in the “preview” sub-folder of the folder that was selected to store the thumbnails from your server catalog. This can be checked or configured via the Daminion Server Administration panel individually for each catalog.
Please note: this feature is only available in Daminion Team Server versions!
Access control allows you to restrict access to files for specific users and groups. Unlike user roles which maintain user access on the catalog level, access control allows you to specify set up access permissions on the file level.
Starting with Daminion 6.7, this option can be activated both in the desktop client and web client.
How to set up Access Control to specific files for one user
Note: everyone from the “Administrator” group has access to all files in the catalog regardless of the access control settings set on those files.
Log into the catalog as administrator and select the file(s) you wish to set access permissions on.
In the below example, we need to provide an access to files with the Brand “Columbia” for a user “Jose”.
To do this, select all necessary files (1) in the thumbnail area (2), then from the Item Menu (3) select “Set Access Permissions” (4).
In the window that opens, click the dropdown list (1) and select a user or group who should have access to the selected files (2). In our case, it’s a user Jose.
Now only “Jose” and administrators will be able to see the files with the tag “Brand: Columbia”.
Note 1: Access permissions apply only to individual files. If you add new files to the tag “Brand: Columbia”, these files will be visible to all users by default and you will need to manually set access permissions to them.
How to set up Access Control to specific files for a group of users
Log into the catalog as administrator and click Catalog > Access Control.
A new tag “Access control” will be displayed in the Tags panel.
Right-click the Access Control header and select “Add Group”.
In the window that opens, specify a name for the group. In our case, it is “Design team”.
A new tag will be added under the header “Access control”. Now, add users to the newly created group. To do this right-click the tag “Design Team” and select “Edit Group”.
In the window that opens, add users to the group. In our case, the users are Anderson and Dean.
Now, specify which files should be seen only by the Design team group, in our case, these are the files from the category “Current design project”. Display the files in the thumbnail area, select the files and drag and drop them to the tag “Design Team”.
Now 24 files will be visible only to the members of the Access control group “Design Team” and Daminion administrators.
Note 1: Access control applies only to individual files. If you add new files to the Category “Current design project”, these files will be visible to all users by default and you will need to manually set access permissions to them.
Note 2: The process of setting access permissions described above works in the same way for Daminion Security authentication scheme and for Active Directory User mapping authentication scheme.
How to set up access control for AD Group Mapping authentication scheme
Please note: this feature is only available in Daminion Team Server version 6.0 and higher!
To set up Access control on files level for AD groups, go to Daminion Server Administration panel, select “Catalogs” and double-click the catalog where you want to activate this option.
The “Catalog Settings” dialog window will open. Click the “Access Control” tab and add the access control groups here. These can be the general Access Control groups that are mapped to the user roles or new AD groups.
In our example, Daminion Admins is the general AD group mapped to the user role “Admin”.
The AD group “Architects” is not mapped to Daminion user roles, but the members of this group are also the members of one of the groups mapped to Daminion user roles.
Once the Access Control groups are added, open the Daminion catalog and display the Access Control tag via Catalog > Access Control. The available groups will be listed.To assign the files to the groups, select the files in the thumbnails area and drag&drop them to a group.
Now, the members of the group Daminion Architects will only be able to see the files assigned to their group.
This feature is available in Daminion Team Server 6.7 or higher!
Access Control on Folder Level allows you to control the visibility of the contents of the folders and their subfolders. The contents of the folder set to Access Control are visible only to those people who have access to this particular folder. Access Control settings are applied automatically to the new files added into this folder.
Please note that:
1 – Once activated, the Access Control on Folders Level feature cannot be disabled!
Please make sure you do need to have this feature activated in your catalog as it may also decrease the search speed in the catalog!
2 – Different subfolders may have different Access Control settings. For example, user John may not have access permissions to the parent folder “Flowers”, yet have access only to its subfolder “Daisy”.
3 – Access Control on Folders Level and Access Control on Files Level are complementary rather than mutually exclusive tools. For example, user Josh may have access permissions just to a few files from the folder “Flowers”, but not to the whole folder which means that new files added into this folder will be hidden from him.
4 – Access Control on Folders Level can be activated with all three authentications schemes: Daminion server security, Active Directory Users, and Active Directory Groups schemes. With the latter two, access permissions to folders are automatically picked up from your file system.
5 – If you are using the Active Directory Users\Groups authentication scheme, the permissions will be retrieved automatically from the file system.
To activate Access Control on Folders level, right-click a folder and select Security.
You will see a confirmation dialog window informing you that this feature cannot be deactivated.
In the window that opens, click the Add button and select Users and Groups who can see the contents of the folder. If you are using the Active Directory Users\Groups authentication scheme, the permissions will be retrieved automatically from the file system.
You can set different access permissions on subfolders. For example, we can give John access permissions to the folder “Daisy”
Once applied, this is what the Security menu looks like:
Now, if John logs in, he will be able to see only 12 files.
You can also give access permissions to a few files located in the locked folder instead of giving permission to the whole folder or moving the files around.
To do this, select one or more files, click Item > Set Access Permissions > Select a user who should see the files. For more information please check out this article.
In our example, we give John access to only two files from the folder “Rose”.
This feature is only available for Daminion Server versions!
In order to use the Web-Access feature to publish your catalogs, it must first be installed and activated.
Installing the Web Access feature
Open the Daminion Server Administration Panel. In the file menu, click on “Administration“ and then on “Web Access”.
This opens the Web Access settings dialog.
Click “Reinstall“.
Web Access will now be installed. Once Web Access is successfully installed and activated, the following dialog window appears:
To publish one or more catalogs for external access via a web browser:
Click the “Add“ button.
In the following dialog window, chose a catalog from the drop-down list and give it an alias (this name will be part of the web link), then click “OK“.
In the “Register Web Access” section of the “Web Access” dialog you will now see the newly created web link to your catalog.
Select the catalog and click the “Open in Browser” link to open the catalog in your web browser.
You can now share this link with other users so that they can access your catalog. For doing this, they will also need a username and a password, which you can create via the “User Management” dialog window. This dialog also allows you to control access rights to your catalog.
The watermark feature allows you to add a watermark to your images, like the one in the sample below.
The watermark could be your company logo for example or a bitmap-text containing your copyright information.
To launch the watermark editor, select an image, click the “Export” button in the upper toolbar and select “Copy to Folder” or “Send by Email“. In the window that opens, click on the dropdown menu under “Transform” and select “Customize“.
You will see the “Customize Export Presets” dialog as shown in the screenshot below. Press the “Add Watermark” dropdown menu and select “Customize…“. For instructions on how to customize export presets, please refer to Customized Export Presets.
To create a new watermark preset, click “Choose Image…” in the top right-hand corner of the dialog box and select an image from your computer hard drive.
Enter a descriptive name in the “Preset Name” box (one that helps you remember the watermark setting for later use). Use the “Position” button to place the watermark where you want it to appear over the master image and set the watermark’s transparency with the “Opacity” slider – the lower the value, the more transparent the watermark. If your chosen watermark image is larger than the master image, check the “Scale Watermark” option to resize it automatically.
Your final settings should look something like the ones in the screenshot below.
Click the “Save” button to save your watermark preset. The dialog will close and the newly created watermark will appear in the “Add Watermark” dropdown list in the “Customize Export Presets…” dialog. You can now add this watermark preset to your preset export settings.
After the final export, all your images will contain your selected watermark.
Daminion supports a wide variety of file formats. Nevertheless, there may be rare occasions when you need to import a file with a format that Daminion does not recognize by default. In such cases, Daminion enables you to integrate the unknown format manually.
To add an unrecognized format to the Daminion import filter, navigate to the File Menu and click Catalog > Import Filters.
In the dialog box that opens, enter the file extension of your unrecognized file in the text box at the bottom (in our example, we entered the DVD video format, VOB). You can enter multiple file types simultaneously. But please note that all entries must be separated by a semicolon.
After you have entered the new file extension(s), click OK to confirm your choice and close the dialog box. The file extensions are now included in Daminion’s list of importable formats.
As you can see from the screenshot above, Daminion gives these user-defined file formats a generic thumbnail preview and lists them in the Tags Panel as Unknown media formats.
In all other respects, Daminion treats these files the same way it treats all other media files. Files of “unknown” format that are linked in Windows to an external viewer will automatically open in the viewer when double-clicked in thumbnail view in Daminion.
See Adding Custom Thumbnails to learn how to change the default thumbnail preview into one that is user-defined.
Assigning custom thumbnails to unknown file formats in Daminion
Daminion shows thumbnail previews of all imported files. For image files, the preview is a bitmap of the image; for video files, it’s the first frame of the video sequence.
Unknown file formats added manually to Daminion’s import list are shown as a default preview (like the “unknown” manually-added VOB video file in the screenshot to the left).
Daminion allows you to change this default preview to a more meaningful image of your own choice.
In order to import and manage these files, you must first add the unknown format to Daminion’s list of imported filters, as described in the chapter Adding an unknown file format.
A standard preview thumbnail is displayed for manually added file formats, either because Daminion does not know the structure of the particular file format and is, therefore, unable to read the embedded preview, or because this type of file doesn’t generally contain a preview image.
In order to display a meaningful preview, the imported file must be accompanied by a specially named jpeg file.
Let’s say you have a VOB video file, and you want Daminion to display it with your own thumbnail. First of all, select a jpeg image for Daminion to use as the thumbnail preview.
In our example, we chose a jpeg file, ferris_wheel.jpg, whose name and image are closely associated with the video content. The jpeg and the video file must be stored in the same folder.
For Daminion to use your jpeg file instead of the default preview, you must rename the jpeg in the following way:
filename.ext.thumb.jpg
Replace the first part, filename.ext, with the name of the video file. In our case, this gives us footage.vob.thumb.jpg
Now, when you import this video file, Daminion automatically looks in the source folder for a jpeg file that fits this naming convention. If such a file exists, it is automatically used as the preview thumbnail for this imported video file.
You can also use this method to create custom thumbnail previews for files you have already imported. To do this, choose a suitable jpeg, place it in the same folder as the file you’d like it to represent, and follow the renaming procedure as explained above. Now, select the file to be linked to the jpeg thumbnail and press Ctrl + B. Daminion will update the preview for this file and incorporate the new custom thumbnail.
Apart from assigning descriptive tags such as Keywords, Categories, and Events to your digital assets, Daminion also allows you to further classify them with star ratings.
Use star ratings to highlight the best or most important photos in your catalog. You can, for example, browse through the images of a photoshoot and separate the good ones from bad ones by assigning them stars, and then select the 5-star favorites in a series to send for printing or to the client.
Daminion’s rating system allows you to assign 0 through 5 stars, including half stars.
5 Ways to rate items
You can rate an item directly:
On the preview thumbnail
In the File menu
In the Catalog Tags panel
In the Properties panel
Using keyboard shortcuts
On the preview thumbnail
Click the respective square at the bottom of the preview thumbnail.
In the file menu
Select one or more images that you want to rate.
In the File menu, navigate to the Item > Set rating and select the appropriate ratings from the drop-down menu.
Alternatively, right-click the thumbnail to open the menu and navigate to Set Rating.
In the Catalog Tags panel
Expand the Rating tab in the Tags panel, select one or more items in the Browser window, hold the mouse pointer, and drag and drop the items to the respective star rating.
On the left of the Rating panel, you can see how many elements in the catalog have already been assigned the same star ratings. Click the small circle next to the number to display the assigned items in the Browser window.
In the Properties panel
To change the rating of the currently selected item in the Properties panel, open the Description tab and click the desired rating.
Using the keyboard
You can use the following keyboard shortcuts to assign ratings directly to selected items.
Daminion can import AutoCAD DWG and DXF files, but it’s hard to find the right drawing visually because the preview of these files is a default icon rather than a quality thumbnail.
However, if you download and install the free DWG TrueView from the AutoDesk you will be able to view quality thumbnails of your AutoCAD DWG and DXF files, not only in Windows Explorer but also in Daminion.
AutoCAD thumbnails that still appearing as default icons can be rebuilt in the following way from the Daminion menu: Item > Rebuild Thumbnail (Ctrl + B).
If the thumbnails are still not displayed, make sure Windows is set to display thumbnails:
Go to the Windows Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab.
Uncheck “Always show icons, never thumbnails” and click OK.
After that, rebuild the thumbnails by selecting the files and clicking Ctrl+B in Daminion.
To display thumbnails of videos encoded with the Cineform codec in the Daminion please do the following:
For Local Catalogs
1. Download this zip file. 2. Unpack it and copy the CFDecode2.ax and RegCineForm.bat files into the following folder: c:\Program Files (x86)\Daminion Software\Daminion\MediaProcessors\VideoProcessor\codecs\ for your Daminion Standalone version. 3. Run the RegCineForm.bat as the Administrator.
For Shared Catalogs
1. Download this zip file. 2. Unpack it and copy the CFDecode2.ax and RegCineForm.bat files into the following folder: c:\Program Files (x86)\Daminion Software\Daminion Server\MediaProcessors\VideoProcessor\mplayer\codecs on the PC where the Daminion Server is installed. 3. Run the RegCineForm.bat as the Administrator.
Now all newly imported Cineform video files will be displayed with quality thumbnails. To update the thumbnails of already imported Cineform files with the default video icon, select these videos in the Daminion and press Ctrl + B.
To carry out more extensive search operations, use Daminion’s Advanced Search dialog. This allows you to create complex queries and can save them for reuse in the future.
You can, for example, work with AND/OR operands, explicitly exclude certain values and filter the desired selection immediately by every possible parameter, including date, rating stars, highlights, and text descriptions.
Launching the Advanced Search dialog
Click the Advanced button to the right of the Quick Search box, as shown below.
The search dialog box opens.
Select the tag field you want to search for a certain value or word.
Depending on which Tag field you select, you can specify a condition that must be met.
Enter your desired search value here. For example, it might be a keyword or part of a keyword.
Use the plus sign to add additional keywords to the selected tag field if necessary. You must then also specify whether this is an “AND” or an “OR” condition. Use the cross symbol to delete this query. Please note that these two switches are only visible when you move the mouse over this area.
Add further fields to be searched for.
Save your custom search or open another existing one.
Example:
We need to find the best photos of the red flowers in our catalog for our website. These images should already be optimized for output to the web and available in .jpeg or .png format. In addition, when published, the images must not be in breach of any copyrights.
So our query looks like this:
We are searching within keywords for the keywords blossom and red, with the AND condition as we have determined that both terms must necessarily be assigned to the image.
We firmly commit only to images with 5 stars. In Copyright, we can only accept images that are tagged with Daminion, and as a media format, we only allow images in jpeg or png format. As the images will be placed on the web, the file size should be correspondingly small, so only images of up to 500 KB are allowed.
If we start searching now, all images that meet these criteria will be displayed in the browser, and a summary of the parameters used appears above the browser.
Click the small triangle icon to collapse or enlarge the query information.
Save your custom search or open an existing one.
Once saved, created queries appear as new entries under Saved Searches in the Tags Panel.
The advantage of these queries is that they are not static, which means that as soon as you add new images to the catalog that meet these criteria, they are automatically added to the query.
When importing, Daminion reads metadata from images, saves it in the database (catalog), and displays it in the tag tree. This allows you to keep your database information synced with the metadata in imported files. But what if you want to import new stock images that may already contain large amounts of metadata that could easily mess up your existing tag structure?
Specifically to handle this problem Daminion can mark all newly imported tags as Unapproved, thus allowing you to easily separate imported tags from your approved tag structure (taxonomy). This option is turned off by default but it can be enabled via the Read Metadata section in the Client or Server preferences.
After checking the “Mark imported tags as unapproved” option in the Daminion settings, a new button on the tag tree panel allows you to quickly switch between displaying All Tags, only Approved Tags or only Unapproved Tags:
All Tags are displayed
Only Unapproved Tags are displayed
Unapproved tags can be marked as Approved via the tag tree context menu:
Please note
Unapproved tags are synced with file metadata in the same way as approved tags
To mark imported tags as unapproved for server catalogs go to Daminion Server Administration panel: Main menu > Administration > Reading Metadata.
You can assign color labels to your files to make them easier to distinguish visually, to sort them by the color of the label, or to instantly track the status of files in your workflow.
You can select from 9 pre-defined colors. By default, labels are named after the name of the particular color. You can changes these color names to whatever you like.
In addition to the 9 presets, you can create more color labels by clicking the header “Color Label” in the Tags panel and pressing the [Ins] key. These newly created color labels will be automatically assigned a gray color.
Assign a color Label
There are various ways to assign a color label. You can do it on a Thumbnail Preview, in the Tags Panel, in the Properties Panel, via the File Menu, or by using a corresponding keyboard shortcut.
Assign a color label on a Thumbnail Preview
Left-click the color label icon below the thumbnail on the left. This opens a dropdown list from which you can select the color you want.
Alternatively, you can simply press the appropriate number on the keyboard number pad, where 1 to 9 assign the preset colors and zero assigns none (as in the screenshot above). After you have made your selection, the image frame and the tag icon change to your chosen color.
Assign a color label in the Properties Panel
Select a thumbnail in the Browser Window. In the Properties panel on the right of the screen, open the Description tab and select the color you want from the drop-down list on the right of the Color Label box color labels.
Assign a color label in the Tags Panel
In the Tags panel on the left of the screen click the little triangle next to Color Label to expand the list. On the right, you can see the number of images that each color has been assigned to. You can now select one or more thumbnail previews in the Browser Window and drag & drop them onto the respective color.
Changing the names of the Color Labels
You can replace the predefined color names with names of your own. For example, you might prefer to associate the different colors with certain steps in your workflow. You could choose red for “Original File”, yellow for “In Progress” and green for “Final”. On the basis of color alone, you can see at a glance the status of each image in your workflow.
To specify your own color names, in the File menu, click Catalog > Color Labels.
In the Color Labels window (see above) you can now replace the existing color names with names of your own.
Alternatively, to rename an existing color label, right-click one of the colors in the Catalog Tags Panel, and in the context menu select Rename.
original File in progress final image reduced for Web
Use the Assign Tag Preset function to save any set of frequently used tags as presets and apply them later to other items. This saves you from having to constantly re-enter the same information.
Daminion offers you two ways of creating your own default tag preset.
Option 1
In the Properties panel, enter all the information about an item that you want to assign later to other items.
In our example, we have entered the following information in the Properties panel:
To save this set of tag information, click the little gear icon in the top right of the taskbar and select Save as tag preset from the dropdown list.
Note that in this case, all filled tag fields are stored, even those that are not displayed because the corresponding heading is collapsed. For example, if the creation-date field is enabled, this date is assigned to all selected elements! Therefore, please check carefully that the data contained in each field fits your requirements and delete any information you don’t want to be transmitted. You will then be prompted to name your preset. In this example, the tag preset was called Daminion web images.
After you click OK to confirm, the setting is saved in the preset list.
Now, in the browser, select one or more items to which you want to assign the contents of this stored preset, and again click the gear icon in the Properties panel taskbar.
Your newly created preset, Daminion web images, will now appear in the drop-down menu. By clicking it, you will assign all the information stored in this preset to the items you have selected.
Option 2
Use the Assign Tag Preset dialog to create new tag presets and manage existing ones.
To open the Tag Preset Editor, navigate to Window in the File menu and select Assign Tag Preset.
Assign Tag Preset panel:
Preset
Create new presets, rename, edit or delete existing ones.
Shortcuts
Assign your own keyboard shortcuts for faster access. Choose either Ctrl + F1 or Ctrl + F5.
Assign the selected items
This option is only active if you have selected at least one item in the browser before opening this dialogue. You can then assign tags filled in the tag area (E) directly to the selected items.
Check
With these options, you can choose to activate all or no tag fields or enable only the tag fields that already contain information.
Tags
This section contains all the tag fields to which you can add information and then store as presets.
Settings
Specify here the splitter for tokens used in the Tag Preset. Tokens are used to transmit metadata information from one tag to another fast and easy. Each token begins with a % sign followed by one or more characters. Each token can be combined with one or more other tokens resulting in a tokens string. The full list of tokens available in Daminion can be found here.
How to use tokens in the Tag Preset is explained in the Example section below.
Example
In the Browser Window we select four images and then open the Assign Tag Preset dialog via Window > Assign tag Preset.
In the Assign Tag Preset panel, we enter “Art Objects” as preset name, select a shortcut [Ctrl+F1] and set a comma as a splitter for tokens.
In the text area we enter all information that we want to be assigned to selected items:
Rating: 3 Stars
Color label: Yellow
Title: %basename, %size (Original file name without extension and file size; tokens are split with a comma)
Place: Germany\Berlin\Berlin
Keywords: Art, Art Object, Street Art, Graffiti, %model (camera model)
After clicking the Assign to Selected Items button we get the following (on the example of one of the selected images):
Now you can simply use the shortcut [Ctrl+F1] to assign this tag preset to other items in the catalog.
Deleting a Tag Preset
In the Assign Tag Preset panel, click Preset, select the preset you want to delete, and click Preset again. Now you can delete the currently selected Preset from the list.
In the same way, you can also rename an existing preset by selecting Rename.
Note: If you are going to work a lot with Tag Presets, it might be helpful to dock the Assign Tag Preset panel on Daminion workspace to have it permanently accessible. To find out how to dock panels in Daminion, refer to Customizing the Window Layout.
Tags are an 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. All the information about a file can be described by a set of tags (title, rating, keywords, location, media format, copyright, camera model, color label, etc.).
In the Tags panel, there are two ways to assign specific tags to your items.
Assigning Tags by Drag and Drop
Simply drag and drop one or more items from the browser window onto the desired tag, as shown in the illustration below.
Assigning Tags via the Context Menu
Select one or more items in the browser and right-click the desired tag in the Tags Panel. In the submenu, click Assign ‘TagName’ to the selected items. If you want to remove a tag that’s already been assigned to the selected items, click Remove ‘TagName’ from the selected items.
During import, Daminion is only able to save the link to the original file in the catalog, which can result in folders and/or data from the catalog becoming unsynchronized with the actual content of the file on the local drive. This can happen, for example, if you delete a folder or file outside Daminion after the import process has been completed or if you add newer files to the imported folder. Daminion cannot detect such externally altered files.
Original files that are missing from Daminion, because they have been deleted externally or moved to another location, are identified in the Daminion browser by a question mark icon in the top left corner of the file thumbnail.
This folder monitoring is also useful for the following workflows:
If you regularly scan new photos and store them in a specific folder.
If multiple users regularly add new photos to a shared network folder.
In these situations, Daminion can automatically update the folder. Thus allowing you to keep your current catalog files automatically synchronized with the actual folder content.
Automatically update folder content
In the Catalog Tags Panel in the Daminion main window, select the tag heading Folders.
Now simply right-click on the folder whose contents you want to keep automatically updated and select Switch Auto-Rescan On. To keep multiple folders automatically updated, simply repeat the steps described above.
The folder icon will now be shown with a small magnifying glass symbol to indicate that this folder is being monitored and synchronized by Daminion.
Next, set the type of automatic update you want.
In the file menu, click Catalog > Auto-Rescan Settings.
This opens the settings window for automatic folder updates.
This check box allows you to turn automatic updates on or off.
Select this option to have Daminion detect external changes to original files immediately and update them accordingly in your catalog. This method is recommended as it requires fewer resources than the scheduled updates option. Read more about Automatic Folder Rescan.
Alternatively, you can choose to check for updates at specified intervals. Please keep in mind that these timetabled upgrades can cause excessive data traffic – particularly in folders containing a lot of files – which can overload the network and compromise performance.
We, therefore, recommend you set the time interval to less than the default 10 minutes in special cases only. Time intervals of 10 minutes and longer can be used safely.
