The DAM FINE System

Digital Asset Management -- Finding Images Nice and Easy

Installation

Extract the ZIP archive into a folder of your choice but something like C:\DAMFINE\.

Using Notepad or some other text editor, open the file damfine.cfg. Please spend a few minutes adjusting the configuration options in this file. These settings are vital to the operation of the system but, once configured, changes will rarely be necessary.

• Owner =

  Simply enter your name or the name of your business to have it appear throughout the system.

• Copyright =

  A default IPTC Copyright value which can optionally be added to images.

• Imagefolder =

  Supply the full Windows pathname to the root of your image collection. e.g. D:\IMAGES\

• Thumbsfolder =

  Supply the full Windows pathname to a folder under which the system can place a thumbnail for each image in your collection. The storage requirements will be non-trivial for large image collections. Typically around 20 Kbytes per image cataloged. e.g. D:\THUMBS\

• Autorun =

  Most of the system functions are delivered via a program that runs continuously in a hidden window (with an icon in the Windows system tray). Enable this option in order to start this program automatically when Windows starts.

• Extensions =

  Customize the list of file types to be cataloged.

• RawFiles =

  The file extensions associated with your RAW files should be listed here (in addition to including them in the "Extensions" setting).

• Serverhost =

  The name or IP address of the computer on which the system is running. You will need to replace the default loopback address (127.0.0.1) with a real hostname or IP address if you wish to access the system from other machines on your network.

• Serverport =

  The system server uses the standard HTTP port number of 80. This will create a conflict if you already run a web server like Apache or IIS on your machine. In that case, simply specify a different port number such as 85, 8080, or whatever.

• Serverremote =

  By default the server will only accept connections from the machine on which the server is running. If you wish to access the system from other machines on your local network, you must enable this option. Be aware that by allowing the system to accept connections from other machines there is a risk of creating security vulnerabilities. To reduce those risks, we suggest configuring...

• Serverallowip =

  Limit the range of IP address from which connections will be accepted so you restrict access to trusted computers that you know and/or control.

• Thumbnail =

  We suggest you leave this at the default of 200.

• Threads =

  We suggest you leave this at the default of 2.

• Timestamps =

  Control the date/time modified attribute when images are updated.
  Timestamp = 0 Reflects the actual time of the update.
  Timestamp = 1 Leaves the date/time modified attribute unchanged.
  Timestamp = 2 Sets the attribute to 5 seconds after its original value.
  Timestamp = 2 preserves some chronological context but generally avoids problems with incremental backup and file synchronization software. Therefore we suggest you leave this at the default of 2.

• Perlexif =

  Supply the full Windows pathname to Perl and the Rewrite.pl script. This requires Perl 5 and the Image::Exiftool module.

• Default GPS Coordinates

  Optionally, you can specify the default GPS coordinates of your home, studio, or business. Later, the system will allow you to insert these into selected images.

Getting Started

Once you have completed the configuration steps, save the damfine.cfg file. Next we suggest that you create a shortcut on your desktop pointing to the program file DamFine.exe. Launch it and simply press the "Rescan Collection" button to start building the system catalog. This will take a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours, depending largely on the size of your image collection. The system provides excellent feedback on progress during the process.

In our case, it took about 16 minutes to extract the meta data and just over an hour to generate thumbnails. This for a collection of 50,000 images.

Note that subsequent Rescans, required to pick up additions, deletions, and changes will run much, much faster.

When the initial indexing is complete, simply launch the server process DamSever.exe and note the icon in the Windows System Tray. Assuming you selected the "Autorun" option in the configuration file, this program will restart automatically whenever you boot up your system and log into Windows.

Finally, you can simply click the Browser button on the main DamFine.exe Window to launch your default web browser and send it to the DamFine system URL. By default that will be:

http://127.0.0.1/dam

but depending on how you've configured the system it may look more like:

http://your.system:8080/dam

We suggest you bookmark that URL for future use.

You are now free to exit/quit DamFine.exe. DamServer.exe will continue running in the Windows System Tray.

Normal Use

At this point, there are two different user interfaces available. The first is provided by the DamFine.exe executable. Use this to rescan and update the database from time to time and when you add new images to your collection.

DamFine.exe also allows you to tag new images before they have been added to the database. We use this to apply some default tags to each image before adding them to the system catalog.

All of the remaining functionality is delivered via the web browser based interface. The system has been tested with:

• Google Chrome and Chromium
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari
• Microsoft Internet Explorer

The main functions available are:

• Browse: allows you to browse the image collection by folder structure.

• Search: allows you to search the image collection by specific metadata fields.

• View: provides a more detailed view of the images selected by the previous Browse or Search operation.

• Compare: allows you to compare the images selected by the previous Browse or Search operation.

• Tag: allows you to edit the metadata associated with the images selected by the previous Browse or Search operation. Tagging operates on one image at a time.

• Update: allows you to edit the metadata associated with the images selected by the previous Browse or Search operation. Update operates on a batch of images.

Many of the associated screens have several other control icons available on them. Mousing over the EXIF button will display a popup with selected IPTC/EXIF data for the current image.

Clicking the GPS button when available will show a Google Maps display centered on the GPS coordinates present within the image EXIF data.

Clicking the Download button will cause your browser to download/save a copy of the original image into the selected folder. Useful when you wish to create a folder containing copies of selected images.

Clicking the FPV button will most likely do nothing. It is possible (but sadly not trivial) to configure your browser such that it will cause the selected image to be opened in some other application that you choose (like an image viewer or editor). Contact the author for more details.

Advanced Features

The DamFine.exe executable can be launched with a command lime parameter like this:

C:\DamFine\DamFine.exe scan

The DamFine program will be launched but it will automatically initiate a fresh scan of your collection to update the database. And then it will exit. This is provided for those who wish to run database updates automatically from time to time using the system scheduler or some other scripting language.

Some Workflow Suggestions

When adding new images to your collection, use the DamFine executable to add some basic tags to the images. Then rescan the collection to catalog your additions.

When catching up on the tagging of existing images, select the Search Metadata option followed by the Show Untagged option to display a list of all folders containing untagged images (those with no keywords).

Then use the Update Listed to tag all of the images in that folder. Note the AutoFill link which will fill the form with recently used values. Finally, use the Tag Listed option to process the same folder tweaking the keywords and ranking for individual images.

Contact

Malcolm Hoar
Email: malch@malch.com
Tel: 510 668 1336

Legal

This software can write metadata to your images. Therefore, it does have to potential to damage, corrupt or delete those images. We have taken significant precautions to ensure this never happens but the user of the software must accept sole responsibility for any such damage. We strongly advise users to take appropriate precautions by making backups copies of their data etc.

This is proprietary software. Malcolm Hoar gants you a non-exclusive perpetual license to use the current version only of the enclosed software for your own personal use. This license confers no rights with respect to subsequent versions of the software. You may not redistribute the software to any other party.

The Dam Fine System
Copyright 2010 Malcolm Hoar. All rights reserved.

The Dam Fine System uses several open source libraries that are copyright works of their respective authors. Their contributions and intellectual property rights are hereby acknowledged:

• The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software

• The Exiv2 Image Metadata Library

• The Little Color Management System, lcms