IMatch Release Notes

Before You Install...

See the Installation Instructions for detailed information about how to install IMatch.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.94/93 (May, 14. 2010)

If the RAW file your camera is not natively supported by IMatch, please check that you have the latest set of WIC codecs installed from your camera vendor's web site. Enable WIC support in IMatch for your specific RAW format under Options > Preferences > File Format Preferences.

After installing, please run IMatch once under an 'Administrative Account' to complete the installation. To do this, right-click on the IMatch icon on your desktop or task bar and choose "Run as..." from the menu. Select an account with administrative privileges and click OK. You need to do this only once after installing IMatch.

Click here to open the Download Center to download this update

New: Added a sort order button to the thumbnail window toolbar. This button allows you to toggle the sort order between ascending and descending without changing the sort preset.

New: Added a whole bunch of new lens types for Nikon, Minolta, Sony etc. to the EXIF processing.

New: Support for standard EXIF 2.2 data for Panasonic RW2 format.

New: Added a view filter to hide read-only files. This allows you to hide all files which cannot be modified. The main purpose of this filter is to show only files which are marked as read-only (by enabling the hide read-only files filter and negating the filter result with the corresponding check box).

If your camera allows you to write-protect images, IMatch will show these files with the special read-only icon. The new filter allows you to show only write-protected files. If you use this flag in-camera as a form or pre-selection ("make the keepers read-only") you can now easily filter for this attribute and quickly label, rate or categorize these images in the thumbnail window.

Bug: Scripting: Assigning the value Empty to an IPTC field and then writing the IPTC data back to the file results under some conditions in a IPTC field with one (empty) element.
This applies only to IPTC fields which can hold more than one item, e.g. keywords or categories. Fixed. IMatch now correclty writes an "empty" or none IPTC field in this case.

Bug: Some edit fields in the Selection View did not accept fractional digits due to localization problems.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.90/89 (May, 14. 2010)

New: Better support for images using CMYK color modes by custom profiles. Make sure you have the Microsodt CMYK color profiles installed. You can download them from the Microsoft Web Site.

New: Added support for a bunch of new maker notes from various camera vendors.

New: Updated lens tables for Nikon lenses.

New: Added support for some new RAW formats and suppport for yet another "embedding" method used by some Pentax PEF RAW variants to include a larger preview inside the maker notes.

I've also updated all third party libraries etc. to the latest available versions. Other small enhancements here and there.

Bug: Deleting a file in the slide show automatically (and correctly) also deleted the associated buddy files. But the slide show and the film strip did not correctly adjust to deleted buddy files.

Bug: Buddy files with extensions using multiple dots (e.g. "AAA.NX.JPG") were not correctly filtered by View Filters.

Bug: GPS data for TIFF-based file formats (including many RAW formats) could not be read anymore.

Bug: Processing 16-Bit PSD files via the batch processor did not work under all conditions.

Bug: Fixed a number of other more or less severe issues reported by users.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.82/81 (May 2009)

(The 3.6.0.82 version contains a bug fix for a bug introduced in the 3.6.0.80 release, plus a fix for the problem loading 16-Bit per channel PSD files). Otherwise it is identical to the 3.6.0.80 release from last week.)

New: Added support for HD Photo (Windows Media Photo) formats.
This formats work when you have the WIC codec installed (from the Microsoft web site). You may also need to add the file extensions .wdp and .hdp under Options > Preferences > File Format Preferences in IMatch.

New: IMatch now allows to search for images with dimensions larger than 10,000 pixels. The new limit is 32,767 which should be good for some time.

New: Added support for some new lens types, maker notes from various camera vendors etc.

New: Added some extra tests to detect changed media.
Depending on the Windows version and device type IMatch may not have always been able to recognize changed media or added/removed drives immediately. This had an impact on certain features, e.g. the media changer dialog when you work with off-line files.

New: Improved the overall render/output quality of the batch processor output when working with JPEG files as input. IMatch now internally performs some optimizations if only some of the features in the batch processor are used, which results in an overall output improvement when JPEG files are used as input.