Here you can specify whether you want to look at the update after new files have been added. If you, for example, have imported a folder and its contents, the entire folder will be synchronized with the Daminion catalog. If, for example, you add more files to the original folder Daminion will reflect this change.
With the first option, you can specify whether original files that no longer exist should be removed from the catalog.
Links in the catalog that refer to missing original files are then automatically removed from the catalog. Invalid links to original files can occur if, for example, the original files have been deleted or renamed in Windows Explorer outside Daminion.
With the second option, you can specify whether files whose metadata has been modified outside Daminion should have their metadata similarly updated in the Daminion catalog.
For files that have different metadata content, the catalog will be updated accordingly. Such inconsistent data may occur when the metadata of the external files have been subsequently modified in an external application. This option allows you to choose to adopt this modified data in the catalog or to instruct Daminion to maintain the original catalog information.
Folder updates take effect the moment you click OK.
This feature is only available for the Daminion Server version!
The Automatic Folder Rescan feature ensures that any external changes made to your files will be immediately detected by Daminion and automatically updated in the catalog.
The following external changes are detected automatically
Changes to filename
Deletion of files from the monitored folder by an external application
Addition of new files to the monitored folder without using the Daminion import function
Metadata added or edited by external applications
Any pre-existing subfolders within a watched folder are also automatically monitored. So you can simply enable Automatic Folder Rescan for the top-level folder.
Although the folder-monitoring function is relatively resource-efficient, it is not advisable to turn it on for the entire catalog. It is more efficient to limit monitoring to the most relevant folders.
The Automatic Folder Rescan feature has several useful applications.
You can, for example, define a monitored folder as your “inbox”, into which all new files imported into Daminion are initially copied from external sources. This has the advantage of allowing all users to access these files in the network without having to individually import them with their own Daminion client. In a second step, these additions can then be inspected – either in Daminion or in any image-viewing program – to sort out unwanted images. Finally, once the inventory is deemed okay, then any Daminion user with appropriate access privileges can move these files into their final destination folders.
You can, for example, create a monitored import folder into which you copy all the files you wish to add to Daminion. This is advantageous when collaborating with other users because rather than everyone having to import the files individually, they can simply be granted access through the Daminion Web client.
In the second step, the newly added files can then be viewed – either in Daminion or any image-viewing program – and unwanted images can be deleted.
Another useful application is for certain folders to be automatically monitored for external modification. This is useful, for example, when working with images that you want to edit with external programs. Thus, you can open, edit and re-save these pictures using the same filename, and Daminion will automatically recognize and note the time and date of any external file modifications that have occurred since the last import or update.
Please note that when changes are made to image content by an external image editor, the thumbnail preview images are not automatically updated. To update the thumbnails of edited files in Daminion, simply use the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl + B] and Daminion will reanalyze the image files and generate new thumbnails.
By default, all tags assigned to your files into Daminion are stored only in the catalog. However, Daminion also allows you to write these tags directly to the metadata in the original files, which gives your data an additional level of security: all descriptive information is stored not only in the Daminion database, but also in your original files.
The ability to define where you want to store your data also means you are not bound by a proprietary system and can migrate to another system at any time: all the tags assigned in Daminion will travel with the original files.
For file formats that support IPTC/XMP metadata standards (for example, JPEG or MP3), Daminion embeds the tags directly into the file’s metadata. For other file formats that don’t natively support IPTC/XMP metadata, Daminion creates an XMP sidecar file with the same name and saves it in the same folder as the original. Metadata storage rules for files that don’t support metadata embedding can be set up in Daminion Server Preferences. For more information, refer to Daminion Server Metadata Preferences.
By default, automatic synchronization is turned off in Daminion. Once the option is activated, all changes previously made to tags, as well as any tag changes you make from now on, will automatically be synchronized in the background with file metadata. Depending on the number of edited files, this can result in increased network load, so it is usually not recommended to have auto-synchronization constantly on. Instead, activate it once a day when nobody’s working with the catalog and turn it off when the changes are synced.
Checking the number of unsynchronized items
Before you turn auto-synchronization on, you may want to find out how many items in your catalog are not synchronized. If you started with a fresh catalog, but have already assigned several tags to certain items, the number of synced and unsynced items will be different. In this case, items with no tags assigned in Daminion will be shown as synchronized; conversely, items with edited tags will be shown as unsynchronized.
To check the number of unsynced items, navigate to the bottom left of the Status Bar. The number of unsynced items is shown on the left followed by the number of items displayed, the total number of items in the catalog, and the number of items currently selected. In our example, 160 of a total of 1,552 items are not synchronized.
Synchronization status can also be checked on the Tags panel under the Saved searches tab. If Saved Searches is not displayed in your catalog, click the little gear icon on the Tags panel header bar, select Customize and then check Saved Searches. Under the Saved Searches tab, check the Unsynced tag. If you want to view all unsynced items in the Browser window, click the little empty circle to the right of Unsynced.
Activating Auto-Synchronization
Navigate to the top right corner of the browser window and click the Sync button. From the drop-down list, select Turn On Auto-Syncing Tags with Metadata <Paused>
Daminion starts to synchronize all assigned tags with file metadata. Synchronization status can be checked in the bottom left corner of the Status Bar.
If you hover your mouse over the synchronization status area, a pop-up window with the number of unsynced items appears.
To terminate the sync process, either click the Pause button that appears when you hover the mouse over the sync area on the Status Bar or navigate to the Sync button in the top right corner of the browser area, click it and select Synchronizing… <Click to pause>
One-time activation of Auto-Synchronization
If you don’t want auto-synchronization to be permanently active and load your network, you can run it manually when required. To do this, navigate to the bottom left corner of the Status bar and click the little triangle next to Start.
When starting manually, make sure you deactivate auto-synchronization again in the top right corner of the browser area, once the items are synced.
Note: Auto-Synchronization is powered by means of Daminion server for each particular catalog, which means that once activated, it stays active for each Daminion desktop client.
Auto-Synchronization is a one-sided process that synchronizes database records (tags) with file metadata only. If you want to synchronize metadata changes made in external applications with Daminion database, please refer to Automatic Folder Rescan.
Daminion offers two types of catalogs: Local Catalogs and Shared Catalogs. You can recognize local catalogs by the file extension DMC. These catalogs are separate files that are used locally on your computer. It is relatively simple to back up local catalogs, since you only have to save one catalog file. Shared Catalogs are part of a Daminion Postgres database. To protect these shared catalogs, Daminion offers the backup feature described below.
Back up your shared catalog
Daminion’s backup feature allows you to quickly and easily create backups of your catalogs so that you can restore them at any time. Please note that this backup function only backs up the catalogs and the information contained therein and not your original files. These must be backed up separately with a suitable backup program. In its catalogs, Daminion stores only the references to the original files – so only the references and the metadata are saved with the catalog!
1 – Performing a Catalog-Backup
Launch the Daminion Server Administration panel.
On the file menu, under Administration click Catalogs to launch the Catalogs Manager.
From the list, select the catalog you want to back up, then click the Actions button and select Backup from the drop-down menu. This opens the Backup dialog box. Enter the location of your backup destination folder and click Start.
As your catalog information is backed up, you can watch its progress in a separate window.
During the backup process, 4 backup files are created in the target folder that you specified:
_daminion(numbers).backup –> (Backup File of the user database) _daminion(numbers).log –> (Log-File of the user database) NetCatalog(numbers).backup –> (Backup File of the catalog data) NetCatalog(numbers).log –> (Log- File of the catalog data)Once the backup is complete, you can close all the dialog boxes.
2 – Perform catalog recovery
Launch the Daminion Server Administration panel. On the file menu, under Administration click Catalogs to launch the Catalogs Manager.
Click Actions and, from the drop-down menu, select Restore.
This will open the Restore dialog box.
This dialog box allows you to choose which information to restore: only the catalog data, only the user database, or both. Select the desired backup file and click OK. Catalog and user data are saved separately.
Please refer also to the tutorial “How to backup Daminion Server” to find out how to schedule Daminion server’s backups.
By default, all active tags are displayed in the Tags panel. This can be very confusing when viewing the content of more than one tag at the same time. Single-tag mode, with only one tag section displayed, saves you from wasting time scrolling up and down looking for the respective sections.
If you move the mouse pointer over any of the tag headings, a small rectangular icon appears on the right of each section. Click it to hide all tag headings in the Tags panel apart from this one.
You can quit single tag mode at any time by simply clicking the small rectangle again.
To change the category currently on display, left-click the tag heading and select a different tag category from the drop-down menu.
In this way, you can always display only the tag-heading you need at any particular time, and thus use the entire height of the screen to its full advantage.
When people change their names, how can Daminion help to keep you up to date?
Written by Uwe Noack
The catalog contains items related to two people: The names assigned to their People Tags are Jenny Green and Paul Miller. They get married and Jenny changes her surname from Green to Miller. How can we take account of this in Daminion?
1. Do nothing
No changes: Jenny keeps her birth name in the catalog’s People Tag. All new items are assigned to the People Tag “Green|Jenny”. By Tag-Selection you get all Jenny’s items. But you don‘t know anything about her change of name.
2. Create an additional sub-tag for “Jenny Miller”
Add this tag to all “Jenny Green” items. Now Jenny has two People Tags: “Green|Jenny” and “Miller|Jenny”. Tag-Selection for either “Green|Jenny” or “Miller|Jenny” will give you all of Jenny’s items. Don’t forget to assign both tags to all newly imported items.
Don’t assign the “Miller|Jenny” tag to the existing “Green|Jenny” items. All Jenny’s items originating after her name has changed are assigned to the “Miller|Jenny” People Tag. Tag-Selection “Green|Jenny” will give you all Jenny’s items before she was married and “Miller|Jenny” all items after she was married. To get all Jenny’s items, CTRL-click as you select both tags.
3. Change the People Tag surname
Change Jenny’s People Tag surname (Rename – F2) from “Green” to “Miller”. In this case, the tags will be merged to “Miller”. You can’t change the surname if there are any other sub-tags for “Green”, e.g. her brother “Axel”, her mother “Lisa” and her dad “Martin”, as you can see in the next examples. The additional photo of Jenny is a photo of Jenny Miller.
4. Use Synonyms
Note: Synonyms don‘t work with Tag-Selection. You have to use either “Quick Search” or “Advanced Search”.
The synonym “Miller Green” is assigned to the People Tags “Green|Jenny” and “Miller|Jenny”. The first photo below is assigned to “Green|Jenny”, the second to “Miller|Jenny”. When using “Quick Search” to search for Jenny and no one else, you must use the options “All Words” or “Exact Phrase Match”.
Using the synonym “Miller” for the “Green|Jenny” People tag doesn‘t work – your search results will contain all other items with the family name “Green”. The same thing happens if you assign the synonym “Green” to the “Miller|Jenny” People Tag.
5. Combine the People Tag with other tags
Other tags can be used in combination with the People Tag to handle this task.
For example, you can enter the Collection Tag “Miller Green” and assign it to all items under the “Green|Jenny” and “Miller|Jenny” People tags. You can now select all Jenny’s items by Tag-Selecting this Collection tag.
Another way is to use Additional Keyword tags.
6. Final remarks
It would be much more complicated if Paul and Jenny were to divorce and both get remarried sometime later.
“Advanced Search” has no limitations on searching with a combination of different tags. You can save your combinations as Saved Searches. You really need to find a way that works best for you. There is no universal solution that fits all possible requirements.
Tests were carried out on Daminion build 1608 server catalog using the following preferences:
7. Copyright and license
All the free stock photos are downloaded from http://www.pexels.com/ For further information about copyrights and licenses, please check the homepage above.
When you install both Daminion Client and Daminion Server you are prompted to select an interface language, which, if necessary, can easily be changed at a later date. Currently available languages are listed below.
Changing Daminion Client interfacelanguage
Launch Daminion Client. In the File menu, click the View tab and navigate to Language. Select the desired language from the drop-down menu and click Yes in the confirmation dialog that appears. The change will come into effect once Daminion Client is restarted.
Changing Daminion Server interface language
Launch Daminion Server Administration panel. Click the View tab and navigate to Language. From the drop-down menu select the desired language and click Yes in the confirmation dialog that appears. The change will come into effect once Daminion Client is restarted.
Daminion currently offers the following interface languages:
This feature is only available in the web client in Daminion server 7.0 or higher!
Commenting allows you to collaborate when working on new projects in the web client. The comments can be added to any part of the image describing what needs to be done or changed. The ability to edit the comments, invite others to the discussion threads, and the notifications of the new comments provide better control over the workflow and allow you to stay updated on the most recent changes.
Please note, that the option is activated by permission “Commenting Assets” and by default is only available to Admins and Editors. Learn more about Roles and user permissions here.
This option is not available under the Active Directory Group Mapping security scheme!
Adding a comment to an image
To add a comment to the image, open the image in full screen and click the icon in the upper right corner of the screen. The icon will be highlighted with blue
The commenting mode will be activated and your mouse pointer will be changed to a pin icon
Click on any part of the image to add your comment to the desired place.
If your comment contains a call to action for your colleagues, use the @ and the user name to add your colleague to the commenting thread.
Once you add @, Daminion will display a list of all registered users for you – you can then select a user from the appeared list or start typing his\her name to narrow down the list. In the example below, we ask Eugene to edit the image and adjust the contrast.
Once the comment is published, you can edit it within 5 minutes, and resolve the thread or remove it anytime.
You can add an unlimited number of comments to different parts of the image.
To exit the commenting mode and hide all the pins from the image, click on the icon again.
Click on the three dots icon in the upper right corner to display the Versions of the image (if any) or show the resolved comments.
Responding to comments
If you are invited to respond to a comment, a notification bell will appear in the upper right corner of the main interface window.
If you leave at least one comment in the comment thread of the image, you will get subscribed to this thread and will be getting updates on it until the thread is resolved or deleted.
By clicking the bell icon, you can see all new and old messages in the comment threads that you are subscribed to.
Click on the notification to open the image with the added comment.
If the file has multiple versions, the comments can be added and viewed in different versions. To switch between the versions in the full-screen mode, click on the three dots icon in the upper right corner and select Versions.
Compare Items view allows you to quickly find the right image from a series of similar images. You can exclude, select, and/or rate images. And you can zoom all images simultaneously with just one click – useful for quickly identifying the sharpest image in a series.
Launching Compare Items View
Select the photos you want to compare (from 2 to 8 images at a time).
In the file menu, navigate to “Item” and then click “Compare Items“.
(A) Use this button to switch between multi- and single-view. When the button is pressed in, only one image is displayed, thus allowing you to use the function buttons F1 through F8 (C) to switch quickly between the respective images.
(B) Click this button to display additional file information: filename, shooting date, image size, and recording parameters.
To close Compare Items view, click the X button (D) or press the ESC key.
The taskbar above the images
Each of the images on display has an individual taskbar above it. (A)Displays the candidate’s number.
Click the Make Master button (B) to anchor the respective image in the top left corner of the first window. The image can only be replaced by clicking Make Master above another image in the film strip.
Use this button (C) to reject an image and hide it from the display. Once rejected, the image is replaced by the next one in the overall selection. In addition, a red ‘no’ symbol marks the image in the filmstrip.
Use the Close button (F) to close the respective sub-windows. Doing this allows you to eliminate unsuitable images one at a time until you are left with the two best images.
The filmstrip at the bottom of the screen displays all images currently present in the browser window.
In addition, the images currently displayed in the viewports above are marked respectively in the filmstrip. The “M” stands for Master (your chosen candidate) and the numbers #1 – #8 are the respective candidates currently on display in the viewport.
The currently selected image is displayed in the viewport within a white frame. You can replace this image, either by rotating the mouse wheel or by clicking on another image in the filmstrip.
Zoom View
Hold the mouse pointer over any one image and click to view all images at 100% magnification. Then use the mouse pointer to move all images simultaneously to help you identify the most appropriate candidate.
Daminion allows you to transfer a set of tags from one item to many others. This can be useful if, for example, you have already assigned keywords to a particular item and now want to assign the same set of tags to newly imported items.
To copy tags from one item to another, click the arrow icon in the upper right corner of the item and select Copy tags. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+C.
This opens a dialog window where you can select which tags should be copied to the Clipboard.
In our example, the tags are Place and Keywords.
Click Copy Tags at the bottom of the dialog window to copy the tags to the Clipboard.
In the Browser window, select all the items you want to assign these tags to. Click the arrow icon again and in the drop-down list select Insert Tags. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+V.
Previously checked tags are now assigned to all selected items.
The selected tags remain on the Clipboard until you copy a new set of tags.
To save yourself having to open the tag list again and again for every copying operation, use the Copy Previous Set of Tags option to copy the previously selected set of tags to the Clipboard.
The Export to PDF option allows you to create contact sheets of your images that you can print or save in a PDF file.
Creating a contact sheet
In the Browser window, select the images you want to place in the PDF contact sheet.
On the toolbar, navigate to Export and select Export to PDF.
The Export to PDF dialog window opens.
Select paper size and orientation.
Select the number of images that will appear on one page.
Set the PDF page margins.
Define thumbnail captions. First, check the appropriate boxes, and then from the drop-down list, select the tags whose details will be displayed below the pictures.
The currently selected tag appears at the top of the tag list with a checkmark.
Use the number pad to the right of the keyword to specify how many rows should be displayed for each tag.
Specify font style, size, and color.
Preview of the current layout. If you have selected more images than can be enclosed on one page, they are automatically carried over to the following pages. You can then switch back and forth between pages using the arrow keys under the layout preview.
Specify who can use the contact sheet, where and for what purpose.
In addition to Tag-Hierarchies, Daminion also allows you to manage your tags by sorting them into groups. Group tags are treated in basically the same way as normal Tags – the only difference is that they are not considered when exporting metadata information.
Suppose you were to catalog your media files into groups by customer name. If you reproduced this with the conventional tag structure, the customer name would be written to the files when exporting and would therefore be viewed by the recipient.
However, because group tags are only used for the internal administration of Daminion, the information remains exclusively in Daminion. You can tell the difference between Group tags and Conventional tags by their shade of gray – Group tags are a lighter shade than Conventional tags.
Creating a new Group-Tag
To create a new Group tag in the Catalog Tags Panel, right-click the corresponding tag-heading and select Add Group from the submenu.
In the dialog box that opens, you can type one or multiple (separated by commas) Group names in the corresponding field. In order to create a single Group with a comma as part of its name, uncheck Add multiple values separated by a comma. The comma will now act as a regular punctuation mark and not as a delimiter.
In this example, we create a new Group for the Category section. If you have already selected one or more items in the browser before calling this dialog box, you can activate the Assign to selected files option. The new groups will then be assigned immediately after you create the Group name.
In the Tags panel, we have created an Animals group and assigned other regular lower hierarchy Tags.
Special features of Group-Tags:
You cannot assign an item directly to a Group-Tag.
Group-Tags cannot be arranged hierarchically.
A Group-Tag can contain other tags.
When you export metadata that contains assigned Group-Tags and then read it back in Daminion, the tags will lose their hierarchical structures.
Group-Tags are used solely for the internal management of your tags. They CANNOT be exported as a part of metadata!
To create a new shared catalog, launch the Daminion Server Administration Panel.
Click the Administration tab and select Catalogs. This launches the Catalogs dialog box as shown in the screenshot below.
In the Catalogs dialog box click the Actions button and from the dropdown list select New Catalog.
This opens the Create New Catalog dialog box with four tabs as shown in the screen-shot below.
General Tab:
Catalog name and description Enter a name for the new catalog and add a description (e.g. use purpose).
Ports
If necessary, change the port used by this catalog. Remember to open the changed ports on your firewall!
Folder(s) to store uploaded files
Specify a folder to upload files to during the import process. This folder can be either local or on a network. Please note, however, that files copied to a local folder cannot be accessed by other users on the network!
Note: We recommend you use a hard drive that is physically different from your OS installation drive. This not only speeds up the file access process but also makes it easier to backup the uploaded files. And finally, if you are running out of disc space, you can easily replace this hard drive with a larger one, without affecting your windows installation!
Folder to store thumbnails
Specify where Daminion should store the imported file thumbnails. You can either confirm the suggested folder path or change it to another of your own choice.
Auto Import Folder
Files copied or moved to this folder will be automatically imported to the catalog and moved to the folder selected to store uploaded files. This enables you to import to the catalog via FTP or DropBox without using Daminion Desktop or Web Client.
The Auto Import folder can also be used as a quick way to import files via Smartphone when the DropBox folder is set as the Auto Import folder on your Server PC. In this case, upload the files to Dropbox on your Smartphone. Once these files are synced with a Dropbox folder on your Server PC, they will be imported to the shared catalog on Daminion Server.
Note: please make sure that the Daminion file watching service logon user has full access rights to the Auto Import folder and Folder to store uploaded files.
Once the Auto Import folder is set up, please restart Daminion File Watching Service. Otherwise, the changes will not be applied!
PostgreSQL Tab:
This is where you select the PostgreSQL Server that will manage your catalog. Define the database name and its password and click Test Connection to check that the new settings work.
API Tab:
REST API is not used by Daminion anymore. It will be removed from the interface of the new versions. Please use WEB API.
Users Tab:
Once users have been created, you can set the rights for each user to access a particular catalog. To do this, select a user and click Change user role for this catalog. In the example below, we can extend or narrow Xavier Iglesia’s access rights for this catalog by assigning him an Admin, Guest, or Viewer role. For other catalogs, this user will have a server default Editor role unless it is changed for the remaining shared catalogs. To find out more about how to create users, read the article User Management.
Once you close the dialog, Daminion automatically restarts to bring the changes into effect.
Opening a new shared catalog
Launch Daminion Desktop client. In the file menu go to “File” > “Open shared catalog”, click Add Daminion Server and specify the server name or IP. Then select a newly created catalog from the list of available catalogs and click OK.
To learn how to start importing files to the catalog, refer to Importing.
For cataloging your media files, the IPTC/XMP standards provide a predefined selection of tags such as comment, title, description, keyword, etc. These will allow you to describe your media files well enough to be able to find them later by searching via tags; however, these presets have a drawback in that the tags available do not always match the exact categories that suit your specific needs.
Daminion’s custom tag fields put this right by enabling you to create your own categories and adapt the program to suit you, rather than the other way around. Suppose you need to categorize your data with the order attribute “customer-ID”.
For this, you could use any of the existing fields, comment for example. But the comment is a text field and for our particular ID-Tag, we need a specific numerical field, which is not provided by the IPTC standard. With Daminion, you can create as many different types of category fields as you like, and adapt each one to your own personal requirements.
Creating a Custom Tag Field
On the main menu click on “Catalog” then “Custom tags …” and in the next window click “New…”
In the window that opens, enter the desired name in the “Name” field. In our case, it’s “customer-ID“. Because only numbers should be entered in this field, choose the menu item “integer” from the “Format” list below.
Please note that Custom Tags can be written to the metadata of the files. Starting with version 7.0 Custom tags can be renamed after being created. However, the name will be only changed in Daminion interface and will not be changed in the metadata of the file. Therefore, please be sure about the name of the custom tag before creating it.
In our example, the customer-ID can only be assigned to one customer per number, but several media files can be assigned to this client, therefore we must click the menu item “Tag has a limited number of values that can be assigned to multiple files“. This will command Daminion to admit each entry only once, to avoid duplicate customer numbers. After entering the information above, Now click on the “Create” button at the bottom of this dialog.
The window will automatically change to the following view:
Click “Create” to finalize the creation of this tag field.
We have now created our very own “customer-ID” category tag.
It will appear automatically in the “Catalog Tags” panel. Based on our previously defined criteria, only integer numbers can be entered in this field and they cannot be duplicated. Now, all you need to assign this tag to particular media files do is drag and drop the associated media files onto the respective customer-ID.
To create a new tag in the Catalog Tags Panel, right-click the corresponding tag-heading and select Add Tag from the submenu or simply press the Ins key.
