ImageIngester Blog

Thumbnails weren’t shown correctly in the thumbnail chooser unless a size was chosen from the drop-down. Now fixed.

I’ve just put into a new OS X version (3.4.10) a feature that might change your workflow: You can extract JPEGs from raw files, making it in some cases unnecessary to shoot raw+JPEG because you need JPEGs immediately.

As you may know, some raw formats, including NEF, CR2, PEF, and RW2, contain an embedded full-size JPEG preview (in addition to a small thumbnail, in some cases). ImageIngester can now extract that JPEG and put it into a subfolder under the Primary Folder named JPEG. (You can’t customize the folder location.) Extracted JPEGs include EXIF and IPTC metadata taken from the raw. However, there’s no support for GPS tagging of extracted JPEGs, unless you ingest them again, of course.

The new checkbox to turn on JPEG extraction is on the File Handling Details panel:

XMP Metadata is always written to extracted JPEGs (if metadata is enabled) regardless of the setting of the Merge XMPs checkbox.

There are two other new features in Version 3.4.10:

• Thumbnails for RW2 raws are now shown in the thumbnail viewer. (And full-size JPEGs can be extracted, as mentioned above.)
• There’s a new metadata template, installed automatically, that’s more compatible with Microsoft Expression Media. (Half my support questions are related to metadata problems, so I plan additional work to make this part of ImageIngester more robust.)

This version is only for OS X right now. I expect to have the Windows version ready shortly.

Please send requests for additional raws form which JPEGs might be extracted, but it may not be possible to get a JPEG out, as some raws don’t store previews any larger than a thumbnail, and some don’t store their previews as JPEGs. And, there are some raw formats that I haven’t yet figured out how to parse. (Camera makers almost never document their raw formats.)

No need to ask about extracting previews from DNGs, as that’s already on my list. However, this feature is of limited use, because, of the few cameras that use DNG as their raw format, probably none includes a large preview.

You’re probably wondering if the extracted JPEG is the same as a raw+JPEG JPEG. I don’t know—I just extract what’s there. If anyone runs experiments along these lines, please let me know what you think.

–Marc

Sorry for the false alarm on Sunday… version 3.4.01 had a few little problems, now fixed. So, go ahead and download 3.4.02.

For OS X and Windows, the new version is 3.4.01. Ineffective for raws that don’t include a sufficiently large preview image, or for raws that the thumbnail chooser can’t process. Ingestion proceeds normally whether thumbnails are shown or not, of course. Works fine for NEFs, CR2s, JPEGs, and a few other formats.

You choose the size via a drop-down on the chooser panel.

Version 3.3.05 had installation problems on XP which are now fixed in this version. In addition, a bug that caused destination paths to be wrong has been fixed. (This bug didn’t result in any missing images, but it could cause the folder names to be wrong.)

I’ve tested this version on XP; if you have any difficulties with it let me know.

Two users have reported installation problems, and I won’t be able to track down and fix the cause until after the Holiday weekend, so I’ve temporarily disabled the download link. As there was no change to the ImageIngester application itself, Version 3.3.03 should work fine, and its link is still there.

This problem doesn’t affect the Mac version.

The main change is to add RW2 as a raw extension to the Mac version; this was done to the Windows version some time ago.

Also, two included utilities used for GPS tagging, GPSBabel and ExifTool have been updated to versions 1.3.6 (from 1.3.5) and 8.03 (from 7.25) respectively. This has been done for both the Mac and Windows versions.

Both II version numbers are now 3.3.05, skipping some numbers, to bring things into alignment.

Please treat the new versions as beta versions until I upgrade the maturity level on the download page from “low” to “medium”.

The new small-screen feature in Version 3.3.02 for Windows didn’t reduce the size of the File-Handling panel; this new version should be better.

The only ImageVerifier change is to support three new file types as raws: IIQ, MOS, and RW2. There’s also a way described on the Technical Notes page to modify existing Jobs to support the new types (or any type).

Two small bugs are fixed:

• RW2 files now really are treated as raws and are passed on to DNG Converter if you’ve so specified. Thumbnails probably still don’t show up in the thumbnail viewer, however. (This is not a bug, as the thumbnail viewer is not meant to provide a preview of all raw formats.)
• Images stored directly in the root folder (e.g., X:\DSC_1234) are now properly handled. Previously, the first character of the file name (”D”, in this case) was skipped, resulting in a failed ingestion and an error message to the effect that the file could not be found.

For all of you trying to use ImageIngester on netbooks, this version now has a Small Screen item on the Tools menu that changes the main window to fit on a 600×1024 screen. The other windows and panels seem to be OK… let me know if they’re not. A few other changes:

• RW2 is now recognized as a raw format that will be passed to DNG Converter. Of course, there never was any problem ingesting RW2’s; it’s just that they weren’t known to be raw files. [Update: RW2's are not recognized. A newer version of II will follow soon.]
• QuickFields now scroll.
• Values you’ve typed into QuickFields that were saved in the Master Preset weren’t always restored when you restarted II.

As usual, use this new version carefully until it matures, and make sure your images are OK and that they’ve all been ingested before you erase the card. (That advice goes for the mature versions, too, come to think of it.) There’s no Mac version corresponding to 3.3.01, yet, as the only feature listed above that applies to the Mac is the RW2 item. I’ll update the Mac version later.