In the dialog box, type one or multiple tag names (separated by commas) in the corresponding text box. If you want to create just one tag that includes a comma within its name, disable the Add multiple values separated by a comma option – the name will now include the comma as a punctuation mark rather than as a delimiter.
In this example, we create three new tags for the People section.
If you have already selected one or more items in the browser before opening this dialog box, you can activate the Assign to selected files option. The new tags will then be assigned immediately after you create the tag name. Otherwise, tag names are created, but they are not assigned to items.
To create a hierarchical tag, use a “\” delimiter:
You can also create a tag inside the existing tag. To do this, select a tag and press Ctrl+Ins. Alternatively, right-click a tag and select “Add Tags inside TagName“.
In the example below we add three new tags under the tag “Smith”:
This article explains how to create and assign tags to your items in the Properties Panel. The following example uses the Keywords tag.
Adding a new keyword
Once you have selected an item in the browser, you can view the contents in the metadata properties panel located on the right of the Daminion workspace.
To add a new keyword, simply type it into the Add Tag box.
As soon as you enter your text, Daminion checks whether the combination of letters already exists and displays all correspondences in a Drop-Down list, which immediately allows you to recognize whether a particular keyword has already been assigned and is therefore already included in the database.
You can also add multiple tags simultaneously by separating them with commas.
When you have finished assigning your keywords, click Save at the bottom of the Properties panel to apply your changes.
You can simplify keyword assignment by double-clicking inside the Add tag box.
Daminion then opens a drop-down list containing the most recently assigned Tags. Thus allowing you to simply click and select the keywords you need instead of having to type them in full every time.
Removing a keyword
When you hover the pointer over a keyword, a small red and white X icon appears to the right of the keyword.
Click the X icon to remove the keyword from the item (please note: the keyword is not deleted from the tag list).
Tags can be deleted permanently only in the Tags panel. To do this, navigate to the desired tag in the Tags panel, select it and press the DEL key, or right-click the tab and select Delete from the sub-menu.
Assign multiple Tags and Tag hierarchies via text input
If you want to assign multiple tags simultaneously to a single item, put commas between the individual keywords.
Example: “tree, house, street”
If the tags used are already available, they will be assigned directly, otherwise, they will be created automatically.
If you want to assign a complete keyword hierarchy, enter the parent hierarchies separated in each case by a “\” character.
Daminion allows you to create your own custom tags in the web client so that you can address your tagging requirements more precisely.
To create a new custom tag, log into your catalog as an administrator, click the three dots icon in the upper right corner of the web client interface, and select Settings.
In the window that opens, click Custom tag settings.
In the next window that opens, click the Add custom tags button to open the following dialog window.
Enter the Tag name. In our case, it is “Permissions to use”
Select the type of custom tag you want from the drop-down menu by clicking the small down arrow icon. You can select from the following: String, Fractional, Integer, Time, and Currency
If the String type is selected, you will need to define the following parameters of your custom tag: – Multiple values can be assigned to the same file
– Tag values can be hierarchical
– Tag has a limited number of values that can be assigned to multiple files
If at least one of the parameters is selected, the custom tag will be displayed in the Filter panel. If none of the parameters are selected, the custom tag will only be available in the Properties panel.
Click the Create button to create your custom tag, close the Settings window, and refresh your browser view.
Please note that Custom Tags can be written to the metadata of the files. Starting with version 7.0 Custom tags can be renamed after being created. However, the name will be only changed in Daminion interface and will not be changed in the metadata of the file. Therefore, please be sure about the name of the custom tag before creating it.
To rename a custom click, right-click it and select “Rename”.
How to assign custom tags
By default, newly created custom tags are not displayed in the Filter panel. Click the gear icon on the Filter panel.
In the window that opens, click “Append a tag”.
Locate your newly created custom tags and select them. Click “Save” to display the tag in the Filter panel.
Create new tags under your custom tags by clicking the plus icon in the Filters panel. Learn more about how to create new tags here.
Once the tags are created, select your files and drag and drop them to the specific tag:
Read more about how to tag your files in the web client here.
The Customize Export Preset dialog allows you to set your own export settings and save them for later use. You can use your customized presets to resize your images, convert image format, rename images and add your own customized watermark.
In this chapter we show you how to create and save a custom preset and how to use it later in the “Copy to Folder” dialog.
The “Customize Export Preset” dialog can be launched from the “Copy to Folder” dialog.
In the “Transform” drop-down list, choose “Customize” to open the Template Editor (see screenshot above).
Preset Name
This is a list of all the existing export presets. Newly created custom presets appear at the bottom of the list. Click any of the entries on the list to see their corresponding settings on the right of the dialog box.
Buttons below the Preset names list:
Add a new preset
Delete an existing preset
Reorder the list of presets
To create a new preset click the plus button (bottom left corner). This adds a new entry to the list and prompts you to enter a descriptive name. Override the existing default: “{format} – {sizeto}” with a name that best describes the task to be performed.
Alternatively, click any of the presets in the list, enter your changes, and then click the plus button. This will create a new template based on your new settings. The name of this preset will be generated automatically from the size and format settings you have chosen.
Image Format
Select the file type your file(s) should be converted to.
Color Profile
Select the color profile to be embedded in the file. You can apply the default sRGB or let Daminion use the color profile that is already embedded in the image. If you are not sure what to use, just leave it as the default sRGB. This is the most commonly used color profile.
Size To
Select the units of measurement to be used for the image dimensions in the box below. If you select “Original Size”, the image will not be resized in any way.
Width/Height
Set desired image size in the units of measurement you selected in the previous option (D) Size To.
DPI
The DPI (dots per inch) setting is only really needed if you intend to print. For screen use, you can leave it at the default 72 dpi. But set 300 dpi if you want to be able to print the images as well. In fact, the DPI setting doesn’t change the image size on-screen, but it can make a big difference to print quality.
Embed Metadata
Decide which metadata should be embedded in the image. You can choose from:
None. No Metadata is embedded in the image.
All. All Metadata is embedded in the image.
All Except Camera Info. All Metadata embedded apart from the EXIF Information containing Camera Info such as camera type and model or lenses used.
Copyrights Only. Only Copyright Information is embedded in the image.
To specify exactly which Metadata tags should or shouldn’t be taken, click the button to the right of the Embed Metadata drop-down list.
Note: To publish your images on the internet, consider choosing None to avoid publishing private or confidential information by mistake – because all the metadata an image might contain can easily be read by other software!
Include Synonyms
If the selected tags contain synonyms, choose whether or not they should be included in the metadata.
Flatten Keywords
If you have created your keyword structure hierarchically, this is where you decide whether to maintain the hierarchic levels or flattened them during the export process.
Add Watermark
Add an image of your choice as a watermark to each image. See the “Add Watermark” article for details.
Assign Tag Preset
Select a tag preset that you have created using the “Tag Preset Editor“.
Sharpen
Add some of the sharpness that images have lost after resizing.
Click “OK” to close the dialog box. The new custom preset will be added to the preset list and can be recalled whenever needed.
To start export, select the desired preset from the list and click “Copy”, or press F7.
The Browser is where you view and manage your media files. You decide what you see. It might be one or more files from an individual folder or the results of a query with images from multiple locations. By default, the browser displays items as thumbnails. You can easily change the size of thumbnails and choose what metadata you want to display. Apart from the thumbnail view, there are several other viewing modes. The Daminion browser works in a similar way to the Windows file browser. You can select single or multiple items, copy and move files using drag and drop, open files by double-clicking and view in full-screen mode.
Browser functions
Buttons above and below the browser window allow you to configure browser view and select the information to be displayed. The browser displays Thumbnails differently depending on their status.
This is the default thumbnail view. The file format is displayed above the thumbnail. The file name, a summary of camera/lens parameters, and file size appear below. You can edit any of these details or expand them to include additional information (more details later in this section).
Hold the mouse pointer over thumbnails to display icons with various functions.
Flag your items here. Please read the article on flagging items for more information
Toolbar (top of the browser window)
Switch between multiple views. Allows you to perform two independent searches with different parameters and then switch back and forth between the two sets of results.
Launches the import dialog box. Read more about this in the article on Importing.
Disables all filters and shows all catalog items in the browser.
Click this button to manually refresh the browser. Alternatively, press the F5 key.
Quick Search is useful for finding such things as a particular tag. Clicking the magnifying glass icon on the left (1) allows you to select the fields to search for the specified word. Start your search by clicking the magnifying glass button on the right (2).
Opens advanced search dialog box. Please read the article Advanced Search for more details.
Export options are described separately in the article on exporting.
Use this function to keep your catalog metadata in sync with the original files. For more information please read the article on metadata synchronization.
Status Bar (bottom browser window)
File status A number of items not synchronized with the original file.
Status during import During import, the background color changes to red, and the number of items decreases as each one is imported.
Current filtered items Displays the number of filtered items followed by the total number of items in the catalog.
Currently selected items Displays number of currently selected items, in blue.
Select sort method Sort items by attributes, name, file size, extension, type, tags, and date, or even based on EXIF picture information.
Sorting order Set to sort in either ascending or descending order.
Browser viewing options:
Default thumbnail view Items are displayed with certain tag information. By default, information appears in one line above the thumbnail and three lines below it.
Square previews When searching for a specific image among a large number of thumbnails, it can be helpful to display. This creates a smoother, more uniform view and provides Picture Search with a better visual focus.
List view List view displays all information in tabular form.
Choose which columns you want to display by right-clicking one of the column headers and selecting Customize from the menu. In the configuration menu, select which information to display and in what order.
The Size all columns to fit option automatically adjusts column width according to the length of the heading.
Additional layout options Click and hold the mouse to open a popup menu (image below) containing additional layout options derived from various combinations of thumbnail, filmstrip, and list views.
Use these three buttons (on the right, below the vertical scroll bar) to change the appearance of thumbnail previews:
Click the minussign to show or hide the information above the thumbnail. Click the equals sign to show or hide the information below the thumbnail. Click the letter “i” to open a configuration menu and define the information you want to see above and below the thumbnails. Please read the article on Customizing Thumbnail Captions
Use the slider to enlarge or reduce the size of thumbnail previews in the browser.
If your mouse has a middle wheel, you can zoom in and out by holding down the Ctrl key and rotating the mouse wheel at the same time.
The catalog tags panel displays various types of annotation called tags. Tags can be used to describe your digital assets. Examples of tags are Keywords, Categories, Rating, etc. Some tags, like Title or Description, can be displayed and edited via the Properties panel only.
It makes sense to create different custom presets for different tasks. For example, you can hide any tags that you don’t need for your current activity, e.g. indexing of images. This clears the Catalog Tags panel, which makes it much easier to locate the right tags in the tag tree.
For example, you can customize your tag tree to display Keywords and Authors only.
How to customize the Tags panel
To customize the Catalog Tags panel, locate and click on the small gear icon in the panel header. This displays a menu with various options. The “Customize…” menu opens a dialog where you specify which tags should be displayed in the Catalog Tags panel and set their order.
This opens the “Edit Presets…” dialog.
Name your new preset here
Use the bin icon to delete unneeded presets.
These tags belong to the Description group. Select the appropriate checkboxes to display them in the tree.
With these buttons, you can
Select all or none of the tags with just one click
Use the up and down buttons to change the sorting order of the tags. You can also perform a custom sort by drag&drop the tags directly within the Catalog Tags Panel.
Click and hold the mouse cursor on one of the tags and drag it to its new position. The new location is indicated by a thin blue line. When you release the mouse, the tag will be moved to the new location.
After configuring and naming your view preset, close the dialog with the “OK” button.
The Catalog Tags panel now displays the two previously selected tags only, “Authors” and “keywords”. Your new preset will appear as a new entry in the selection list.
The Properties panel is the main tool for cataloging your data. When you select one or more thumbnails in the browser, the Properties panel is where the metadata information is displayed and where you can add further information or modify and delete existing entries.
Tags are arranged thematically in categories with names such as General, Description, System, and Image. Left-click categories to open and close them.
To customize your settings, click the small gear icon in the upper taskbar and use the Edit Presets dialog box to specify which tags to display in the Properties panel; arrange the order, and finally, save your new presets under a custom name. You can create and save your own tag presets in the same dialog box – read Assigning tag preset for details.
Specify which tags to display
If you are working with metadata, it can be helpful to hide fields you don’t need when performing certain tasks, like indexing images for example. Clearing the Catalog Tags panel of unnecessary fields makes it much easier to locate the right tags in the tag tree.
You might choose to display just keywords and the title field, for example, and hide everything else.
To create a new custom view, click the little gear icon on the right of the Properties title bar and select Customize from the drop-down menu.
This opens the Edit Presets dialog box.
Preset
Give your new preset a name.
Bin
Use the bin icon to delete presets you don’t need.
Tag list
Shows all tags that can be displayed in the Properties panel. Uncheck the boxes of tags you want to hide.
Select
Click to select all tags.
Deselect
Click to deselect all tags.
Sorting
Use the up and down arrows to arrange the order of the tags.
After adjusting the settings to your preferences and giving the new template a name, click OK to close the dialog box.
The Properties panel now displays only the two tag fields you selected, Title and Keywords, and your new template now appears in the selection list.
To display the default view again, simply click Default on the Properties’ settings drop-down menu.
Follow the steps described above to create multiple views that you can open whenever you need them.
To customize Daminion’s Web Client interface and adjust it to your brand, click the three small dots on the toolbar, and then click Settings. If you logged in as Admin, the Settings window will look like the screenshot below:
Settings Window
Set up a color scheme here for the current catalog and a default color scheme for all catalogs . Select between light and dark themes, change the accent color that is used to highlight tag headings in the Properties panel, checkmarks, Save icons etc., and also choose a color for selected files.
Accent color #7cd1ed
Accent color #ffffff
Upload a default logo for the web catalogs here. Click CHANGE and select a file no larger than 100 KB. If necessary, change the default logo for a unique logo for this catalog only. When logging in to other catalogs, users will see the default logo.
Select a language for the currently logged-in user and for all other users. You have a choice of English, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Dutch.
Note: The settings displayed above are available for users with admin access rights only. By default, Editors, Viewers, and Guests are only able to change the catalog language. Other users’ permissions can be extended via Daminion server admin panel > Administration > Roles
Customize your login page here . Select a background image and a logotype for the intro page, as well as define the welcome message.
You can freely configure the workspace of Daminion according to your preferences. All dialogs with a blue title bar can either be free-floating or permanently docked to certain areas.
The first time you start Daminion, it opens in a standard layout, as shown in this screenshot.
The red outlines indicate the title bars of windows that can be moved.
In order to move or resize a window to your liking, position the mouse over one of the title bars, left-click and hold and pull the window away from the docking area.
When you hold down the mouse button and move the window, docking icons appear in the workspace, as shown in the screenshot below.
Moving the window into the vicinity of a docking icon causes an appropriate part of the workspace to turn blue. This indicates that if you release the mouse button, the window will immediately snap to the nearest docking area. If, however, you release the window away from the docking icons (i.e. when it hasn’t turned blue), it becomes a free-floating item.
Opening and closing windows
Windows can be closed in two ways: either by clicking on the “X” icon in the top right corner of the window or by going to the title bar, clicking on “Window” and, in the drop-down list, unchecking the window(s) you wish to close. Conversely, you can open windows that are closed by re-checking them in the same list.
Creating tabs
You can also stack multiple windows so that they arrange themselves as tabs.
In this example, the “Properties”, “Map” and “Preview” windows were sequentially incorporated into the “Catalog Tags” window. In the lower part of the “Catalog Tags” window, you can now switch easily between tab views.
To create these tabs, drag one window to another and place it right in the middle of the docking icon, as shown in the following example.
In this case, the blue area marks the “Catalog Tags” window, into which we want to place the “Properties” window.
When you place multiple windows on top of one another, they automatically rearrange themselves as tabs.
Reset Window Layout
To revert from your custom layout back to the standard workspace, go to the File menu and do the following: click on “Window” > “Reset Window Layout“. Daminion restarts in a standard layout.
By default, Daminion is configured to display file format above the thumbnail with an additional three lines below it displaying file name, size, and exposure.
However, there is nothing to stop you from changing what metadata is displayed above and below your thumbnail previews.
At the bottom right of the main window, click the “i” symbol (see screenshot below).
You can also open the dialog box via the file menu by clicking View > CustomizeThumbnailCaptions or by right-clicking the bottom caption of the image and selecting CustomizeThumbnailCaptions.
This opens the Customize Thumbnail Captions dialog box.
Information above Thumbnails
Select which information should be shown above the thumbnail by selecting one item from the drop-down list.
Information below thumbnails
This shows the list of the tags currently displayed below the thumbnail.
Add
Click Add to choose from a list of other tags that can be displayed below the thumbnail.
Delete
Use Delete to remove tags that should no longer be displayed.
Sorting
Use the up and down arrows to rearrange the sort order of the tags.
Once you have made your selection, click OK to close the dialog box. Thumbnails will be displayed in the browser according to your new settings.
There are two ways of displaying Lightroom’s people tags in Daminion:
A – Tag your archive in Lightroom first (facial recognition and\or other tags), save the tags to file’s metadata, and import your files into Daminion. During the import process, Daminion will automatically pick up all tags from files’ metadata and display them in the catalog.
B – Simultaneous work with Daminion and Lightroom
If you have already imported your files into Daminion, and you want to tag people (or assign any other tags) in Lightroom, please follow the steps below:
1 – In the screenshot below you can see 5 pictures with several filled-in tags and empty People tags (Daminion).
2 – Before switching to Lightroom and proceeding with tagging, please turn on auto-synchronization in Daminion to make sure that Daminion tags will be written to files’ metadata. It will help you avoid tag overwriting.
Write your Daminion tags to the metadata of the file. You can check the number of unsynced files under Saved Searches > Unsynced in the Tags tree.
3 – Open Lightroom and make sure that for the selected images the same set of tags is shown as in Daminion.
If not, please read the tags from the files first!
If Lightroom does not display the tags assigned in Daminion before you proceed with tagging in Lightroom and then you will write the new Lightroom tags to files’ metadata, the tags previously assigned in Daminion will be overwritten!
4 – Tag people in Lightroom and save tags to file’s metadata via Metadata > Save Metadata to Files.
5 – Now in Daminion select the files you edited in Lightroom, click the Sync button and select “Read tags from files”.
Daminion will display assigned People tags.
6 – To automatically display metadata changes in Daminion without having to read tags from files, please activate Auto-Rescan.
Conclusion: To ensure that working with Daminion and Lightroom will be smooth and without data loss, verify the metadata in Lightroom before assigning new tags. If the metadata in Daminion differs from Lightroom, please read the tags from files in Lightroom first!
Note: before running any test on your database, make sure to create a copy of your local *.dmc catalog or a backup of your shared catalog via Daminion server admin panel > Catalogs > Select a catalog > Actions > Backup
To configure the Daminion Auto Import folder, open the Daminion server administration panel, navigate to the Catalogs menu, select a catalog, and double-click it to open the Catalog settings.
Files copied or moved to this folder will be automatically moved to the folder selected to store uploaded files and imported to the catalog. This enables you to import to the catalog via FTP, DropBox, or GoogleDrive without using Daminion Desktop or Web Client.
The Auto Import folder can also be used as a quick way to import files via Smartphone when the DropBox folder is set as the Auto Import folder on your Server PC. In this case, upload the files to Dropbox on your Smartphone. Once these files are synced with a Dropbox folder on your Server PC, they will be imported to the shared catalog on Daminion Server.
Note: please make sure that the Daminion file watching service logon user has full access rights to the Auto Import folder and Folder to store uploaded files.
Once the Auto Import folder is set up, please restart Daminion File Watching Service. Otherwise, the changes will not be applied!
With version 5.0.1697 and higher, you can run a silent setup without opening desktop client applications when the installation is over. Please use the following command:
DaminionSetup-5.0.0.1697.exe /verysilent/norun
Q. Daminion renders my RAW files incorrectly.
A. Daminion extracts built-in JPEG or PPM preview from RAW images in order to preview them. This is the only way to guarantee that you will see the same image in your RAW editing tool and Daminion. You can open your RAW files by your RAW editing tool, update its preview and then rebuild the thumbnail in Daminion (Ctrl + B).
Q. Import is very slow. What can I do to improve it?
A. Importing speed varies from many factors:
Whether you use local or server catalog (importing to server catalogs are up to 4-5 times faster)
Location of importing files (importing from network folders are slower)
Checked “Copy To” option in the import window also decreases the importing speed
Your PC configuration (free RAM/CPU)
Importing format and file size (importing of 5MP JPEGs are faster than 30MP TIFF files)
Active background processes. When syncing is turned On, it might impact import speed.
Q. Is it possible to categorize more than 1000 items at a time?
A. Sure. There are several ways for doing this:
Increase the number of files per page via Edit > Preferences > General up to 5000 files per page.
Select all items on the current page (Ctrl + A). Then right-click on a tag value that you want to assign to selected images and navigate to “Assign “TAG” to selected items“.
In this case, the selected tag will be assigned to all found files instead of just 1000 images.
Q. I have a lot of duplicate files. Is there a way to find and automatically remove any and all duplicates?
A. You can find duplicate files via the Catalog > Find Duplicates menu. Daminion treats images as duplicates by comparing their visual part (thumbnails). So for example, 2 images with 100% identical visual parts but with different metadata blocks will be treated as duplicates.
Daminion can only find duplicates but can’t remove them automatically. It’s very hard to determine automatically which file is original and which one is duplicate. So the duplicate removal operation is solely under user responsibility.
Q. What is the maximum number of photos you can put into a catalog?
A. This depends on Daminion’s version:
All Daminion Server editions allow you to add an unlimited number of files.
Daminion Standalone Pro – unlimited
Daminion Standalone Standard – 75 000 files per 1 catalog
Daminion Standalone Basuic – 25 000 files per 1 catalog
Q. I have created a standalone catalog. Can I then export this catalog into a shared catalog?
A. Sure: File > Import > Daminion Local Catalog
Q. I need to move my Daminion .dmc Catalog to a new hard drive to free space on the current hard drive. What is the best practice when moving the local catalog?
A. There are 4 possible ways to move .dmc file:
Catalog .dmc file and imported files are stored in the same folder:
If you want to move both .dmc catalog file and imported files just copy this folder to a new location (it is possible thanks to supporting of relative file links).
If you want to move .dmc catalog file only, place it to the new location and relink the root file folder to change the relative file paths with absolute paths (don’t forget to move the Thumbs folder as well – it is stored in the same folder with Daminion .dmc catalog file
Catalog .dmc file and imported files are stored in different folders:
If you want to move both .dmc catalog file and imported files, place them in the new location and relink the root file folder (don’t forget the Thumbs folder)
If you want to move .dmc catalog file only, just place it and the thumbs folder in the new location.
Q. Is there a way to assign GPS coordinates to files that don’t have them?
A. Just drag images to the Map panel and sync tags with image metadata:
Manually: Item > Actions > Write Tags to File Or Automatically: Turn the Sync option on (it is located near the export button on the toolbar).
Depending on your Writing Metadata preferences (Edit > Preferences > Writing Metadata), GPS info will be written to the XMP section of the selected files, or to both XMP and EXIF.
For Server Catalogs the above-mentioned Writing Metadata preferences should be adjusted via the Daminion Server admin panel.
Q. When I open my RAW files I can’t view them at 100%. The program shows that they are already at 100% but this isn’t the case. There is about half the size zoomed out. Why?
A. Daminion uses built-in JPEG previews inside the RAW images to display them. This is the only guaranteed way that you will see the same picture in both programs: Daminion and your Camera RAW editing program. Different RAW editors might display the same RAW image differently.
When taking photos some digital cameras write half-size JPEG previews into RAW files. You can adjust your RAW editing program so they will generate and write full-size JPEGs inside your RAWs and then you can view them at 100% within Daminion.
Q. I receive the Time Mismatch between Client and Server message. What does it mean?
A. The time difference between S and C should be less than 10 mins. Check also HyperV – time sync service that prevents from changing your server date.
Q. I would like to know why my Daminion version is no more a pro version?
A. It seems that you upgraded your Daminion to a new version that was released after your maintenance period ended.
You can follow one of these ways:
Revert back to your older Daminion version and restore your catalog from automatically backup files in the same folder where your catalog files are stored.
Prolong your maintenance with a 50% discount, restore your Daminion Pro license status and get rights to update to any Daminion release during the next 1 year.
Q: Any plans for a Mac client?
A: No, but we are planning to keep on developing Web-Client with the same functionality as Daminion Desktop client and accessible from Macs.
Apart from it, you can run Windows on Mac with Parallels Desktop software and install Daminion there.
Q. I want to move all of the image files already cataloged by Daminion to a different drive, in order to free space on my master drive. Is there a way I can edit the path of each file within Daminion?
A. No need to edit the path of every single file. Just move the parent folder with all sub-folders to a different drive and then relink this parent folder: right-click the folder > Relink Folder> specify the current path.
You can find the dialog for changing the Daminion settings in the program menu under the “Edit” > “Preferences ...” menu.
General
Files per Page Specify the maximum number of elements Daminion shows on each page of the browser. The default is 200, but you can select any value from 200 to 5000.
Cache Size
Specify the size of the cache. You can choose from the following values: 500, 1000, and 2000. The higher the cache value, the more computer memory (RAM) is required. We recommend the default value of 1000.
Set start value of the counter token (%###) for renaming templates
When renaming batches of files, Daminion uses an internal automatically high counting token. Reset the counter or define a specific starting value for your renaming process.
Automatically check for updates
If this option is enabled, Daminion checks for updates on startup.
Check availability of Daminion Server by the ‘Ping’ command (faster)
If this option is enabled, Daminion Client checks if the Daminion Server is available in your environment.
Reading Metadata
Treat the following characters as tag hierarchy delimiters when reading metadata
By default, Daminion uses the “|” character to separate Tag hierarchies. Other programs sometimes use different characters as Tag delimiters. In order to import your metadata correctly, it may be necessary, under certain circumstances, to select the delimiter used by the external program.
Mark Imported Tags as Unapproved
Check this option to prevent your existing tag structure from being damaged when new files are imported.
Writing Metadata
Add Camera RAW format support
Define how Daminion should handle metadata of RAW files.
Do not update Metadata No metadata will be stored in the RAW file. Neither in the file itself nor in a sidecar file. The information related to a specific RAW file is only stored in the Daminion catalog. Therefore, please be aware that if you open these files with an external application or send them to others by mail, the metadata information will not be available.
Write Tags to Sidecar .xmp files (except DNG format) Metadata will only be stored in separate sidecar files – not in the file itself, except for the Adobe DNG file format. If you activate this option, Daminion creates a separate sidecar file with the same base name as the RAW file but with the extension*.xmp. This sidecar file contains all the metadata information that was given to that specific file in Daminion. This option gives you the flexibility to have all metadata alongside your RAW file while your original RAW file remains untouched by Daminion.
Write Tags into EXIF/IPTC/XMP The metadata will be stored both in the XMP section of the original file and in a separate sidecar file.
Add video format support
If this option is checked, Daminion writes all assigned tags to the metadata of a video file or to XMP sidecar file (for video formats that don’t support the embedding of metadata).
Preserve file modified date when updating metadata
If you let Daminion write metadata information directly into files, you can choose whether or not it also updates the file’s modification date. If you don’t want Daminion to make any changes at all to your master files, do not activate this option. Note that this date/time information will be stored independently within Daminion anyway.
Color Management
Apply display color profile
Specify whether Daminion should use a color profile for displaying previews only, for displaying thumbnails only, or for displaying both.
Display Profile
Click Customize to open the Windows Color Management menu and set your preferred Display profile.
Default Input ICC Profile
By default, Daminion uses the sRGB profile to display images that have no color profile embedded.
Accelerate Preview
Here you can select whether Daminion should accelerate preview of large images and set a maximal JPEG preview size.
Proxy Settings
Direct Connection to the Internet This option is the Daminion default setting.
Automatically detect proxy settings If activated, Daminion tries to detect the port settings.
Manual proxy configuration Set the internet access manually by entering a valid IP address and the port number.
In the Daminion preferences, you can determine how Daminion should treat Metadata Information. These settings have to be made separately for shared catalogs and for local catalogs. In this article, we describe which settings can be set for the shared catalogs.
The metadata preferences for local catalogs must be set separately in the Daminion preferences dialog.
You can find the dialog for changing the Daminion Server Metadata Preferences in the program menu under the “Administration” > “Preferences …“.
Reading Metadata
Treat the following characters as tag hierarchy delimiters when reading metadata
By default, Daminion uses the “|” character to separate Tag hierarchies. Other programs sometimes use different characters as Tag delimiters. In order to import your metadata correctly, it may be necessary, under certain circumstances, to select the delimiter used by the external program.
Mark Imported Tags as Unapproved
Check this option to prevent your existing tag structure from being damaged when new files are imported.
Writing Metadata
Add Camera RAW format support
Define how Daminion should handle metadata of RAW files.
Do not update Metadata No metadata will be stored in the RAW file. Neither in the file itself nor in a sidecar file. The information related to a specific RAW file is only stored in the Daminion catalog. Therefore, please be aware that if you open these files with an external application or send them to others by mail, the metadata information will not be available.
Write Tags to Sidecar .xmp files (except DNG format) Metadata will only be stored in separate sidecar files – not in the file itself, except for the Adobe DNG file format. If you activate this option, Daminion creates a separate sidecar file with the same base name as the RAW file but with the extension*.xmp. This sidecar file contains all the metadata information that was given to that specific file in Daminion. This option gives you the flexibility to have all metadata alongside your RAW file while your original RAW file remains untouched by Daminion.
Write Tags into EXIF/IPTC/XMP The metadata will be stored both in the XMP section of the original file and in a separate sidecar file.
Add video format support
If this option is checked, Daminion writes all assigned tags to the metadata of a video file or to XMP sidecar file (for video formats that don’t support the embedding of metadata).
Preserve file modified date when updating metadata
If you let Daminion write metadata information directly into files, you can choose whether or not it also updates the file’s modification date. If you don’t want Daminion to make any changes at all to your master files, do not activate this option. Note that this date/time information will be stored independently within Daminion anyway.
Accelerating Preview
Here you can select whether Daminion should accelerate the preview of large images and set a maximal JPEG preview size, as well as select whether to generate mid-sized JPEGpreviews for faster preview by web-client.
Security Mode
Here you can define what security mode to use when logging in to Daminion catalogs. For more information on security modes, please refer to this article.
Q. I am trying to upgrade to version 5.5 Server. Do I need to install it fresh or is there a way to update our current version?
A. Upgrade path:
Make sure that your maintenance is newer than the Daminion version that you are trying to install.
Download the latest Daminion Server 5.5 installer.
Launch Admin Panel of your existing Daminion Server 5.0 version.
Backup your existing catalogs (via Administration > Catalogs. Then right click and go to the backup menu for each catalog in the list).
Launch Daminion Server 5.5 installed on your server.
Follow the screen instructions. Your 5.0 version of the server will be uninstalled automatically but all files, thumbnails, catalogs, and settings will remain and 5.5 version will be installed.
You don’t need to install separately Daminion Clients 5.5 because they will be installed automatically on each client PC after an attempt to connect to Daminion Server.
Read this article about enabling web access in the new Daminion version.
Q. Is it possible to access the Daminion server via the Internet?
A. Yep, there are multiple ways of how to do this:
1. Via VPN connection between remote computers and your office LAN. 2. By installing Daminion Server (non-cloud) on your corporate web server or a new web server. 3. Via port forwarding on your company’s firewall. 4. Via white IP address. 5. Individual files and folders also can be shared via Dropbox Connector (named Publishing Panel in Daminion).
Q. Is it possible to easily add photos from a mobile phone?
A. The easiest way to add photos into Daminion Server at the moment is via Dropbox:
Install Dropbox on your server PC and on your mobile phone.
Import the Dropbox folder or its sub-folder into Daminion Server.
Mark this folder as Auto-Rescan.
Now once you share any photo(s) via your mobile phone with Dropbox, it will be synced with your Dropbox folder on the server PC and Daminion File Watching service will pick them up.
Q. Is it possible to install PostgreSQL on a separate drive?
A. Yep, you need to download PostgreSQL and install it separately.
Q. How to change the location of the PostgreSQL installation?
Q. My login and password doesn’t pass verification and I can’t open my shared catalog
A. Try to open this catalog from another computer. If you are able to do this, please check whether 8082 and 8084 ports are open on your client computer. If not, add these ports manually (Windows Firewall > Advanced Settings > Inbound Rules > DaminionServerRules > Protocols and Ports).
The remote server and the client’s system time must be within (typically) 10 minutes of each other. If they are not, security validation will fail.
Q. What is the best way to backup my Daminion Server?
A.Here is the instruction on how to backup your Daminion Server database.
It’s recommended to add the “dump_postgresql.bat” file from the above zip archive into a scheduler of your third-party backup tool (we use free Cobian Backup).
Q. The option “Add Files” doesn’t work. Any ideas?
A. Open the catalog as LocalHost.
Q. I have a dedicated drive that the catalog can be on, rather than running it off the OS drive (if that would give it a better performance). Can I move it somehow?
A. Follow the steps below:
Stop PostgreSQL and Daminion Server services from the “Services” window
and specify a new PostgreSQL data location like this: C:/Program Files (x86)/PostgreSQL/bin/pg_ctl.exe runservice -N “postgresql-9.2” -D “ANEWLOCATIONOFTHEDATAFOLDER” -w
Do not change any other part of the text except ANEWLOCATIONOFTHEDATAFOLDER
4. Start Daminion Server again.
Q. How to migrate Daminion local catalogs to Daminion Server?
A. There are several ways to do this:
Open a shared catalog and go to the main menu: File > Import > Daminion Local Catalog (.dmc).
Open local and shared catalogs in Daminion Standalone version. Select all files and navigate to the Move To > Shared Catalog option from the context menu.
Daminion can automatically sync all of your annotations (tags) into the file metadata (for JPEG, TIFF, PSD, PNG, etc…). So once the sync process is done, you can just import your images from the local catalog to Daminion Server. All tags embedded into the metadata will be automatically extracted. (This way doesn’t work for some file formats, e.g. BMP).
Via CSV. To get more information, please refer to the articles Exporting Metadata to CSV and Importing Metadata from CSV.
Q. Is in the roadmap of Daminion the possibility to store the data in an MS SQL Database instead of a Postgres database?
A. Nope, at the moment. We offer an easy-to-install and out-of-the-box solution where all the necessary program components are included in a single package.
We started designing Daminion Server with the possibility to use virtually any corporate-level SQL Database but focusing on a single database allowed us to reach the best performance, and it works for most of our customers. Plus it is free! So now Daminion is available in two editions: -SQLite-based (for local catalogs). -PostgreSQL based (for shared catalogs).
Q. How to move a Server catalog to a new hard drive?
A. There are several ways to do this:
1. Create Symbolic Links to individual files or folders, and then these files or folders will appear like they are stored in the folder with the symbolic link even though the symbolic link only points to their real location. Follow this link to find a complete guide to symbolic links.
This way you can move your folders from drive #1 to drive #2, and leave just a small symbolic link on your drive #1. This is especially useful when your system drive is SSD with low capacity.
2. The second way is:
Backup your Daminion Server catalog(s)
Uninstall your PostgreSQL
Install PostgreSQL on another drive
Re-install your Daminion Server
Restore your Daminion Server catalog(s)
Q. How to migrate Daminion Server from one computer (PC1) to a new computer (PC2)?
A. Please follow the steps below:
1. Launch the Daminion Server Administration panel on PC1. 2. Go to the main menu, Administration > Catalogs… and backup all your catalogs. 3. Install Daminion Server on PC2. 4. Launch the Daminion Server Admin panel on PC2.
Now we need to move all catalogs from Daminion Server on PC1 to Daminion Server on PC2. Repeat the below steps for all catalogs on PC1:
5. Create a new catalog on PC2 6. Copy the catalog name from the first catalog on PC1 7. Adjust “Folder to Store Uploaded Files” and “Folder to Store thumbnails” paths or copy them from the first catalog on PC1 (check carefully user names). 8. Copy files from the “Folder to Store Uploaded Files” folder on your PC1 to the “Folder to Store Uploaded Files” folder on your PC2. 9. Copy files from the “Folder to Store thumbnails” folder on your PC1 to the “Folder to Store thumbnails” folder on your PC2. 10. Restart Daminion server. Then right-click on a newly created catalog on PC2 and run the “Restore…” command from the context menu. Specify a catalog backup that you did in step 2. You also need to specify the _daminion##.backup file where information about Daminion users is stored, but you can do this only when restoring the first catalog only. 11. Repeat 5-10 steps for all catalogs on your PC1. 12. Add a new Daminion Server address on your Daminion Clients. You can omit this step if a new PC2 name is the same as your PC1 name or has the same IP address (if you for example just upgraded the server).
Q. How to set up Daminion Server when working across multiple offices?
A. Follow the instructions below:
First of all, you need to arrange a VPN connection between your offices. There are different (software and hardware) ways to arrange this:http://blog.daminion.net/tips/how-to-access-daminion-server-remotely-via-the-internet/
Then you need to download and install Daminion Server on your main office where your documents are located.
After that install Daminion Client on a client computer (in this or remote office), launch it, and go to the main menu: File > Open Shared Catalog. Press the “Add Daminion Server” button and type in the IP address of a computer where Daminion Server was installed. This IP will be different for computers in your main office and computers in other offices. Please consult your system administrator.
Repeat the above step on all other clients. Please note that you need to install Daminion Client once. All further client software updates will be automatic.
The above steps are enough to start working with Daminion Server across multiple office locations, however, you can drastically increase the speed of viewing and accessing original images if you do the following:
Replicate a folder in your server computer in your main office with server computers in other offices by Windows DFS (Distributed File System). The replicated folder MUST be stored in the same location on all replicated computers. This allows you to make copies of your file server content in all offices.
Launch Daminion Client, connect to your Daminion Server as admin, and go to the main menu: Catalog > Replication Settings and then check what group of users can take advantage of this option.
After that when a user from a remote computer double-clicks a photo in his Daminion Client, he will open the local file instead of downloading it from another office.
Q. In setting up multiple Libraries with multiple clients, is there some sort of config file that specifies UI layout?
A. There are several ways to edit default UI settings:
Part of the settings like a set of tags in the tags tree, thumbnail browser captions, and a set of tags in the Properties panel is stored inside the catalog (server or a local one). To set a default set of tags for all users you need to open a server catalog by Daminion client and go to the main menu: Catalog > Default View Settings…
A list of catalogs can be adjusted by editing this file: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Daminion Software\Daminion\1.0\CatalogsStore.xml
Other UI settings can be adjusted via this file: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Daminion Software\Daminion\1.0\Settings.xml
In Daminion 5.0 version you can adjust default UI settings for all users via the Administration menu in your web client.
Q: Does Daminion work with terminal services?
A: Yes, it does.
Q: Is it possible to use the existing MS SQL Server or MySQL with Daminion?
A: No. When installing Daminion Server, PostgreSQL is installed automatically as an out-of-the-box solution.
This feature is only available in the web client in Daminion server 7.0 or higher!
Embedded links help you to integrate Daminion with CMS and other systems and save you the necessity to download your images to the local drive to upload them to the corporate CRM. Instead, you can now publish the image on your website or blog directly from Daminion via embedded links.
Daminion will generate a static link to the image that can be used to display it on your website or blog without using Daminion resources.
To generate a static link for a file, click on the three dots icon on the thumbnail and select “Get an embed link”. You can select a transformation preset or an original file.
For some file formats (videos, audios, documents), you can only generate a link to the original file.
When a preset gets changed, the link will be updated if you click “Get an embed link again”.
If a new version of the file is uploaded and you need to get a link to this new version, please click “Get an embed link” again after checking the file in.
Service cannot be started. System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. —> System.ArgumentException: The certificate ‘CN=localhost, OU=Debug, O=daminion.net, S=Russia, C=RU’ must have a private key that is capable of key exchange. The process must have access rights for the private key. —> System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Keyset does not exist
A. If Daminion Server wasn’t launched in normal mode, and you see the info about the certificate access issue please do the following steps:
– grant access rights for Daminion Server user to this folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys
– launch this command line for the Server version: c:\Program Files (x86)\Daminion Software\Daminion Server\Daminion.Server.exe
Wait until it will be launched and close it
– Launch Daminion Server again from the admin panel
Q. We have recently received the attached error message while trying to access a server catalog in Daminion:
Error opening catalog. Time mismatch between Daminion Server PC and your PC! Server Time: … Client Time:…
A. The maximum time difference between Server and Client computers can be 10 mins. Please check also the timezone settings on the server and client PCs. They should match if computers are in the same office or home.
The Export Settings menu in the web client allows you to create export presets to be applied to files when you download them. You can select a file and by applying the export preset, resize it, apply a watermark, change the format, and embed or exclude metadata.
Daminion comes with predefined export presets, some of which are activated by default. Check out the activated presets by clicking the download icon on the file’s thumbnail as shown on the screenshot below:
Daminion allows you to either change the properties of existing export presets or create your own presets.
To change or create an export preset, log into your catalog as administrator, click the three dots icon in the upper right corner of the web client interface, and select Settings.
In the window that opens, click Export Settings. You will notice that there are two disabled presets: JPEG – Fit within 2000 x 2000 px and JPEG – Fit within 1600 x 1600 px.
To activate them, select one of the tag presets and click the Enable button. Once activated, you can change the properties of the export preset.
Creating a new Export Preset
To create a new Export preset, click the + button below the presets list.
On the right of the screen, you will see the properties of the new tag preset to be created.
А – Enter the chosen name of your export preset
B – Enable or disable your preset
C – Select a format that your files will be transformed into when downloaded. Available formats are JPEG, TIFF and PNG
D – Change the quality of the resulting files
E – Resize Click the down arrow to expand the drop-down list and select from multiple further options.
F – Choose which metadata to embed. You can select not to embed any metadata, embed all metadata, copyrights only, or all metadata except camera info.
G – Add a watermark. Change the position, opacity, and scale of the watermark to fit your images. Once the watermark is selected, a preview appears under the Watermark sign, and the Browse button changes to Clear.
H – Save your export preset. It will automatically be added to the list of export presets.
How to use the export preset
In the browse panel, select a file, hover your mouse over one of the thumbnails and click the download icon.
From the drop-down list, select the required export preset.
To apply a preset to multiple files, select the files in the Browser area, on the toolbar panel click “Selected” > “Download selected files” and select a preset.
This feature is available in Daminion version 6.7 or higher.
The Export to PDF options allows you to quickly create contact sheets of your images that can be used as mood boards or product presentations for your colleagues or clients.
To create a PDF contact sheet in the Daminion web client, select one or more files (you can also use Favorites option), click the three dots button in the upper right corner of the thumbnail area, and select Export to PDF.
In the Window that opens, select the layout and a tag to be added as a thumbnail caption. You can select either Filename or one of the Custom Tags.
All tags and tag values stored in the catalog can be exported (and imported) as .txt files, which can be used in other databases or spreadsheet applications.
Conversely, the import function is useful when you want to add keyword lists created outside Daminion to the Daminion tag tree.
The export-import function can also be used for transferring tag lists between two catalogs.
Exporting tags
To export the values of one or more tags: in the File menu, navigate to Catalog > Export Tags.
In the export dialog, check the tags to be exported and click OK.
You will then be prompted to specify a name and location for the exported .txt file.
When the export is complete, the newly created text file will be displayed in Windows Explorer (if the respective option is checked).
This text file can then be opened in a word processing program for further editing.
In the screenshot on the left, you can see the Place tag with the hierarchical tag values that were exported to the .txt file. The hierarchy is built here by using a tab as the delimiter.
Importing tags
To import tags from a text file: in the File menu, navigate to Catalog -> Import Tags. Then in Windows Explorer select the text file you want to import into Daminion.
After a brief content analysis of the .txt file, the Tag Import dialog opens.
In the screenshot below, we are going to import the previously exported and edited Place and Author tags back into Daminion.
Check this option if you want to convert all fields to a certain tag, e.g. Keywords or Categories
Check this option to reassign the tag fields. In our example, we mapped the Author tag to Access Control. Once imported, the values of the Author tag will appear under the Access Control tag.
After clicking Import, the tags will be added to the catalog.
Note: if the tag values have synonyms, they will be also exported and imported.
The Export function lets you export your media files with predefined export rules. You can scale your images to fit Flickr or Facebook, for example, or optimize them for PowerPoint presentations.
Daminion allows you to convert your media to the required format and size during export.
How to export files
In the browser, select one or more images you want to export.
On the command bar, click Export and select Copy to Folder from the sub-menu. Alternatively, open the export dialog directly by pressing F7.
In the Copy to folder dialog box that opens, Daminion gives you the following options.
Destination Folder
Specify the path of the folder where you want to store the selected media files.
Create Sub-Folders
Let Daminion automatically create sub-folders in the target folder depending on naming conventions that you can set here. By clicking on the small triangle icon on the right of the text box, you can launch the template editor. Find out more about using the Template Editor in the article Template Editor.
Rename Files
This allows you to use the template editor to set the naming conventions to be used when the files are renamed during the copy process. Find out more about using the Template Editor in the article Template Editor.
Example File Name
An example text based on the parameters set for B and C will appear here so that you can make sure it meets your expectations.
Existing Files
Specify how Daminion should behave if the destination folder already contains files with the same name. You can choose from the following:
Ask. Daminion asks how to proceed for each duplicated filename
Skip All. Files with names that already exist in the destination folder are not exported
Overwrite All. Any existing files with the same name are overwritten by newly exported files
Overwrite All Older. Only older files with the same name are overwritten
Rename Automatically. Daminion changes the duplicated names of existing files by appending sequential numbers to them.
In addition, you can specify whether files should be automatically displayed in Windows File Explorer after export and whether or not file creation dates should be set. When deactivated, Daminion sets the creation date to the date of export.
Usage Purpose
Specify here what the file should be used for.
Preview
The preview area shows the image currently selected from the current list.
If you select more than one image for export, you can use the arrow buttons to move back and forth through your selection.
The figure 1/18 tells you that this is the first in a set of 18 images
The magnifying glass icon opens the current image in a separate preview window and displays it according to the parameters you have specified. So you can easily examine the expected result in advance
The cross icon is designed to remove images from the selection. If you decide not to export one or the other image, you can quickly remove them from the export list. The image itself will not be physically deleted but only removed from the selection for the export.
Transform
Click Transform to open a pre-defined list of default presets. Select any of the standard parameter settings or launch the Template Editor.
The topmost entry, Export Original File(s), is the default – no resizing or file type changes will be applied to the files.
The other presets offer a selection of common file sizes and file types that you can apply instantly.
Customize at the bottom of the list opens the Template Editor where you can create your own presets or edit existing ones.
The Export to CSV function allows you to write some or all metadata information of one or more items in a CSV file.
This CSV file can then be used, for example, for importing into other digital asset management software. Alternatively, you can use this feature to transfer metadata information from one tag to another.
Creating a CSV file
In Daminion, select all the images whose metadata you want to export. Then, on the toolbar, click Export and navigate to Export to CSV.
You will see the following dialog window.
Choose to export either selected items only or all found items.
Choose which tags to export. You can select all of them or deselect every field and manually check only the ones you want.
All the exportable tags that can be selected for exporting are listed here.
Specify whether the file path to the newly created CSV file should be opened in Windows Explorer when the export is completed.
After confirming with OK, the selected tags are written to the CSV file and stored in the previously specified location.
The contents of the CSV file looks like this:
Please note the delimiters used in the CSV file:
– Tag headings are separated by a semicolon [;]
– Tag values are separated by a comma [,]
– Tag hierarchies are separated by a backslash [\]
Favorites, or Tray in the Daminion Web Client allows you to create a temporary selecting of files from different searches to be shared or exported to PDF later on.
To add a file to the Favorites, hover your mouse over a thumbnail and click the heart icon.
Once at least one file is added to the Favorites, an additional icon appears in the toolbar.
Click the heart icon in the toolbar to display the contents of the Favorites.
Specifying your filtering criteria in the Daminion Web Client Filters panel enables you to find the images you require easily and fast.
Use Boolean Search and Filtering to combine tags with AND, OR, and NOT operators to produce more relevant search results.
In our example, we need to find all images of Kitchen or Dinining room that were shot anywhere but Colorado, USA. To do this, we expand the necessary tags (in our case Room Type and Place) and check the respective tag values.
To hide a tag from a search, click the three dots icon next to it and select Hide.
To display a hidden tag, click once again the three dots button next to it and select Show.
You can change the boolean operator by clicking it and changing it from AND to OR or vice versa.
As you can see, the search result has changed as there are fewer files with the tags “Living Room” AND “Kitchen” in our catalog.
In the same way, you can widen or narrow your search parameters by checking further tag values or unchecking the ones selected. Please read the article “Web Access” to find out how to customize the Filters panel and display currently needed tags only.
Searching in Web Client
To find an image with a particular tag, enter a searchable word or phrase in the search box on the toolbar.
By default, Daminion searches for files everywhere and shows hints on where this tag value can also be found. If you know where to search for the tag, feel free to click a specific tag to be searched in.
In the example below, we searched for “attic” in Everywhere and got 11 search results.
Please note that quick search uses the AND operand as default. If you want to make your search results more specific, please combine quick search with filtering.
The <Filter Tags> textbox just below the title bar is provided for a quick reference of tags. It allows you to filter the entire contents of the catalog quickly by certain combinations of words. This filter passes all Tag-Headings in the Tags panel and immediately displays a list of all text matches.
As soon as you enter a combination of letters, a list of all the tag entries containing this combination will appear here.
In each case, elements that match the input word are shown in red. In this way, you can search for one tag, whose exact spelling you don’t know. Alternatively, you can use it, for example, to quickly find out whether a particular tag has already been used, and thus already exists – or whether it might be possibly duplicated.
Daminion offers you the opportunity to search the Internet for images that are the same as, or visually similar to images in your Daminion catalog.
If, for example, you plan to use a particular photo for a campaign, and you don’t have exclusive rights to it, it may be helpful to find out whether or not it is being used on the Internet and who is using it.
Then again, if you market your own photos, you might be interested to know who is using them and in what context.
Or maybe you want to use a specific subject for a campaign and would simply like to see what alternatives are available.
Exact search for a specific image on the web
In the Daminion Browser, select an image you want to search for and navigate to Catalog > Find Image on the Internet.
Daminion submits the image to Google, where it starts the search. Search results are then automatically displayed in your web browser
Find images on the Internet that are similar to a particular image in your catalog
In the Daminion Browser, select an image you want to search for and navigate to Catalog > Find visually similar Images on the Internet.
Daminion submits the image to Google, where it starts the search. Search results are then automatically displayed in your web browser.
The flag function allows you to mark, unmark or reject items.
This is useful when you are looking through a large number of newly imported images in full-screen view and you want to pre-select which photos to keep for further processing and which can possibly be deleted. The advantage is that images you reject are not actually deleted, but rather intended for deletion. On a second pass, you can review the rejected images only, and then finally decide whether you really want to delete them or leave them in the catalog.
In thumbnail view, the flagging checkbox is in the bottom right corner.
Flagged Rejected Unflagged
Flagging with a Mouse
Flag – Click the box once to flag the image – the box is green.
Unflag – Click the box a second time to unflag the image – the box reverts to gray.
Reject – To reject an image, hold down the Ctrl key and click the box – the box is red with an X in the middle.
Flagging with the Keyboard
Press [f] key for flagging
Press [u] key for unflagging
Press [x] key for rejecting
Flagging in the File Menu
Select one or more items and in the File menu navigate to Item > Set Flag
The Item Menu can also be invoked by selecting and right-clicking the item itself:
In the Tags panel on the left side, you can see the quantity of all flagged, unflagged, and rejected images.
In the Properties panel on the right side, you will find the Flag tag under the System tab.
Daminion’s full-screen mode allows you to use your entire PC screen to view and rate images. This is a real-time display; in other words, it instantly displays the original file on the screen. If the original file is temporarily unavailable, Daminion enlarges the thumbnail and displays it at a lower resolution with the following message at the bottom of the screen: “The file [file name] is offline or missing”.
All image file formats can be displayed in full-screen mode. Other file formats, such as MS Word Documents or PDF files, are opened instead in their default applications.
You can also use full-screen mode to rotate, copy, move and delete images as well as to display image information and assign tags.
To open a file directly in full-screen mode, double-click its thumbnail in the Browser window, or select a file and press Enter on the keyboard.
Press the F11 key to switch between the following display modes:
Full-screen view with the toolbar
Full-screen view only
Full-screen view with metadata caption
Full-screen view with the toolbar
434/724 – sequence number within specified search criteria. This number varies from one search criteria to another, e.g. within the Event tag the given image can be 56/72;
Cast-iron lion on the terrace of the White Tower.jpg – file name with extension;
1 767 KB – file size;
3264×1836 – image width and height;
ISO 100, f/2.4, 1/1900 sec – ISO, aperture, and shutter speed
The title of the image (if any) is displayed in the central area. Click this field to edit the existing title or add a new one.
In the top right corner of the screen, you can assign a color label, rate, and flag the image, and change the display size by selecting the appropriate percentage from the drop-down list.
To exit the full-screen view, click the Close button or press the ESC key on the keyboard.
To expand the Properties panel (collapsed by default) and pin it to the right-hand side of the screen, click the small left-arrow button halfway down the right-hand side. To display the panel only temporarily, simply move the pointer over the right edge of the screen without clicking the arrow button. When you move the pointer over it again, the panel disappears.
Full-screen view with metadata caption
This screen mode allows you to display metadata information in the top left corner of the browser window. The information displayed is entirely up to you.
To customize the metadata caption, right-click the image and choose Customize displayed Info.
In the Customize dialog box, select or deselect the tags to be shown above the image in full-screen mode.
To add more tags, click Add and then select the tags from the dropdown list.
To remove a particular tag from the list, select it and click Delete.
Use the arrow keys to move the tags up or down into the required position.
Adding images to the tray
To place a full-screen image in the tray, press the INS key. The image gets a green frame, indicating that it is currently in the tray. For more information on how to use the tray, please refer to Using the tray.
Zooming and moving an image in full-screen view
Images with dimensions greater than those of the display area are scaled down to the current screen size.
To show the image at 100% resolution, left-click over the image and hold down the mouse button.
Use the PLUS [+] and MINUS [-] keys to gradually zoom the image in and out. Alternatively, hold down CTRL and rotate the mouse wheel.
Rotating images
Use the F3 and F4keys to rotate the image clockwise and counterclockwise.
This feature is available for Daminion Server editions only!
Once you have installed and activated the Web Client in Daminion, you can open your shared catalogs through the web browser. For instructions on how to do this, please refer to Activating Web Access.
Firstly, before you log on, you’ll need to create a username and password in the Daminion User Management window. For instructions on how to do this, please refer to User Management.
After you have logged on successfully, the Web Client will open the shared catalog in your web browser.
Overview of Web Client Workspace
Web Client and Daminion Desktop Client are quite similar in terms of interface and how they work.
Toolbar
The toolbar runs across the top of the Web Client workspace.
1 – Click this icon to display the Tags panel on the left side of the workspace.
2 – This is your company logo. Please refer to the article Customizing the Web Client Interface to learn how to change it and customize the color scheme to match your brand.
3 – Enter the tag you’re looking for in the Search bar. Please read the article Searching and Filtering in Web Client to learn more about how these options work in Daminion Web Client.
4 – Click this button to upload your files into the catalog
5 – Clicking the pin icon opens the Map where you can locate your Geo-tagged files or assigned GPS coordinates to the files. Please refer to this article to learn more.
6 – Click the three small dotsin the upper right-hand corner to open a drop-down menu with more features (see screenshot below).
Click to create new shared collections and manage existing ones. For more information, please refer to “Shared collections”.
Click to log out of the catalog as soon as your work session is over. It is very important to do this when working with multiple logins. If you don’t, other users may be denied access to the catalog because all the available connections appear to be in use.
Status Bar
The Status Bar is just below the toolbar.
By default, only a few options are shown on the Status Bar.
When there are no files selected the options on the Status Bar allow you to switch between the view mode of thumbnails with or without captions and change the Sort mode .
When at least one file is selected, clicking the icon allows you to drop the selection, and clicking the icon allows you to select all files displayed on the current page.
To display more options, click the three dots icon in the right corner of the Status Bar as shown on the screenshot below:
Please refer to the following articles to learn more about each of the listed options:
The Browser Window is the central area of the Web Client workspace, where all items are displayed.
Hovering the mouse over an item’s thumbnail reveals additional symbols.
The footer of the thumbnails shows information about an image: Title or Filename (when Title is not assigned), File format, Width and Height, and Color Label. Click this icon to change the color label of the file.
Click this checkbox to select a file
Click this icon to add the file to Favourites (Learn more here)
Click this icon to display additional options as shown on the screenshot below:
Please refer to the following articles to learn more about each of the listed options:
Navigate through your categorized tags in the Filter Panel – displayed by default on the left-hand side of the browser window.
– Click the gear icon to open the window where you can adjust the view of the Filters panel (rearrange tags, add tags, remove tag from the Filter panel)
– Click on the Tag to expand it and display the search bar
– In the search bar start typing the first letter of the word or the whole word to locate it in the list
– Check the checkboxes to select the files assigned to one or multiple tags. Click the OR icon to change the operand to AND and vice versa
When you hover your mouse over the name of the expanded tag, a plus icon appears. Click it to create new tags.
This feature is only available for Daminion Team Server version!
You can selectively grant or deny individual user access to any of the Daminion catalogs. This gives you precise control over the way the catalog is used within your organization structure at the user level.
Grant or deny specific users the right to access a particular shared catalog
Open Daminion Server Administration Panel, click Administration, and then Catalogs.
In the following catalog selection list, double click the catalog that you wish to lock or unlock for a particular user.
In the Catalog settings window, navigate to the Users tab. Select the user you want to grant or deny access, click “Change user role for his catalog” and from the drop-down list select Deny Access.
In the same way, you can change the access permissions at the user level at any time for each catalog.
Before starting auto-tagging your photos, you need to get Google Cloud Vision API key and activate it in Daminion server administration panel. Please learn how to do this here and here.
Once Auto-Tagging is enabled in Daminion server administration panel, open your shared catalog in Daminion desktop application.
Select one or more files, right-click them and navigate to “Actions > Generate AI Labels”. Alternatively, click the “Item” tab and navigate to “Actions > Generate AI Labels”.
The process can take some time. You can monitor the number of generated labels via Tags Panel > AI Labels.
Daminion Server will be installed on your server computer as a Windows Service. You can find it in the Services window.
Question: “When I clicked on the “Add Files” button in my Daminion Client and specified a folder with images on a network shared folder, the importing process took no time at all and no files were imported – could you please explain why?”
Answer: Check to make sure that the Daminion Server service account user has read/write permissions to access Documents in-network locations. By default, Daminion Server is installed as a Local System account user with no access to network resources.
Please change the logon user for Daminion Server service in the Services window:
Select Daminion Server service
Right click > Preferences
Log on > Select This Account
Select a user to be used as Daminion Server service logon user
Restart Daminion Server Service
Do the same for Daminion File Watching Service
Daminion Server Service Account User
Locate a folder with documents and grant it read/write access from the Daminion Server Service logon user account. If your computers are part of a Workgroup you should create a user on the remote computer (where Documents are stored) with the same credentials as on your server PC.
If Documents are located on a NAS device, you need to launch the NAS control panel to configure user access rights. Make sure that the user created on NAS has the same name and password as your Daminion Server service logon user! After configuring access to remote locations with documents, open Daminion Client and try to import your files. If you have any problems feel free to contact our support.
Before enabling Auto-Tagging in Daminion, you need to get Google Cloud Vision key. Please learn how to do this here.
To enable Auto-Tagging and activate your Google Cloud Vision key, open Daminion server administration panel and click “Catalogs”.
In the window that opens, select a catalog where you would like to activate Auto-Tagging, then double-click it to open the Settings menu.
In the window that opens, navigate to Auto-Tagging tab and check the checkbox “Enable Auto-Tagging”.
Check out “Auto-Tagging Agreement terms and conditions” and click the “Add” button to add your Cloud Vision API key.
Daminion server will be restarted automatically and auto-tagging will be available in Daminion client application. Learn how to initial auto-tagging of your photos here.
To start working with Auto-tagging in Daminion, you first need to configure Google Cloud Vision API Key.
To do this, log into your account in Google Cloud and go to the Google Cloud Console.
Now you need to create a new project or select the existing one from under the Project tab.
If you want to create a new project, click “New Project” in the upper right corner. Alternatively, select a project from the list of existing projects.
Click the project’s name to open it. When the project is opened, click Navigation Menu and select “API & Services > Dashboard”.
Now you need to enable Cloud Vision API. To do this, click the “ENABLE APIS AND SERVICES” button.
Enabling APIs and Services
In the search bar, search for Cloud Vision API…
…and click it to enable.
Cloud Vision API will be activated for the selected project.
Now you need to create Google Cloud Vision key which will be used by Daminion to generate AI labels.
To do this, click Navigation menu, select “IAM & admin > Service accounts”.
In the window that opens, click “Create Service Account”.
Set up the name, ID and optionally add the description.
In the next step, set up a role or leave it by default and click “Continue”.
In the last step, optionally grant users access to this service account and create the key.
If you forgot to create the key during the last step, you can do this later.
In the menu “Service accounts for project “Project Name”, click “Actions > Create key”. In the window that opens, select “JSON” as the key format and click “Create”.
You will be prompted to automatically download the key. Confirm the download and activate the key in Daminion. Learn how to do this here.
To import your Media Pro catalog into Daminion, open Media Pro and select all of the files contained in the catalog, or all of the files from a specific folder.
Now you need to export the files and tags associated with them to a *.txt file.
To do this, click Make > Text Data File.
In the window that opens, select the tags that need to be exported in the left pane and click the arrow button to add them to the right pane.
Exporting files and metadata tags to *.txt file.
Important: If a particular file does not contain a specific tag, Media Pro exports this tag as a dash “-“. All the tags are tab-separated in the resulted *.txt file. You need to remove all these dashes from the *.txt file prior to importing it into Daminion. Otherwise, Daminion will retrieve all these dashes and display them in the database. Tab-separated *.txt file
Please be very careful with replacing the dashes as the dashes can be a part of the file name or another tag. Please use the command “\t-” to locate all tabs with dashes and replace them with “\t”(tab only). We recommend trying this with a small *.txt file first. Removing unnecessary dashes from the *.txt file.
Once the *.txt file is edited, you are ready to proceed with Daminion import. Selecting the Media Pro database *.txt file for importing
Open your shared catalog, go to File > Import > CSV > navigate to the location of your *.txt file, and select the option “Display All File Types”. Then select your *.txt file.
In the window that opens, change the CSV delimiter to “TAB” and select “Key contains full file path”.
In the next window, set the tag mapping rules. Path Name, File Name, and File Type can be left empty because these fields will be automatically recognized and imported by Daminion.
Proceed with the import. Daminion will import all the files and associate them with the tags contained in the *.txt file. Media Pro database imported in Daminion
Launch the Daminion Server Administration panel on PC1.
Go to the menu Administration > Catalogs… and backup all your catalogs (select a catalog > Actions > Backup).
Install Daminion Server on PC2.
Launch the Daminion Server Admin panel on PC2.
Now we need to move all catalogs from Daminion Server on PC1 to Daminion Server on PC2. Repeat the below steps for all catalogs on PC1:
Create a new catalog on PC2:Catalogs > Actions > New Catalog.
Copy the catalog name from the first catalog on PC1 and past it as the name of the new catalog on PC2.
Adjust “Folder to Store Uploaded Files” and “Folder to Store thumbnails” paths or copy them from the first catalog on PC1 (check carefully user names).
Copy files from the “Folder to Store Uploaded Files” folder on your PC1 to the “Folder to Store Uploaded Files” folder on your PC2.
Copy files from the “Folder to Store thumbnails” folder on your PC1 to the “Folder to Store thumbnails” folder on your PC2.
Restart the Daminion Server. Then select a newly created catalog on PC2, click “Actions” and run the “Restore” command from the context menu.
Specify a catalog backup that you created in step 2: NetCatalog##.backup.
You also need to specify the _daminion##.backup file where information about Daminion users is stored, but you can do this only when restoring the first catalog only.
Note: If there are any errors during the restore process, open Windows services and restart PostgreSQL service. Then start DaminionServerService and try to restore the catalog again.
Repeat 5-10 steps for all catalogs on your PC1.
Add a new Daminion Server address on your Daminion Clients.
Daminion Server address can be found on Daminion Server Administration panel launched on PC2.
– Open Daminion Client – Click File > Open Shared catalog – In the window that opens click “Add Daminion server” – Specify the IP address of PC2 – the catalogs on the new server PC will be listed
– To remove the old server, click the Remove button and select the old server’s from the list:
– Perform the same on each client station.
Note: You can omit step 12 if a new PC2 has the same name or IP address as your PC1 (if you for example just upgraded the server).
IMPORTANT: If you are moving the original files from the old location to a new location, you will need to relink the top folder in the Daminion catalog! Please open the Daminion catalog, expand the Folders tab in the Tags panel, select the top folder > Right-click > Relink Folder > point the folder to the new path.
To back up the Daminion catalog(s) on schedule, follow the steps below:
1 – Download this archive 2 – Unzip it into the folder where the backups are to be stored. Please remember that the folder should be local. You can later share it on the network or use a script to copy it to another location. 3 – Edit the “backup_config.bat” file as shown on the screenshot below:
*1 – The thumbnail folder may or may not be backed up. When deciding, please remember that thumbnail backups may require additional space. Generally, thumbnails can be easily restored from the original files themselves. The backup priority is the databases.
4 – Open Task Scheduler or another scheduling tool for your preferences and create a new task.
Actions > New > Start a program > Browse > Specify a path to the file “Backup Daminion Catalog.bat”
* If #4 is “D:\Daminion Backup Weekly\Backup Daminion Catalog.bat”, then #5 should be “D:\Daminion Backup Weekly”
Specify also where to start the .bat file – it should be the same folder where the file “Backup Daminion Catalog.bat” is located.
5 – In the Triggers tab set up a schedule – daily\weekly and at what time.
6 – Once everything is set up, try to manually run the task from the Task Scheduler > Right-click > Run to check if it is executed.
Keep an eye on the first scheduled automatic backup – check the folder with the backup files once the automatic backup is executed to verify if the backups were created.
The ExifTool doesn’t write Daminion custom tags by default. One has to customize the file “.ExifTool_config”. This is the result of the first „try and error” activity. Juha made the first review of this document and the example of the configuration file. Thank you very much, Juha. Maybe someone can make further suggestions for improvement or can add customizing for more and more complex custom tags.
Sample image
Custom tags created in Daminion
Custom tags in the Properties panel
Example
There are three custom tags. The TIF file (above) is a screenshot and doesn’t have any metadata. Below you can see the text/date information entered in Daminion.
Information entered in Daminion
This is the XMP section Daminion writes to the file.
XMP metadata written to the file by Daminion
1. Different from the definition and what one can see in the Daminion client the tags are written in lower case.
2. Each „space” of the tag name is substituted by „__” (double underscores).
Knowing this, one has to modify the file “.ExifTool_config”. The file has to be in the folder of the ExifTool. For the Daminion Server this folder is: „C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\DaminionSoftware\DaminionServer\MediaProcessors\ImageProcessor\”. Using other folders and other options please read the comment in the example: „http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/config.html”
Below you can find an example of the file “.ExifTool_config” modified to work with these three custom tags defined in Daminion:
# # Example how to configure Daminion Custom Tags in ExifTool # # replace the tag names with your custom tags # copy paste this snippet into your ExifTool config file “.ExifTool_config” # # add new XMP namespace ‘daminion’ to the main XMP table
# see http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/index.html #groups for Family 2 groups # data types are # – ‘string’ = Text (in Daminion) # – ‘integer’ # – ‘real’ = Fraction (in Daminion) # – ‘date’ = Time (in Daminion) # – ‘boolean’ = – (not supported in Daminion) # # Daminion custom tags below default to string type variables in Family 2 group “Other” %Image::ExifTool::UserDefined::daminion = ( GROUPS => { 0 => ‘XMP’, 1 => ‘XMP-daminion’, 2 => ‘Other’ }, NAMESPACE => { ‘daminion’ => ‘http://ns.daminion.net/1.0/’ }, WRITABLE => ‘string’,
# add custom tags below # – all tag names are lower case letters # – spaces are subsituted with double underscores ‘ ‘ ==> ‘__’ # # Examples # customtag1 = { }, # default string type tag # customtag2 = { Writable => ‘integer’ }, # change data type to integer # customtag3 = { Writable => ‘date’, Groups => { 2 => ‘Time’ } }, # data type date and family 2 ‘Time’ # customtag4 = { List => ‘Bag’ }, # multivalue tag (like Keywords), can be also hierarchical #
From Daminion version 5.0 onwards you can import files directly to a folder selected on your server. To do this, expand the Folders tab in the Tags panel, right-click the destination folder and select “Upload here”.
In the window that opens, browse for the files to be uploaded to the selected folder.
In the Import Dialog window, you will see only one import option “Upload files to the server PC” and the path of the destination folder. In the example below, it is “C:\Users”.
Note: This option is available when Daminion Server and Daminion Client are installed on different machines.
Upload to the selected folder in the web client
Note: This option is available in Daminion Server 6.2 or higher
Open your web catalog and display the Folders tag in the Filters panel. Hover your mouse over the folder you want to upload your files into and click the upload icon as shown on the screenshot below:
Select your files and wait while the upload process is over.
You can click the “Show upload files” button to display the recently uploaded files.
In order to manage your assets with Daminion, you must first import your data into a catalog. Daminion offers two ways of doing this.
You can use the dedicated Import option (described later in this chapter), or the rescan folder option, which synchronizes already imported folders within the Daminion catalog. The rescan folder option is described in “Rescan Folder Option“.
The Import dialog can be accessed either by clicking the “Add Files …” button (Ctrl + I) or by dragging and dropping files directly from Windows Explorer in the Daminion browser window. If the destination folder already exists in the Daminion catalog but doesn’t contain files to be imported, you can use the automatic folder synchronization instead (see “Automatic Folder Rescan“).
You can also import files using Windows copy/paste commands. Just copy the files from Windows Explorer (Ctrl + C) and paste them into the Daminion browser (Ctrl + V). The import dialog will open immediately with the files pasted in place.
Overview of all functions in the import dialog
The Daminion Import Dialog
A – Import Source
Select a new source path for files to be imported.
B – Group by
Choose whether images are sorted by date, name, or file type.
C – Add files to the catalog without copying them
With this option selected, Daminion only reads the metadata from the files but leaves the actual files in the source folder (recommended if, for example, your files already exist in the desired destination folder).
D – Copy files to a folder and add to the catalog
When selecting this option, you must specify a source folder. See (F).
E – Delete source files after the successful transfer
With this option checked, Daminion deletes all files in the source folder after copying.
F – Destination folder
If (D) is enabled, Daminion needs to know where to copy the files. This can be either a local folder path or a network path. Please note, however, that files copied to local paths cannot be accessed by other users on the network.
G – Create Sub-Folders
In addition to the specified destination path, Daminion can also create subfolders automatically using special tokens selected from the drop-down list. For example, you can program Daminion to create folder names by date, time, or by camera brand. Click on “Customize…” in the drop-down list to create your own naming scheme and save it for later use. Once saved, your customized naming schemes are added to the drop-down list. For more information please read Assigning Tag Preset.
H – Rename Files
With this option checked, files are renamed automatically during the import process. The procedure is the same as renaming folders.
I – Assign Tag Preset
Define your own tags and determine which should be assigned automatically during the import process. Once created, these import requirements can then be accessed from the Properties panel.
J – Convert RAW files to DNG
If you have the free Adobe DNG converter already installed on your PC, you can convert camera RAW files to the DNG format.
K – Create Categories from Folder Names
With this option checked, Daminion automatically creates category tags based on the names of source folders.
L – Check all/Uncheck all
Use these buttons to select or deselect all images in the import window.
M – Import
Closes dialog. Import begins.
Step-by-step instructions for importing your files
On the Daminion main screen, click the “Add Files” button (top left corner). This opens a submenu that displays all the connected devices you can import files from.
Available devices in our example are a digital camera and a smartphone. But for now, we just want to import some files from the local hard drive.
Click “Browse files and folders” to open the Explorer window and select the path to the files you want to import.
You can select individual files or an entire folder. If you select a folder, all subfolders are imported as well. Click the “Add” button to open the Daminion import dialog.
The selected files are now displayed as small thumbnails in the Import menu.
The little yellow squares above the previews indicate that these files are marked for import. You can leave the selection as it is or uncheck one or more previews by clicking the yellow square. When you hover the mouse over a preview of an image, it is automatically enlarged to make it easier to analyze.
Click the “Import” button to start importing the selected images. Daminion now reads all metadata information from the files and links the original files with the catalog. Once imported, all images are displayed in the Daminion browser. The results of the import operations are also stored in the Tags Panel under “Saved Searches”. This allows you to recall all the files that belong to this import by clicking the small circle which will turn green.
Daminion saves three import-states: “Last Imported”, “Imported Today”, and “Imported Yesterday “. In our example (see screenshot below), we have recently imported 10 files.
You can import data into Daminion from a CSV file. This is especially useful when you need to transfer data from another database application into Daminion. Alternatively, you might have kept your metadata in an Excel spreadsheet and now want to import it into Daminion. For a trouble-free import from CSV, you need to follow a few formatting rules, which will be covered in detail later.
Creating the CSV file:
Many spreadsheet programs allow you to create CSV files. You can even use Windows Notepad to create this type of file – simply change the file extension from .TXT to .CSV.
Content of a CSV file:
A CSV file always contains a header row with the names of the fields or tags that need to be imported as metadata and always begins with the file path of the data.
In the example above, the images called IMG-01.jpg to IMG-03.jpg will be imported from the given path. Additionally, the Keywords and Copyright tags are attached.
Valid Delimiters:
You must use particular delimiters to enable Daminion to separate the individual tags and field names.
You may use the following delimiters:
Semicolon [;]
Comma [,]
Tab [TAB]
Individual tags are separated by a comma [,] or semicolon [;], and the backslash character [\] is used to create a hierarchy. For example: “Attractions\Castles” will create a tag called “Attractions” and a second tag called “Castles” as a sublevel tag to the “Attractions” tag. Please ensure that you always specify the correct delimiter – they must be consistent within each CSV file.
Starting CSV import in Daminion
On the File menu, click Import and then select CSV File. In the window that opens, select the CSV file you wish to import.
After you select the CSV file, the Daminion Import Dialog opens.
CSV Delimiter: Enter the delimiter used in the CSV file.
Key Field: Enter the row that contains the paths to the files.
This file contains headers Specify whether or not your CSV file contains a header row. If it doesn’t, select the appropriate row in Key Field (B).
Encoding: Select the correct encoding for your CSV file. If the wrong encoding is selected, it may lead to errors when converting some characters, e.g. umlauts.
Key contains full file path/ Key contains the relative file path Select the correct format of the source path information. You may select either absolute or relative paths. If you select the relative path, you can select the source folder via the file browser.
These areas show the parsing and search results. This allows you to check that you have used the correct settings, before the actual import.
After you click OK, you will need to match up the relevant field names.
On the left, you will see the field names used in the CSV, and on the right the related fields to be populated in Daminion. The key field Filepath will not be allocated here as it only contains the path information to the source data.
The information from the CSV file will be imported into the Daminion Catalog after you click OK.
Daminion allows you to import local catalogs into shared catalogs. This can be necessary if you have organized your data in a local offline catalog and now want this information to be integrated into a single shared catalog.
Importing a local catalog
First, open the catalog you want to import a local catalog into. In the File menu navigate to File >Import > Local Daminion catalog.
In the dialog that opens, specify the local catalog to be imported. Once you have selected a catalog for import, a confirmation dialog will appear.
After you click OK to confirm, all data contained in the local catalog will be imported, including the thumbnail preview files and all associated metadata information.
If the source catalog contains additional custom tags that do not exist in the target catalog, another dialog will prompt you to create the same custom tags in the destination catalog.
In the example given above, all data from the local catalog named “Test Catalog” will be imported into the shared “Travel Catalog”. However, the source catalog contains the custom tag “Animals”, which is not in the target catalog. To prevent data loss, we select Create New Tag and enter the name for the mapped custom tag. This name doesn’t have to be identical to the existing one.
If you do not want to import certain custom tags, select the Pass option from the drop-down list. These tags will then be excluded from the import queue.
The following tutorial shows you how to import your data when switching from Canto Cumulus to Daminion.
Cumulus has no internal function for exporting all metadata directly to a CSV file. However, if you write your metadata into the original files, they will be read out again when the files are imported into Daminion.
In order to write the catalog information back into Cumulus, you may have to activate the IPTC catalog administration.
In the dialog box that opens, select the corresponding catalog. In the second window (under the heading “Selecting Asset Handling to Prepare for IPTC”) make sure that all entries are selected. Click “Next” and then click “Start”.
This process may take some time to complete, depending on the size of the catalog. To write back the catalog data, select all assets in Cumulus, and on the File menu, click “Metadata” -> “Write back Metadata…”
Once all Metadata is written into the files, you can import them into Daminion. Most of the common information such as keywords and location tags will be transferred correctly to the associated metadata fields in Daminion. However, some files – particularly those with field names generated internally by Cumulus – cannot be allocated directly from Daminion.
By default, the following Cumulus fields can be imported into Daminion:
In addition, if you used any field names other than the ones listed in Cumulus (see above), it is recommended that you perform the import using a CSV file in order to assign the metadata fields correctly.
You should therefore do the following:
1. Determine the field names used 2. Adjust the batch file and generate an importable CSV file 3. Import the CSV file and assign the Cumulus field names to the field names in Daminion
1. Determining the actual field names
First, import only one file into Daminion in order to read out the Cumulus field names. After import, just click the arrow icon in the top right-hand corner of the image thumbnail and select the context menu command “Show All Metadata…”
The ExifTool opens and shows you all the information, without exception, stored in the file.
From our example, we can see that the metadata information, “USA Trip 2013”, that was originally entered in the Cumulus “Headline” field, is now located in the file’s IPTC “Fixture Identifier” field. In Daminion this field is linked to the “Event” tag, where it is automatically stored. In the case of our example, the “Title” tag might be a better fit.
So, when importing into Daminion, we should redirect this information to the “Title” tag.
2. Adjusting the batch file
First, download the following batch file from our website.
Place the batch file in one folder above the folder containing the files you want to import. If your image directory is D:\data\pictures, place the batch file in the folder “data”. In this case, all underlying folders will be read.
Next, open the batch file with Windows Notepad and adjust the data’s source directory accordingly. The corresponding string is located at the end of the batch file and is stated by default: “x:\DataPath” > out.csv
The string inside the quotes is the path to your data files and out.csv is the name of the CSV file that is created by this batch file. It will be created in the folder where the batch file is located.
The metadata fields to be read must now be entered in the batch file.
In our example, we chose the “Fixture Identifier” field. Please note that in the batch file these names are not allowed to contain spaces, and they must begin with a hyphen. So the correct entry is: ” FixtureIdentifier”.
In this way, you can now search all the required field names from the ExifViewer view and submit them consecutively into the batch file. When finished, save and run the batch file.
3. Import the CSV file and assign the Cumulus field names to the Daminion field names
When the batch file finishes reading the metadata, it creates a CSV file called “out.csv”, which is located in the same folder as the batch file.
Now start Daminion and click the File menu at “File” > “Import” > “CSV file …”.
Daminion will ask you which CSV file to import. After you specify the file’s location, the Daminion Import dialog opens.
Select “comma” as the “CSV Delimiter” and activate “key contains full file path”.
Once all settings have been entered correctly in the batch file, the exact amount of files found should appear in the right-hand column.
If everything is correct, click OK.
In the next dialog box, reassign the Cumulus fields to the Daminion fields.
In the “FixtureIdentifier” row, click the “<>” button, select the “title” tag from the drop-down list and click OK.
All metadata will now be written into the Daminion catalog. Tags that were previously stored in Cumulus under “Headline” will now be copied in the Daminion tag field “Title”.
Daminion can be installed from a file downloaded from our website. Follow the procedures described below. Please note that you need Administrator privileges to be able to install Daminion Server and that there are different procedures for installing Daminion Server and Daminion Standalone!
Please note that if you are installing Daminion on Windows Server 2016, PostgreSQL 12 should be installed first. After that please reboot the server machine and proceed with the installation of the Daminion Server.
The Daminion Server Installation package contains:
Daminion Server Installation
Daminion Client Installation
Daminion Server Installation Guide
Install Daminion Server on a computer that will be acting as a server on your local network.
To run Daminion Server setup, double click the file DaminionSetup.exe
On the first screen, select an installation language. Daminion suggests the language used by your operating system, but if you prefer to use a different language, change it here. Otherwise, just click OK to proceed. Note that the interface language can be changed in Daminion any time after installation.
After confirming the welcome screen and accepting the license agreement, choose between either the Standard or Custom setup. If you choose Custom, you must then specify which Port numbers should be used by the Postgres database. You can easily change this parameter later in the Admin Panel (launched automatically at the end of the setup process), so feel free to proceed with the Standard installation.
In the next screen, confirm the Postgres login. The default password is: postgres Again, you can easily change this later in the Daminion Server Admin Panel!
So just click Next to continue.
Specify the path to the folder in which the Daminion program files should be installed. The default is C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Daminion Software \ Daminion Server. You can change the path here or leave it as it is.
Select a folder path for your uploaded files.
You can type a folder path of your own or leave the default. But please remember to select a shared path so that other users can access the folder. If you choose a local path, other users may not be able to see files in the destination folder.
Note: We recommend that you use a different physical hard drive than the one your Windows OS is installed on. This not only allows you to access your files much faster but also makes it easier to back up uploaded files. And finally, if you start running out of disc space, you can easily replace this hard drive with a bigger one without affecting your windows installation!
Please read the article Selecting the Right Storage Scheme for helpful information on choosing the right storage theme for your personal needs.
After you have chosen whether or not to add the program to the Start Menu and to create a desktop icon, Daminion is ready to install the program files. Click Next to continue.
Setup will now install and configure the Daminion Server and create the default catalog.
Finally, click Finish.
The Daminion icon will appear on the desktop, and the Daminion Server Admin Panel will launch automatically.
On the main screen of the Daminion Server Administration Panel, check that the 3 “running” bullets are green. This indicates that the Daminion Server Service, File Watching Service and PostgreSQL are installed and running correctly.
Daminion can be installed from a file downloaded from our website. Follow the instructions below, and please note that procedures for installing Daminion Server and Daminion Standalone are different!
Install Daminion Standalone to act as a client workstation on your local network
Double-click the setup file to start the Daminion Standalone installation.
The first screen will ask you to select the setup language. Daminion proposes the language currently being used by your operating system. However, if you prefer to use a different interface language, change it here. Otherwise, just click OK to proceed. Note that you can change Daminion’s interface language at any time.
Once you click OK, you will see the software license agreement message.
After reading and confirming the software license agreement message, the installation begins.
After Daminion has been installed, ensure that Launch Daminion is checked, and click Finish to start the program.
Note: you can install Daminion Client in silent or very silent mode on multiple PCs by entering one of the following commands in command prompt:
This feature is only available for Daminion Team Server version!
Available for Windows only. Mac version will be ready soon.
The Daminion Web Client Assistant adds the useful “Open With” capability to your Daminion web client. This allows you to directly open files with desktop applications just as you would in the Daminion Desktop client. Web browsers generally don’t have access to local desktop programs and therefore are not able to launch external applications from within a web-based application.
However, our small Daminion Web Client Assistant can do a handy trick and hack this web browser limitation.
By moving your mouse cursor over a thumbnail in your Daminion web client you will see a three dots icon, clicking on which will expand a drop-down menu.
Click on the icon to bring up a small information window that simplifies and automates the process of installing and configuring the Daminion Web-Client.
Assistant Information Window:
Click on the first link to download and install Daminion Web Client Assistant. After installation, the program will appear in the system tray (Windows).
Right-click this icon to open a submenu where you can either reach the web access settings directly or terminate the program.
Click the second link to download the catalog settings. This settings file contains the catalog URL and username that will be automatically added to the Daminion Web-Client Settings. Please note that you may need to log out and log in to the catalog to make the change be applied to your user account.
Once the Daminion Web Client Assistant has been successfully installed you can open files with external applications directly from the Web client. Simply click on the icon above the thumbnail again and a list of your local applications will appear. When you click on an application, a selected file link is sent to this application which then directly opens the file for you.
The image below shows the list of applications that a PDF document can be opened with.
Please note that this feature only works for files that were imported by file references and doesn’t work for files uploaded to Daminion Server. You can hide this icon via the Daminion Server Administration panel: Main menu: Administration > Web Access > Allow to open local files from the web browser.
If a user is unable to log into a shared Daminion catalog using LDAP security through the web or desktop client, please:
1 – check if the password is entered correctly and/or was not changed for this user.
2 – check if the user is able to log into another catalog (if you have more than one catalog).
3 – try to delete the user from the Daminion server administration panel > “Users” menu and add it again.
However, sometimes the user shows as deleted in the Daminion server administration panel, but gets stuck in the database of users. If the three options suggested above do not work, and all other users are able to log into Daminion shared catalog(s), please follow the steps below.
Please note that the below actions are recommended to be performed by your IT administrator. If you do not have an IT administrator on-site, please contact Daminion support to organize a remote session to fix the issue.
1 – Open Daminion server administration panel > Catalogs > select a catalog > Actions > Backup. Do the same for all your catalogs if you have more than one catalog.
2 – Open pgAdmin, an administrative tool for PostgreSQL, using which you will delete the user from the database of users. Just start typing “pgAdmin” in the Windows search and you will be prompted to open the application.
3 – Once pgAdmin is opened, expand the list of servers and double-click “PostgreSQL 10” (Depending on your PostgreSQL version, the inscription may vary).
4 – Enter the database password. By default, the password is “postgres”, unless it was changed by your network administrator.
5 – Once the list of databases is opened, expand them as following: PostgreSQL[#] > Databases[#] > _daminion > Schemas > public > Tables[#] > users > right click > View/Edit Data > All rows.
6 – Select the row of the user that you need to delete in the table and click “Delete”.
7 – Go to Daminion server administration panel > restart Daminion server, then open the “Users” menu and add the user once again.
If this does not help solve the issue, please contact Daminion support.
Creating artwork often involves the use of a number of derivative graphic assets. Setting up relationships (links) between these assets allows you to find the necessary files much faster. Examples of file relationships (links) include:
A brochure that contains several photos, a company logotype, and vector corporate style elements.
A model release agreement document linked to all the photos of the model.
How to link items
To start linking items select a single item in the thumbnail browser, right-click and go to the “Linking >Link Item…” menu or press the “Ctrl + L” keys to bring up the “Linking” panel:
The “Linking” panel has two tabs where you specify the relationship between the selected item and the items it is linked to:
“What this item is linked to” – for example, a piece of artwork might contain a logotype, several photos, and some vector images.
“Where this item is linked to” – for example, a logotype may have been used in a piece of artwork, several calendars, and some banner ads.
The next step is to switch to the “Where this item is linked to” tab, click on the “Start Linking…” button, and in the thumbnail browser, check the items you want to link to.
The files you check are added to the active tab in the “Linking” panel. Click on the red “Finish Linking…” button or right-click anywhere in the workspace to finish linking. Items with specified relationships (links) are marked with a small “link” icon in the thumbnail browser (in the bottom right-hand corner of the item thumbnail). Clicking on this icon reveals a small menu indicating the number of items linked to the selected file. Clicking the menu items opens the “Linking” panel directly from the thumbnail browser.
This feature is only available for Daminion Team Server version!
By default, all users are allowed to import new files into Daminion, specify the destination folder for uploaded files, and apply different file renaming schemes when importing. However, in a multiuser environment, this may not always be desirable. For this reason, administrators can terminate certain import functions and specify particular import settings for users who do not have admin rights.
Lock import settings for other users
To lock import settings, log on as an administrator in a shared catalog, and in the File menu navigate to Catalog -> Import Settings.
Check the Lock import settings for others box.
Import settings selected during the last import process can no longer be changed by other users.
In the “Default Import Settings” area, you have the option to specify if the imported files should be placed in sub-folders on the server and assign a particular renaming rule to imported files.
From now on, when the import dialog is opened, a notification in the top right corner explains to the user that the administrator has locked the import settings. The user is now only allowed to assigned tag presets, convert RAW files to DNG format, and create categories from folder names.
Daminion’s Import dialog with locked import settings
This feature is only available for Daminion Server versions!
Daminion allows you to lock certain tags to prevent undesirable changes. Although these tags are locked, they can still be assigned to and removed from items, but they cannot be renamed or deleted from the catalog. Only users with administrative rights are permitted to implement such changes. Locked tags are displayed in the Tags panel just like free-access tags.
To lock one or more tags, you need to log on as an administrator in the respective shared catalog.
Then in the File menu navigate to Catalog > Lock Tag Editing
Click Add to select tags to be locked. Choose as many tags as required and close the dialog. If you accidentally add the wrong tag, select it and then click Remove.
In the Catalog Tags panel locked tags are now labeled “Locked” and cannot be deleted or renamed by users without admin rights. To learn more about user roles in Daminion, please refer to Control Access to Your Content.
Daminion has a customizable interface with draggable panels so the workspace can be used more effectively on multi-monitor configurations. The main components of the Daminion interface are explained below. Most of them can be repositioned or moved to other displays.
Tags Panel
All available tags are listed in this panel. Think of this as your central tag administration. This is where you create tags, rename tags, delete tags, assign tags to files and remove them from files. You can select which tags are displayed and specify the order of the tags in the list. At the same time, the catalog tags panel can be used to manage your tag structure and classify your content by dragging files to tags or selecting checkboxes in Assign Mode.
The preview window displays a quality preview of a selected file. You can resize or move this window. In a multiple-display environment, you can for example place this window on the second display and view thumbnails and large previews side by side without leaving your thumbnail workspace.
Filter Panel
After filtering your content by checking tags in the Tags panel or via the Advanced Search window the query parameters are displayed on this panel. You can collapse the filter panel to save vertical space, which allows you to display more thumbnails below. Apart from displaying your current search, this panel also allows you to quickly edit the parameters of your query. Use the gear icon on this panel to save the current query for future use. All your saved searches are available under the Saved Searches section in the Tags panel. Learn more about working with Advanced Search.
Thumbnail Browser
Depending on your current viewing preferences, query results are displayed in this panel either as thumbnails or as a list of files together with their properties. Thumbnails can be zoomed in by dragging the small zoom slider in the bottom right-hand corner of this window. Captions below and above thumbnails can be edited in place without leaving the current view. Rating, Color Label, and Flag can be edited by clicking on the appropriate options below the thumbnails. The thumbnail browser offers a choice of viewing options. Learn more about Customizing the Browser.
Tray
The Tray allows you to collect files for upcoming actions such as exporting, printing, tag assignment, or publishing, while the content in the thumbnail browser view might be continuously changing in response to different queries. Use the Ins key to quickly add/remove files to/from the Tray. Learn more about the Tray.
Properties Panel
Dragging files to tags in the Catalog Tag is not the only way to classify files. The properties panel (docked by default on the right-hand side of the Daminion’s workspace) allows you to view more detailed information about files and edit the properties of multiple files in batches. Some tags, such as Title, Description, or Copyright, are not available in the Catalog Tags panel and can only be viewed and edited in this panel. This panel is highly optimized for rapid annotation of collections of photographs using the keyboard only. Learn more about using the Properties panel.
Map
The Map panel displays all files with GEO coordinates as markers according to their locations on the map. Markers can be automatically grouped when zooming out to achieve the best visual performance. To stamp unreferenced images with GPS, simply drag and drop them from the thumbnail browser into the appropriate location on the map. Images without GPS coordinates can easily be found via the Saved Searches chapter in the Catalog Tags panel. Learn more about working with Map and stamping your images with GPS Information.
Other panels
Other useful draggable panels in Daminion include Recently Assigned Tags, Publishing, and Folders that can be accessed via the Window menu. The chapters on Customizing the window layout and Customizing the Browser are also recommended reading.
Some cameras and special GPS recording devices extract GPS coordinates and write them into the image files when a photograph is taken. On import, Daminion uses this GPS information to place a corresponding marker on a world map. Image files that don’t contain this GPS information can, at any time, be dragged & dropped (individually or as a group) from the browser into their exact position in map view.
To use GPS-referencing, you need to be connected to the Internet because the respective suppliers only provide GPS data online.
Opening Map View
Navigate to the File menu and click on “Window” >” Map“.
The map can be docked permanently on a particular area in Daminion’s workspace, or free-floating over it. In both cases, you can freely change the size of the map window. To find out how to undock windows in Daminion, please see the chapter Customizing The Window Layout.
Map Functions
Search
Enter a place name in the search field to display the corresponding item directly on the map.
Source
Select your map data provider here. In addition to Google, you can also use map data from Bing, Yandex, Yahoo or Open Street.
Map
Select the way you’d like the map to be displayed. You have the following options:
Map. Vector-based view with the place and street names – similar to a conventional road map.
Satellite. Bitmap-based representation of the map information based on aerial photographs – doesn’t show street or place names.
Hybrid. A combination of map and satellite views.
Zoom
Click on the plus or minus icons to zoom in and out of the map or use your mouse’s middle wheel to do the same thing.
Marker Icons
Images placed on the map are indicated by a corresponding marker. These markers can show three different states:
This icon indicates that a certain number of images (as seen on the marker) have been allocated to this particular place.
This indicates that the image is actively selected in the browser – thus making it visually easier to find the selected image on the map.
This group icon indicates that a number of markers are located close together and the current zoom level is too low to show them individually without them obscuring each other. If you zoom in on these markers, they display separately as soon as you reach a suitable zoom level.
Low zoom level High zoom level
View thumbnails assigned to specific markers
Clicking on the marker icon will open a larger preview image just above the marker. When multiple images are stored, hover the mouse pointer over the left or right edge of the preview to reveal small arrow buttons that allow you to flick backward and forwards through the images.
Right-clicking on the marker opens a menu containing additional options.
“Show all images at this location” Select this option to display all images assigned to this marker in the browser window.
“Select a Place tag to all images at this location” This option opens a menu where you can manually assign a new place tag by selecting it from the list of place tags already inserted in Daminion.
Position information can be found in two different fields in the Properties Panel.
These are the metadata fields for determining the position that must be entered manually.
These are the corresponding GPS coordinates. These were either provided by a GPS recording device or by manually drag and drop the images from the browser to the map.
If you notice that precise GPS coordinates on the map do not match the location data entered under the Place tag in the Properties panel, select the correct place here, and the new place name will automatically be assigned to the pictures.
Entering a place name in the empty field will open a list of all places with the same name, from which you can select the correct location. The updated location for these images is then registered in the Properties panel.
GEO Tagged images in the Tags Panel
To view a summary of already tagged and not tagged images, click the “Saved Searches” tab on the left-hand side of the Tags Panel.
For example, you can easily find out which of your images are GEO-Localized and which are not.
Basic map settings
Clicking on the small gear icon in the top right corner of the map window opens the following settings.
“Maximize” Maximizes the map window to fill the entire screen.
“Zoom map to the location of the selected image” With this option activated, the map displays the pinned position of images currently selected in the browser.
“Display found images only” Use this setting to display images currently selected in the browser and hides the rest. This is useful if you have set a lot of markers in the same location and they are obscuring or confusing your view of the map itself.
This feature is available in the web client in Daminion v 6.4 or higher!
Some cameras and special GPS recording devices extract GPS coordinates and write them into the image files when a photograph is taken. On import, Daminion uses this GPS information to place a corresponding marker on a world map. Image files that don’t contain this GPS information can, at any time, be dragged & dropped (individually or as a group) from the browser into their exact position in map view.
To use GPS-referencing, you need to be connected to the Internet because the respective suppliers only provide GPS data online.
Geotagging in the web client
To start assigning GPS coordinates to your files, log into your web catalog and click the geo pin icon in the upper right corner to display the Map window.
All files that have embedded GPS coordinates, will be automatically displayed on the map.
To assign GPS coordinates to the files that do not have them yet, select the files and simply drag and drop them to the desired location on the map.
Tip: You can display all the files with no GPS coordinates by navigating to Saved Searches > No GPS coordinates.
Dragging and dropping your files to the desired location on the map
Map Functions
Search – type in the name of the location you want to quickly find on the map.
Hover your mouse over the GPS pin to view the files assigned to a specific location.
Click the three dots icon on the thumbnail to be able to display all items assigned to this location, add a Place tag, delete just one item or all of the items.
Zoom in and zoom out the map view.
Expand the map to full screen.
Click here to display the map next to the Thumbnail pane.
Click this icon to select your map provider.
Pin Icons Indications
Only one image is assigned to this location.
From 2 to 5 images are assigned to this location or the location includes more than 1 pin (zoom in to verify).
From 5 to 10 images are assigned to this location or the location includes more than 1 pin (zoom in to verify).
More than 10 images are assigned to this location or the location includes more than 1 pin (zoom in to verify).
Daminion allows you to easily open an item in its original location on your PC without having to navigate through numerous folders.
Right-click an item that you want to open in Windows Explorer and select the Locate in Explorer option. Alternatively, select an item and click Ctrl + Enter.
Windows Explorer opens and displays the folder containing the selected item. The corresponding original file is automatically selected in Explorer.
In the Browser window, select the image or images you want to print, and in the File menu navigate to File > Print or press Ctrl+P.
On the left of the pane, select the printer and set print options such as page size, margins, or a number of copies.
Each image is printed on a separate page. If you have selected more than one image for printing, you can switch back and forth between images using the arrow buttons under the layout preview.
Printing Contact Sheet
If you want to print more than one image per one page or want to print an image with the metadata information, use the function “Creating a contact sheet in PDF”.
The quick search box is on the toolbar above the browser window.
Enter one or more words to be searched for and click the magnifying glass on the right to start searching.
Clicking the other magnifying glass inside the search box opens a drop-down list from which you can specify a tag where Daminion should search for the word or words.
In this example, the search for all words entered in the search box is performed within Keywords only. To get Daminion to search for a particular word under all tags, check Everywhere.
Check multiple tags to make Daminion find matches with a given word or words within these tags only.
Let’s try to find all photos of ginger cats within two tags: Categories and Keywords.
We select both Categories and Keywords from the drop-down list…
If you find yourself repeatedly having to enter the same tags into the Properties Panel, the Recently Assigned Tags feature will save you a lot of time and effort.
The Recently Assigned Tags dialog box contains all previously entered tags, with the ones you use most near the top of the list. You can easily assign these tags with a mouse click or cancel tags you’ve already assigned, without having to enter them manually each time.
Opening the “Recently Assigned Tags” dialog box
In the File menu, navigate to Window > Recently Assigned Tags.
Alternatively, click the magic wand icon on the appropriate thumbnail.
You can move the dialog box into an area where it doesn’t interfere with other panels on the screen or dock it in a precise position within the window. To find out how to move or dock dialog boxes, please refer to Customizing the Window Layout.
The Recently Assigned Tags dialog box contains a list of all previously entered tags. The most recently used tags always appear at the top of the list. If a Tag has hierarchy levels, they are displayed one by one.
If you select an item in the browser, the tags already assigned to it will appear in the list with a checkmark next to them.
To assign additional Tags or deselect existing ones, simply click them.
If you need a Tag that has not previously been entered, and therefore does not appear in the list, searches for it by typing the name into the text box at the bottom.
In our example, we entered “w” and Daminion automatically listed all tags with names beginning with “w”. Click the down arrow to extend the search text until you reach the desired Tag. Once the tag has been assigned, it too will appear at the top of the list and you won’t have to search for it again.
By default, the most recently entered keywords appear in this dialog box. However, you can also display other Tags, like “Place”, “Event” or “Person” for instance. To change the Tags display, left-click the small gear icon in the top right of the title bar.
In the drop-down menu, select one of the listed Tags. By doing this, you will always be able to access the required tags directly.
You can request a Daminion demo (a standalone version with some limitations) and evaluate Daminion for the period of 7 days.
After the expiration of the test period, you need to install a valid license key.
Shortly after buying a Daminion license, you will receive an email containing your personal license key.
If you lose your license key, please contact support!
Installing the license key for Daminion Server Versions: Team, Pro, and Home
1 – Copy the license key from the email.
2 – Launch the Daminion Administration Panel and under the Administration tab click License Management.
This opens the License Dialog Box (see below).
To add your license, click Add License and then click From Clipboard.
After you have pasted the license key from the clipboard, you will see your registered name, version, maintenance expiration date (Free Updates until), and the amount of available concurrent connections in the List. In the example above, our registered user, Daria Kotilainen, has a Team Server License with 3 concurrent connections.
Note: All Daminion licenses include 1-year maintenance. You can renew the maintenance option after the first year or continue to use the license without maintenance. The new maintenance period starts from the date on which your previous maintenance period expired. The expiration date of your maintenance period can be found in the summary at the bottom of this Dialog Box. You can extend your warranty at any time on Maintenance Renewal.
Installing the license key for Daminion Standalone Versions: Standard and Pro
1 – Copy the license key from the email.
2 – On the Daminion main screen, under the Help tab, click Daminion Registration.
In the dialog window that opens, click Add License and then click From Clipboard.
After you have pasted the license key from the clipboard you will see your registered name, version, and the maintenance expiration date (Free Updates until).
Removing one or more items within the Browser window
In the Browser window, select the item or items you want to remove from the catalog and right-click one of the thumbnails. In the context menu that opens, select Remove from Catalog or press the Del key.
This opens the following message.
If you only want to remove these items from the catalog, without deleting the respective original files from their source folders, click Remove from Catalog.
However, if you no longer need to store the original files, check the Move the file(s) to Recycle Bin option. In this case, the following confirmation dialog appears.
Click Delete to remove the selected items from the catalog and their original files from their actual location.
To remove a file from the catalog and delete it from the disc without moving it to Recycle Bin, select an item and press Shift+Del.
To rename a single item, select it in the Browser window and press the F2 key.
In the dialog window that opens, edit the file name.
If you want to rename multiple files at the same time, use the batch rename feature.
First, select two or more items in the Browser window and click Edit > Batch Rename (Move) in the File menu.
The first option, Move files to a new folder, allows you to specify a destination folder the selected files will be copied to after renaming. Leave this option unchecked if you want the renamed files to remain in their original location.
In the text box below you can manually enter different renaming parameters or select them from the list of presets by clicking the small triangle icon on the right. Alternatively, you can compile a new renaming rule and save it as a template for later reuse.
In our example, we’ve selected Custom Name with Counter.
For more information on how to automatically batch-rename files using the Template Editor, please refer to Template Editor.
Located on the Catalog menu, the Replication command is designed for working with Daminion Server in a VPN environment. When you set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to allow external users (e.g. users from a branch office of your company) to access catalogs or catalog folders, you might find that the catalog contains rather large files. A remote user viewing preview simply to inspect the contents of a catalog, for example, will cause large amounts of data to be transferred via the VPN. This can considerably slow down processing speed and force users to wait longer than usual.
In order to speed up the processing of large files via VPN connections, an Administrator can replicate a collection of media data – between a company’s branch offices, for example. The branch offices have access to the data, but instead of using the slow VPN connection and a remote server, they work with local files.
Replication is performed using the Window Server Distributed File System (DFS), which automatically replicates data between different locations. For more information on this topic, visit the Microsoft website.
On a remote server, the administrator defines the Replication Settings for a catalog. In other words, he defines which users are allowed to use the relocated files. Users with a checked check box after their name can access the replicated files.
Thus, if user Hans (checked) opens a catalog via a VPN connection and double clicks an image, the preview comes from a local replicated folder rather than from the remote server via VPN. Whereas when user Sven (without a checkmark) opens an image, the preview has to be transferred from the server via the VPN connection, and it takes a lot longer.
When performing a task like assigning keywords to a catalog file, you would normally work on the remote server, because assigning keywords does not require high-resolution image data. The main purpose of replication is to speed up access to large image files, e.g. when previewing, without having to transfer the data over a slow VPN connection.
Install Daminion Server in the office where the files are located.
Then install Daminion Client on the client PCs in the central office and in the branch office. Next, launch the software and on the menu, click File > Open Shared catalog.
Right-click Add Daminion server and enter the IP address of the computer where Daminion Server is installed. This IP address can differ depending on whether the computer is located in the central office or in a branch office. Your system administrator will give you more information about
Repeat step 4 on all client computers.
At this stage, you can already start working with Daminion Server over several branch offices. However, you can considerably increase access and processing speed by performing the replication:
Replicate a folder on the server PC to other computers by means of Windows DFS (Distributed File System). The path to this replicated folder must be the same for all computers and branch offices. This way you can use copies of the server content on all computers.
Data will be replicated between two locations (branch offices, for example) where the path to the folder is the same, say \\MediaServer\ImageLibrary. This is important because it is not necessary to transfer data to each computer, but to one computer only in a local network. Other computers might have access to the main computer, for example, via \\MediaServer\ImageLibrary.
Launch Daminion Client, connect to Daminion Server as Administrator, and on the menu, click Catalog > Replication Settings and define which users are allowed to access the replicated folders.
Now, when users double-click an image in their Daminion Client browser, they will be using a local file and not a file from the remote server.
Because Daminion only stores links to the original files at the time of import, there may be occasions when the content of the folder path differs from the links to already imported files. This can be caused by deleting files from or adding files to a folder after it has been imported. In both cases, this happens because Daminion cannot detect file operations carried out by third-party software. On how to make Daminion automatically detect external changes, please refer to Automatic Folder Rescan.
Original files that are missing from Daminion because they have either been deleted, renamed externally, or moved to another location are displayed with a question mark in the top left corner of their respective thumbnail preview.
Daminion’s Rescan Folders feature was designed specifically to ensure that the folder containing your original images is always in sync with the Daminion catalog.
How to rescan a folder in Daminion
Within Daminion, navigate to the Tags panel (usually located on the left of the Daminion interface). Click the small triangle on the left to expand the Folders bar, if it’s not already expanded. You will now see a list of all folders and sub-folders currently available in the Daminion catalog.
Locate and right-click the folder you want to synchronize with the catalog. In the context menu, click Rescan Folders to start the rescan process. Alternatively, you can press the F6 key to open the rescan folder dialog box for a specific folder. The following dialog box opens.
Specify how Daminion should perform the scan:
Add New Files – Daminion scans the folder for files that have been added after the other files were imported and then adds them to the catalog as if they were regular new imports. After rescanning folders, Daminion displays all newly added files in the browser, where you can continue tagging them.
Remove Missing Files from Catalog – Daminion will remove all links that refer to files that are no longer in the catalog, usually because they have been deleted, renamed, or moved to another location outside Daminion.
Update Catalog Tags for Modified Files – Daminion re-reads the complete metadata of the files and compares it with the related metadata information in the catalog. If the metadata in a file differs from the information stored in the catalog, Daminion updates the catalog with the new information. Inconsistencies such as these can arise when certain metadata is changed by external software. This option allows you to either keep the information in the catalog or update it with the information from the file when you add the file to the catalog.
Rescan Report
A Rescan Report is automatically created during each rescan. To open and view the Report, click the rotating circle in the left-hand corner of the status bar.
Alternatively, once the rescan is complete, navigate to Catalog > Latest Rescan Report.
This feature is only available in Daminion Team Server version 6.0 and higher!
Daminion’s Roles Configurator allows you to change the access permissions of the default user roles as well as create new user roles with custom permission sets, providing you robust access control on your catalogs.
To change the permissions of the default user role, open Daminion Server Administration panel > Administration > Roles.
Select a user role and check/uncheck the checkboxes of access permissions to the catalogs and then click “OK” to save the changes.
To create a new user role, click the “Add” button and in the window that opens enter the name of the new role:
Once created, the role will appear in the roles list. Select the newly created role and specify its permissions by checking the checkboxes, then click “Apply” and “OK” to close the “Roles” dialog window.
If you want to create a new role that has most of the permissions as an existing role (with exceptions), you may Clone an existing role to save yourself from checking multiple checkboxes and only check/uncheck additional permissions.
Once the new role is created, it will appear in User Management where you will be able to assign users.
Note: User roles can also be edited and added via the web client. Please log into your web catalog as administrator and manage user roles via Settings > Roles menu.
Sometimes Daminion displays preview thumbnails with incorrect orientation.
This can happen particularly with scanned images or pictures taken in portrait format with a digital camera when image orientation fails to be recorded in the EXIF data.
Daminion recognizes EXIF data when importing files. When the data is missing, thumbnails are generally displayed horizontally.
In Daminion, thumbnails with inappropriate horizontal orientation can be rotated manually. The new orientation information is then stored within the catalog, but not within the images. This means that in other applications the image will still be displayed with default horizontal orientation. To find out how to change this information and store it within the file itself, please refer to Write and read tags to and from the file.
How to rotate thumbnails
To change thumbnail orientation, select one or multiple thumbnails in the Browser window, click the arrow icon in the upper right corner of any thumbnail and select the desired rotation. Alternatively, you can rotate thumbnails with the following keys:
This is the most common setup, but not necessarily the best.
Pros:
Quick Start: you can start using Daminion quickly, without breaking your existing workflow. You simply need to specify where you’d like your image library to be located on Daminion Server and then press the “Add” button.
MacOS or Linux-based computers may have access to shared files on a remote network
Cons:
Slow. The speed at which you can import files, update metadata, and preview images is highly dependent on the network bandwidth between the Server PC and the computer on which the Documents are located.
Insecure. There is a risk that files accessible from outside the Daminion Server Control Panel could be “screwed-up” when using Windows Explorer or any other file explorer.
No Version Control in older versions (4.1 or lower). The Version Control feature is disabled for all shared files. This is to prevent them from being accessed from outside the Daminion Server control and to avoid damaging the Version Control mechanism.
Recommendations:
If you decided to stick with this approach please make sure that you:
Use at least 1 GBit network environment.
Install Daminion Server on a computer with a minimum of 16 GB RAM, an i7, i9 (Xeon) processor, a separate hard disk with plenty of free space.
Add Daminion Server database to your existing backup schedule. Learn more about how to backup your Daminion Server database or add it to your existing backup tool’s scheduler.
Wherever possible, please consider using Scheme B.
SCHEME A. How to add an EXISTING media archive to Daminion Server
If your photos and other media documents are already located on a NAS or a shared network location please follow the steps below.
Install Daminion Server on a server computer. This can be any computer on your local network that acts as a server. Install Daminion Client on a client computer somewhere on your local network and launch it. Go to the File menu and navigate to the “Open Shared Catalog…” option.
Press the “Add” button and enter your server PC’s name or IP address. You can get this info from the Dashboard on the Daminion Server Administration Panel on your server PC.
Double click on the catalog icon that appears.
If everything’s OK, you’ll see an empty workspace that will open with the name of your server or your IP address as the title in the tab at the top of the page. Click on the “Add Files” button and select the files to import into your Daminion Server.
Now locate and select the remote shared folders that contain the documents you want to import (you can select multiple folders) and click the “Add” button.
Daminion’s Import window will appear. Select the “Add Files to the catalog without copying” option and press the Import button. Only links to the selected documents will be added to the Daminion Server, without copying the actual files to the server PC.
The import process will take some time, but it works in the background so you can start working with Daminion Client immediately. Once the import is complete your documents and their descriptions will be visible to other Daminion Clients connected to the Daminion Server.
SCHEME A. How to add NEW files to Daminion Server
Method #1
Launch Daminion Client and open your shared catalog.
Click on the “Add Files” button and select files you want to import to the opened catalog.
Check the “Copy files to a shared folder…” option.
In the panel on the right, specify a storage destination for the imported files. You can also specify file/sub-folder naming rules.
Click the Import button
Method #2
Launch Daminion Client and open your shared catalog.
Use Windows Explorer or any other file manager to copy new files to the shared network folder where all your documents are stored.
Import the copied files using the “Add Files…” button
You can also import newly added files to already imported folders with the “Rescan Folders…” option. To do this, right-click on the root folder and navigate to the “Rescan Folders…” option on the context menu.
Performs well when importing files, viewing images, and updating metadata
Uses User Roles to prevent unauthorized access to documents from outside Daminion
Version Control feature
Cons:
Large documents (like video files) that are stored in local folders on a server computer, and only accessible via Daminion, are downloaded to the local computer before viewing. To avoid this, we recommend that you share folders that contain large documents such as videos, and importing them using network paths like \\ServerPC\Documents\Video via the “Add Files without copying to server“ option
Recommendations to store large documents such as Video files:
Share folders that contain large video files and then import them using network paths, for example: “\\mediaserver\videos\…” and the “Add Files without copying to server” option. This allows you to watch videos without having to download them to a client’s computer.
To protect your video files from accidental “screw-ups” when using Windows Explorer or any other file explorer please change permission settings for folders where video files are stored: – 1. Assign Read-Only access to Everyone. – 2. Assign Read/Write access Daminion Server service account user.
To achieve the best performance, we recommend that you install Daminion Server on a computer with a minimum of 16 GB RAM, an i7, i9 (Xeon) processor, a separate hard disk with plenty of free space.
SCHEME B. How to add an EXISTING media archive to Daminion Server
Install Daminion Server on the same computer as your shared documents.
If files are located on a NAS device you can copy your documents to a server computer that has Daminion Server installed.
Install Daminion Client on the same server computer and launch it
Go to the File menu and navigate to the “Open Shared Catalog…” option
Press the “Add” button and enter your server PC name or IP address, or simply type in “localhost” (without quotes).
You can get the server IP address from the Daminion Server Administration dashboard.
Double click on the catalog icon that appears.
If everything’s OK, you’ll see an empty workspace that will open with the name of your server or your IP address as the title in the tab at the top of the page. Click on the “Add Files” button and select the files to import into your Daminion Server.
The Daminion Import window will appear. Select the “Add Files to catalog without copying” option to import files from this computer.
Click on the “Import” button to add the selected files to Daminion Server. This takes some time, but because the importing process runs in the background, you can start working with Daminion Client while the files are being imported.
When the import is complete all your documents, with their descriptions, will be visible to other Daminion Clients connected to the Daminion Server.
SCHEME B. How to add NEW files to Daminion Server
Any Daminion Client connected to your local network can add new files to the Daminion Server.
Launch Daminion Client and click on the “Add Files” button.
Select the files you want to import. These can be files from a flashcard or a local folder.
Check the “Upload files to the server PC…” option
In the right-hand panel, you can optionally specify a sub-folder and file naming templates for the imported files.
Click on the “Import” button
All the chosen files from the local computer will be uploaded to the Daminion Server. In the Daminion Server Administration Panel, you can specify which server-based folder the uploaded files will be stored in.
This scheme is an enhanced version of Scheme A, but performance is better because the Documents are stored on the same computer as the Daminion Server
Pros:
Performs well when importing files, viewing images, and updating metadata.
It’s possible for MacOS or Linux-based computers to have access to shared files on remote network locations.
Cons:
The Version Control feature is disabled for all shared files in all old versions (4.1 and lower).
Note: To protect your video files from accidental “screw-ups” when using Windows Explorer or any other file explorer please change permission settings for folders where video files are stored: 1. Assign Read-Only access to Everyone. 2. Assign Read/Write access Daminion Server service account user.
Recommendations:
Share folders that contain videos, then import them using network paths, for example: “\\mediaserver\videos\…” using the “Add Files without copying to server” option. This allows you to watch videos without having to download them to a client’s computer.
For optimum performance, we recommend you install Daminion Server on a computer with a minimum of 16 GB RAM, an i7, i9 (Xeon) processor, a separate hard disk with plenty of free space.
SCHEME C. How to add an EXISTING media archive to Daminion Server
Install Daminion Server on the same computer as your shared documents.
If files are located on a NAS device, you can copy them to the shared folder on the server.
Install Daminion Client on the same server computer and launch it.
Go to the File menu and navigate to the “Open Shared Catalog…” option.
Press the “Add” button and enter your server PC name or IP address, or simply type in “localhost” (without quotes). You can get the server IP address from the Daminion Server Administration dashboard.
Double click on the catalog icon that appears.
If everything’s OK, you’ll see an empty workspace will open with the name of your server or your IP address as the title in the tab at the top of the page. Click on the “Add Files” button and select the files to import into your Daminion Server.
Select the local folders that contain the documents on the Server PC (you can select multiple folders) and press the “Add” button.
The Daminion Import window will appear. Select the “Add Files to catalog without copying” option to import files from this computer.
Click on the “Import” button to add the selected files to Daminion Server. This takes some time, but you can start working with Daminion Client while the files are being imported because the import process runs in the background.
When the import is complete all your documents, with their descriptions, will be visible to other Daminion Clients connected to the Daminion Server.
SCHEME C. How to add NEW files to Daminion Server
Any Daminion Client connected to your local network can add new files to the Daminion Server.
Launch a Daminion Client, open a shared catalog and click on the “Add Files” button.
Select the files you want to import. These files can be from a flashcard or a local folder.
Check the “Copy files to a shared folder…” option.
Specify your network destination folder in the panel on the right.
Specify file/sub-folder naming rules
Click on the “Import” button
Now all files from the local computer will be copied to shared folders on the server computer and added to Daminion Server. In the Daminion Server Administration Panel, you can specify a server-based folder where the uploaded files will be stored.
Daminion offers you a number of ways to quickly perform a targeted search of your database.
You can search by using Quick Search, Advanced Search, or the Tags Panel.
In this article, you will learn how to search using the Tags Panel.
The numbers to the right of the entries in the Tags Panel indicate how many items have been assigned to the particular tag.
Click the circles next to the numbers to view all the items in the browser that use the same tag.
You can extend your selection by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking multiple tags. If you hold down the Alt key and click, the circles go red, and the selected tags are excluded from the search.
In our example, we have chosen to view all items that use the keywords Vehicles and Red, while explicitly excluding Camera RAW files. The word AND in the red box means that items being searched for must use both Keyword tags, Vehicles AND Red. Select OR instead of AND to view items that use just one OR both tags. You can refine your search by control-clicking in the date range and adding a time restriction to your selection.
Please note that you always need to hold down the CTRL key when adding new filter conditions in the Tags panel! If the CTRL key is released, click on the radio button will be recognized as a new search query.
To help you keep track of your search parameters, they are also displayed above the browser window.
A – To collapse or expand the query area, click on the small triangle.
B – The query area gives you a quick, plain-text overview of all selected search parameters.
C – You can save your customized search for later use.
Your saved search will appear as a new entry under Saved Searches in the Tags panel and can be quickly launched from there with a single click at any time.
To send files by email, first, select one or more files in the browser window. On the toolbar click Export and select Send by email from the drop-down list.
The email dialog window opens.
You can choose to use the default email client or to log in using your Gmail or Google Mail account.
If you want to use the default email client, and you already have one set up on your PC, it will be displayed in this window. Otherwise, click the “How to set up my Outlook accounts” link and follow the instructions.
If you are a Gmail user, log in with your Gmail account to continue.
It may be necessary to reduce the size of large images before they can be sent.
Click Export Original File(s) and select the appropriate image size from the drop-down list.
Click Customize at the bottom of the drop-down list to open the Template Editor and use it to make the necessary adjustments to the image and save them as a template. Please refer to “Customize Export Presets” for more information on how to apply your own export settings.
Daminion Server Administration Panel is the central point for setting up metadata handling; managing shared catalogs, users, and Daminion licenses; installing web access, and backing up catalogs.
The front part of the Daminion Server Administration panel shows license information, Daminion Server version, logon user, used ports, and your computer’s name and IP address(es). The three green bullets indicate that the Daminion Server, File Watching, and PostgreSQL services are currently active. If these bullets are greyed-out, click Start at the bottom of the panel (replaced by Stop when the server is running).
The upper menu bar contains the following three tabs with their associated options:
Administration
Stop Daminion Server stops the Daminion Server. Alternatively, click the Stop button at the bottom of the Daminion Server Administration Panel. When clicked, the Stop button becomes the Start button that launches the Daminion Server, File Watching, and PostgreSQL services.
Web Access allows you to open your shared catalog in the web browser. Refer to Activating Web-Access for how to get started with Web-Access.
Catalogs opens the Catalog management menu. You can also open it by clicking the blue Catalogs at the bottom of the Daminion Server Administration Panel.
Users opens the User management menu. You can also open it by clicking the blue Users at the bottom of the Daminion Server Administration Panel.
Preferences opens the dialog box where you can change the Daminion Server settings, adjust metadata handling, and change the security mode. For more information please refer to Daminion Server Metadata Preferences
Show logs opens a folder containing the Daminion Log file and other configuration files. The log file is needed for troubleshooting.
Exit stops Daminion Server and closes the Daminion Server Administration Panel.
View
This is where you configure the Daminion Server interface language. Click the View tab, navigate to Language and select your preferred language from the drop-down list. The change will come into effect the next time you restart Daminion Server. For more information please refer to Changing the Interface Language.
Help
The Help tab provides two options: Help and About
Help > Help connects you to the Help section on the Daminion website where you can find useful information on how to manage Daminion Client and Daminion Server. If you can’t find the information you’re looking for in Help, please contact our support.
Help > About opens the About Daminion window, which contains information about the current version of the server.
To protect yourself against unintended license violations – like accidentally using a picture whose license has expired, for example – you can tag your pictures in Daminion with a special license expiration date.
As soon as an image license expires, a red warning symbol appears in the Daminion browser next to the image in question, which can no longer be printed, exported to PDF or other external applications, and cannot be sent by email. If you attempt to do any of these things, Daminion will flash up an appropriate warning.
You can of course change the license expiration date at any time or remove it completely.
Setting a License Expiration Date
The License Expiration Date tag field is located in the Properties panel under the General heading. However, you may not see it if it hasn’t yet been activated. For instructions on how to activate the License Expiration Date tag field see Customizing the Properties panel.
By default, this field is blank. To enter a date, click the calendar icon on the right.
From the calendar, select the appropriate expiration date for the chosen image. If necessary, you can immediately lock an image by setting a date from the past.
When you click in the empty field, the current date is set automatically. You can change the date, month, year, or time by clicking them and using the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard.
To delete the date or to display all images with the same license expiration date, simply right-click the date field.
You can also display the license expiration date under your thumbnail previews. This is useful, as it allows you to see time-critical license periods at a glance. For more information, see Customizing the thumbnail Captions.
Shared Collections is an easy way to share your digital assets with your clients and colleagues. You can share selected documents via links without having to grant access to your entire catalog or register new user accounts.
How to create a shared collection
Select one or multiple images by checking the box in the upper right corner of the thumbnail. Hold down the Shift key to select multiple files.
A little hint: If you need to select all displayed items, first select one item only, and then click Select displayed files on the toolbar.
You now have two ways to make a shared collection.
Hover your mouse over one of the selected thumbnails, click the three dots icon and click the icon.
Alternatively, click the three dots icon in the upper right corner of the thumbnail window and select Create Shared Collection.
Whichever way you choose, the Share Files dialog window will appear. This is where you set up the properties of your shared collection.
There is only one required field, Title, feel free to fill in the rest of them according to your requirements.
Specify a title for the shared collection here. Please note that this is a required field.
Add a description (optional).
Set up public access to the collection.
Set a password or allow password-free access to the shared files. If a collection is password-protected, people with permission to access it will be prompted to enter the password, so make sure that you provide it to them.
Set an expiration date for the collection. Once the collection has expired, it remains visible in the Shared Collection window to the owner of the collection and the admins, but cannot be accessed externally.
Specify whether or not the original files can be downloaded.
Once the collection preferences are selected, click “Get Link” to create a new shared collection or click “Cancel” to quit the menu.
After clicking “Get Link” you will see a window with the sharable link.
What a shared collection looks like
Your shared collections can be accessed via unique URLs created for each collection.
Depending on the collection settings, the appearance and the properties of the shared collection may differ.
The screenshot below shows our recently shared collection.
Title and Description (if any) are displayed here.
Download the collection as a ZIP archive (available only if Allow to Download Original was selected). You can also select two or more files and download them as a ZIP archive.
Click the download icon on a separate file to download it (available only if Allow to Download Original was selected).
Access your shared collections
All your shared collections can be accessed by clicking the three dots icon in the upper-right corner of the interface and selecting Shared Collections.
You can manage your collections here and get their sharable links again.
Click the icon to quickly open the shared collection in a new tab.
Click the three dots icon on the preview icon of the shared collection to get access to be able to Edit or Delete the shared collection
How to display the contents of a shared collection
To display the contents of your shared collection in the Shared Collections window, simply click your collection thumbnail:
To remove one or multiple files from a shared collection, display the contents of the shared collection in the thumbnail area, select one or multiple files, then hover your mouse over one of the thumbnails, click the three dots icon, and select Edit Tags.
In the panel that opens, display Shared Collection as a tag via the gear icon, then hover your mouse over the name of the shared collection and click the X icon.
Notes:
In order to share collections with people outside your LAN, your Daminion server must be publicly accessible. Make sure you install it on a Windows-based web hosting or use the Daminion Cloud version.
Administrators can access and manage all shared collections.
Editors have access only to private shared collections that they have created by themselves.
Viewers and Guests cannot create Shared collections within Daminion.
The Shift Date/Time option allows you to adjust the date of creation of one or more files. This can be useful if the camera time has been set incorrectly and needs to be fixed after shooting, or for changing the Creation DateTime of images recorded in different time zones – or if you simply forget to set the correct winter or summertime on your camera.
Finally, you can use this function to synchronize multiple cameras being used together on the same shoot. Thus avoiding issues with images from unsynchronized cameras appearing in the wrong order when displayed in the browser.
The Move Date/Time option allows you to fix these inaccuracies and streamline your workflow.
Shifting the Creation DateTime
To change the Creation DateTime of one or more images, select the required images in the browser window, click the arrow icon in the upper right-hand corner of the thumbnail, and in the drop-down menu navigate to Shift Date/Time.
In the dialog window that opens, you can now specify whether the new value is to be subtracted from or added to the current creation date and time.
We get the following result when we shift the date forward by 2 months and 20 days, and the time by 4 hours, 23 minutes, and 5 seconds:
If, for example, you want to reset summer or winter time, select the appropriate Forward or Backward option and enter or select “1” under “Hour”.
Changing the Creation DateTime in the Properties panel
Select one or more images in the browser window and navigate to Creation Datetime under the General tab in the Properties panel.
To change the Creation DateTime, click the calendar icon and reset the creation date by selecting it on the calendar.
Alternatively, click the part of the Creation DateTime you want to change and use the up and down arrows on the keyboard to edit it.
Synology provides one of the most popular NAS systems and many Daminion users are Synology owners.
Daminion can be integrated with Synology Photo Station so that Daminion provides the back-end library management capabilities, and Photo Station the front-end web publishing service that allows users to share their photo library.
This content is created and maintained by Paul Barrett, a Daminion user. Please click the link below to view the content which is hosted externally (on the same DiskStation where his own integration with Photo Station is hosted.)
Subjects covered include:
Setting up Photo Station
Setting up Daminion
How tagging works across the two applications
File and Folder Management
Synology Drive
Synology Moments
His posts are independent and represent his views only. In publishing them on our site Daminion does not validate or accept responsibility for the accuracy of the content nor for the consequences of following his advice
It is highly recommended to install Daminion Server on a separate server machine (or use a separate SSD drive when installing Daminion Server on a virtual machine)
Ethernet speed of 1 Gigabit (recommended 10 Gigabit)
1 TB SSD drive (larger if possible to store thumbnails and file previews)
NET Framework Version 4.7.2. If you do not have this installed, Daminion Server Installation will prompt you to install it for you automatically.
Calculating required storage space
– 100 kb thumbnail size for each imported file. For example, 100Gb of thumbnail storage space is required for 1 million files.
Depending on activated settings, additional storage space may be required:
1. Web access is activated
300-400 kb of additional storage space per one file to store JPEG mid-sized previews of 2000x2000px. For example, 300-400 GB of additional storage space is required for 1 million files in this case.
2. Accelerated preview for large file formats (BMP, TIFF, PSD) is activated
1-5 MB of additional storage space is required for each large file. For example, 10-50 GB of additional storage space is required to store JPEG previews of 10 000 large files
3. Generation of MP4 preview for video files is activated to preview videos in the web client
An additional 10-20% of the total size of the imported video files is required. For example, for 1 TB of video files, 200 GB of additional storage space is required to store MP4 video previews (to be able to preview your videos in the web client)
* Daminion Server can run on a common Windows platform like Windows 10. It is not necessary to buy an expensive Windows Server. Daminion Server is Unicode compliant.
Daminion Standalone/Client
Windows: Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 or higher
Mac OS: via Web-client or Desktop-client via Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion
i5 or higher processor
8 GB of RAM or higher
200 MB of disk space (additional space required for media files)
Display is optimized for 1280 x 1024 screen resolution or higher
NET Framework Version 4.7.2. If you do not have this installed, Daminion Installation will prompt you to install it automatically
Daminion Web-Client
OS: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, Android
Browsers: Chrome, Mozilla, Safari, Internet Explorer 11, Edge, Opera
Note: All currently supported versions of Daminion and Daminion Server are 32-bit applications. This means that when Daminion is installed on x64 based systems, it will be installed by default to: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Daminion Software” folder.
In the web catalog, click the heading of the respective tag to expand it. Then click the little plus icon to switch from filtering mode to create new tags.
In the window that opens, enter the tag value in the entry box and click Create. If you want to create multiple tags at the same time, click the plus icon (1). If the tag was entered incorrectly, you may delete it by clicking the bin icon (2). To create hierarchy, please use backslash “\”.
Please note that the tag values created in the Tags Panel are automatically suggested for use when tagging in the Properties panel or Tag editor.
To create sub-tags under the existing tag, hover your mouse over the tags to display the three dots icon next to it.
Click the three dots icon and select “Add”.
In the window that opens, create new sub-tags.
You can use the same menu to edit tags or delete them.
Drag’n’Drop Tagging in the Tags Panel
Select one or several files in the thumbnails window, hold down the left mouse button, and drag and drop the files to the certain tag as shown on the screenshot below.
Tagging in the Properties Panel
In the browser window, click the image you want to tag to open it in full screen. Click the icon in the upper right-hand corner to display the Properties panel.
In the Properties panel, click the Description Tab to expand it and start assigning tags.
Hierarchical tags are created in the same way as in the Tags panel – each hierarchy level is delimited by a backslash “\” and multiple tag values are separated by commas.
If a tag value already exists in the database, Daminion will auto-suggest it as soon as you type the first letters.
In order to delete a mistakenly assigned tag from an image, just hover the mouse pointer over it and click the X icon.
Click the icon to display all files which have the same set of tags.
Note: In the Properties panel all existing tags are displayed and cannot be customized to show fewer tags. Additionally, the tags cannot be assigned to more than one image at the same time. All this can, however, be done in the Tag Editor.
Tag Editor
The Tag Editor allows you to assign tags to multiple images at once and customize the list of displayed tags.
To open the Tag Editor, select one or more images in the Browser window, click Selected on the toolbar, and select Edit tags.
Alternatively, click the pencil icon on any of the selected images.
The following window appears. Fill in the tags here. If you want to delete or extend the list of displayed tags, click the gear icon as shown on the screenshot below (1):
Click the bin icon (2) to delete a tag from the list or “Append a tag” (3) to select and add new tags:
The Template Editor allows you to set various parameters to automatically rename files or folders during the export process.
You can launch the Template Editor from the Copy to Folder dialog box, as seen on the following screenshot.
To rename folders and files, click the small triangles to the right of the text boxes Create Sub-Folders and Rename Files and then, at the bottom of the submenu, click Customize to launch the Template Editor.
Template Name
If you have chosen a predefined template from the list, the name will appear in this box. If you started from scratch and have not already save your new template, its name is displayed as Custom Template.
Triangle button
Click the small triangle to select a predefined naming convention from the submenu, or save your own new template. If you click Save Preset as you will be asked for a name, and the preset will be stored in the submenu where you can later select it in the Copy to Folder dialog box and then apply it.
Template Code
This is the text editing area of the template. All tokens selected from the Insert Tag area below will be placed here. You can also manually edit your template in this area by adding custom text or specific separator characters. Below the edit area, you will see the final result of the selected tokens. So you can see at a glance how your currently selected tokens will affect the final file or folder name.
Insert Tag
Daminion offers a wide variety of tokens for creating different renaming conventions. These tokens are sorted into groups that are identified by the buttons in this box. Click on these buttons to open submenus with different sets of tokens.
Hover the mouse pointer over the tokens to reveal a pop-up description of the specific token. This will help you find the right token for your particular naming convention.
Definition of a token
Each token begins with a “%” sign followed by one or more characters. Each token has a unique purpose. You can combine any of these tokens with any other.
The following illustrates a sample combination of tokens and the resulting filename:
%date = Uses the capture date in the format “year month day” ” – ” = custom text used as a separator %pxl = Displays the megapixel of that image ” – ” = custom text used as a separator %lens = Displays the model name of the used lens ” – ” = custom text as a separator %### = Each “#” sign defines the total number of leading zeros for the numerating. ” . ” = dot separator for the file extension %ext = file extension
A full list of supported tokens can be found here.
Note: To ensure that your self-created naming convention exactly matches your requirements, it is advisable to first try it out on a single test file before you rename a large number of files because there is no undo function for these renaming operations!
In your browser, you can create groups of thumbnail previews in which a series of associated images are represented by one thumbnail.
Grouping Thumbnails
First, select at least two thumbnail preview images in the Browser. Now you have three ways to take the images in a group.
Option-1
Click with the right mouse button on one of the thumbnails. It opens a context menu as shown in the screenshot below.
Click Grouping and then in the sub-menu click Group. The selected images are now grouped together and represented by the thumbnail image you clicked to run the command.
Option-2
If you select two or more images and then move the mouse over the top right corner of the thumbnail previews, a small clickable Group Selected Items icon appears.
The picture you run the command on becomes the thumbnail preview image of the group.
Option-3
Select two or more images and then press Ctrl + G to group them together.
All four images are now grouped together and the number of items in the group appears in the top right corner of the thumbnail.
Collapse and expand a group
Move the pointer back to the top right corner of the thumbnail preview, where the number of items is normally displayed. As the pointer hovers over it, the number changes to an arrow symbol. Click the arrow to expand and collapse the group.
Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + D.
Ungrouping
Right-click a group of pictures and choose Grouping > Ungroup. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + G.
The group is now broken up into individual items.
Splitting a group
You can also split an existing group into smaller groups.
Expand the appropriate group, right-click the images that you want in the new group, and then select Grouping > Split Group.
Choose a display picture for the group
You can choose which image is used as the preview thumbnail for a group.
Expand the group, right-click your chosen image, and select Grouping > Move to Top of Group.
Remove images from the group
Expand the appropriate group, right-click the image you want to remove from the group, and choose Group > Move Out of Group.
Daminion server may broadcast a lot of UDP packets in the network.
You can turn off the UDP broadcasts by editing the config file located by the following path on the server PC: C:\Program Files (x86)\Daminion Software\Daminion Server\catalogs.config
Before making changes to the *.config file, please stop Daminion server, then open the *.config file and locate the lines shown below:
All files imported to Daminion are displayed differently in the Browser window depending on file type and status.
All possible types of displayed thumbnails are given below.
All image file formats, as well as other file formats that have an integrated thumbnail or support thumbnail embedding (e.g. TIF, JPG, or PDF), are displayed with the corresponding thumbnail preview.
File formats that have no built-in thumbnail preview are shown with the default icons of file format.
By default, unknown file formats, which have been added manually, are displayed with a big question mark.
To find out how to assign a custom preview thumbnail to unknown file formats please refer to Add Custom Thumbnails.
A broken chain thumbnail is displayed when Daminion doesn’t have access to the folder where thumbnails are stored or the thumbnail is damaged. In the latter case, select an image and try to rebuild the thumbnail by pressing CTRL+B.
If the original files have been deleted, moved, or renamed outside Daminion, the thumbnail preview displays a small question mark in the upper-left corner.
The question mark is also displayed on thumbnails whose original files are stored on devices that have been disconnected from the PC. In these cases, Daminion cannot locate the original files, and therefore marks them as offline. Once the external storage device is reconnected, the original files are available again. However, sometimes you may need to update the thumbnails manually to make the question mark disappear. To do this, select all the items with question marks and press Ctrl + B.
When the offline file is opened in full-screen mode, it is displayed in low resolution with the notification The file “filename” is offline or missing at the bottom of the screen.
To find out how to relink particular folders or items, please refer to Relink Folders and Files.
So that you can find documents quickly, Daminion stores all information about imported files in a database called a catalog. Some of the information, mainly technical data, is imported automatically from asset metadata; however, most of the descriptive information must be entered manually by the user.
Daminion gives you the flexibility to create and manage multiple catalogs and open them on different page tabs. Catalogs do not store the original files – they store only links to the files.
Local and Shared Catalogs
Daminion supports two types of catalogs: “local catalogs” and “shared catalogs”. A local catalog is a single file (an SQLite database) with a .dmc extension. You can open and manage several catalogs at once but only on one computer. The catalog cannot be accessed from a second computer via a network. It is an effective and fast single solution for anyone who works independently on a local computer with no need to share catalog data with others. To work with local catalogs you need only the Daminion Standalone version. Shared catalogs allow multiple users to access the same asset archives collaboratively and safely through a company’s local network. The Daminion Server is required in order to create and work with shared catalogs. The Daminion Standalone version is used as the client to access the Daminion Server. Daminion Server uses the enterprise-level PostgreSQL database engine, which can protect shared catalogs by restricting user access to particular files and functions.
Support for Multiple Catalogs
Digital assets in different formats or based on different themes can be separated into individual catalogs. For example, private_photos.dmc can be used for private photos; music.dmc for songs; landscapedesign.dmc for a collection of landscape designs, etc. Multiple departments of a company can each use multiple shared catalogs for their own needs.
Portable Local Catalogs
Daminion stores relative links to imported files in local catalogs. This means that you can easily move your photo archive library to a new location simply by copying the folder that contains all the photos and the .dmc catalog file. For example, to move “D:\Media\Photos” to “E:\Photos”. Daminion will correctly see the files, even though the folder has been moved to a new location.
The only requirement is that the catalog’s .dmc file should be stored in the same folder as the imported files. This folder will also contain thumbnails and version folders that can easily be backed up.
Another benefit of relative paths is that they allow you to create portable catalogs on external drives and devices even if your Windows drive letters have a tendency to change each time a device is plugged into your computer.
Keep a note of the following when working with your cataloged media
Storing local catalogs in network locations may damage your data. The Daminion Server is required if you need to provide access to your digital media archive across a local network
Daminion supports working with offline files. You can search, organize, and maintain catalogs even if your original files are not present. The thumbnails and information associated with these files can still be viewed 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 or offline.
You cannot recover files from the Daminion catalog if you delete these files from the disk outside Daminion. A catalog contains only information about the file, not the file itself.
Adding files to the Daminion catalog will not move or modify the original media files.
Cataloging strategies
Because Daminion can manage more than one catalog at once, it is entirely up to you to decide how many catalogs you want to create and whether or not you separate your media files into several catalogs. You could, for example, create one catalog for your image files, one for your documents, and one for your video files. If you wanted, you could even import all your different media files into one large catalog. It makes no difference because Daminion has all the features you need to easily manage large – even huge – amounts of data stored in one catalog. Daminion can create and handle multiple catalogs, both local and shared.
Daminion automatically creates usage information for certain actions and saves it together with the respective assets. For example, you can see when an asset was printed or sent via email and by whom. In addition to the usage actions stored by default, you can create custom actions and comment on them. The Comment function is useful for passing on important information about certain items to other users, for example.
You can launch usage history either via the actions menu or by pressing the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+U.
Adding usage information
To add usage information to an asset, right-click the little arrow symbol in the top right corner of the thumbnail and click Add usage information.
In the window that opens you can add a comment or choose one of the default action types from the drop-down list below, or do both. The current date and time is added automatically, but you can change them manually by left-clicking the date link to set the desired date. Asset file name.
To create a new custom action, chose Add Action Type from the drop-down list.
Add a file name for the new action type in the following window or edit the existing name with Edit Action Type.
The action types in the red frame are set by default and applied automatically. They cannot be changed.
Note: When sending emails you can also add your comments directly to the email message.
Viewing usage history
To view the usage history of a particular asset, click the little arrow symbol in the top right corner of the thumbnail and click Usage History.
All action types that have been applied are listed and sorted by date . In the upper menu bar, new custom action types can be added , edited or deleted .
Export of Usage History
Daminion allows exporting Usage History to CSV file, which can be later opened in Excel.
To export the Usage History of one or more files, select the files in the browser window, click the Export button and select Export to CSV.
In the Explorer window that opens, browse for a folder where to store the CSV file and set its name. Once this is done, you will see the following dialog box in Daminion.
In our example, we have selected to export Keywords along with the Usage History for three selected items. Once the CSV file is created, you can open it in Notepad or Excel.
Reorder the list of presets
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icon allows you to select all files displayed on the current page.
to change the color label of the file.
to open the window where you can adjust the view of the Filters panel (rearrange tags, add tags, remove tag from the Filter panel)