Bug: Fixed a problem with the installer. This problem caused IMatch to attempt to re-install itself whenever launched.

Bug: ***SECURITY RELEVANT*** if you protect your IMatch database with a password.

IMatch did not always check the full database password. Under some circumstances knowing the first letter of the password is sufficient. To ensure that your database uses a strong password, please use the Change Password feature available in the Database menu > Database Wizard (3rd option on the first page). Entering the same password as before is OK, IMatch will this time check the full password.

This problem was introduced with the conversion to full UNICODE some time ago. I apologize.

Note: Make a backup copy of your database before you change the password. In case something goes wrong, you can revert back to your previous database.

Bug: Deleting images in the slide show may confuse the film strip. Sometimes deleted images still showed up in the film strip or navigation was not working correctly anymore.

Bug: IMatch automatically maintains a set of standard buddy file relations, e.g. between .NEF and .JPEG/.JPG. If a user configured instead that .NEF is a buddy file of .JPG, IMatch had two concurring buddy file definitions. The built-in definition was then used.

Bug: Sometimes IMatch was unable to find EXIF maker notes for files using certain variants of GPS records inside EXIF.

Bug: Attempting to save a file in the PSD_24 format via the IMBitmap scripting class resulted in an error.

Bug: Under certain conditions an Adobe RGB profile was applied when the IMBitmap LoadLowRes method was used to load the embedded preview, even if the image did use a different color space.

Bug: Attempting to create a a circular reference in the category view via drag and drop was property handled and an error message was displayed. Under some circumstances IMatch crashed afterwards while attempting to recover from this problem internally. Fixed.

Bug: Pasting attributes (IPTC data) to a Canon .CRW file did not work. IMatch failed to determine the correct output format for IPTC data in this specific case. Since IMatch cannot update CRW files, it uses the associated THM thumbnail to store the information. This should also work when pasting attributes, but did not. Fixed.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.76/75

New: Added support for Windows Imaging Components (WIC)
IMatch now can use WIC codecs installed on your system to read RAW image files. You can activate the usage of WIC codecs under Options menu > Preferences > File Format Preferences. If enabled, IMatch will use installed WIC codecs instead of using its internal RAW decoder or the libraries provided by camera vendors. You can easily configure for which file formats IMatch uses WIC codecs in the same dialog box.

To use WIC codecs in IMatch, download and install the latest codec from the web site of your camera vendor first. For more info about WIC and available codes, please see the Microsoft web site, the web site of your camera vendor, and this Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Imaging_Component

This page also contains links to the codec download pages of major camera vendors.

Please note that I consider this feature new and hence a bit experimental. My tests show that most RAW codecs provided by camera vendors are pretty stable and fast. And that the resulting images are of good quality.

Furthermore, since the codecs are produced by the camera vendor, they usually cooperate much better with proprietary "soft-edits" written to the RAW file by the camera or the software provided by the camera vendor. This allows IMatch to display the RAW files exactly as you see them in the software of your camera vendor, even if IMatch does not know anything about the proprietary and undocumented edits written to the RAW file.

Your milage may vary though, depending on your computer system, the Windows version and the RAW format you use. Your camera vendor may not support all of its RAW formats in the WIC codec. Or provide only codecs for Windows Vista but not for Windows XP. Or the codecs still got some bugs or issues.

I have tested quite a number of codecs with IMatch. In general they work pretty well. But I have seen some issues while processing large batches of images in one session. Some of the codecs suddenly start to allocate huge amounts of memory, or just crash. In such cases, please restart IMatch to release the codec from memory. Some codecs seem to "lock" files when you use Windows Explorer with enabled preview - which prevents IMatch or Windows from deleting or moving such a file until you restart your computer. If the problems persist, deactiate the WIC support to use IMatch's built-in RAW processing system and contact your camera vendor for assistance.

New: Added support for Panasonic RW2 RAW files.

New: Added several new lens types to EXIF maker note processing.

New: Updated the RAW support to use the latest available libraries from camera vendors.

New: Added support for different camera serial formats used by various Canon models.

New: The Sort Profile dialog now opens much faster, even for databases with hundreds of XMP fields.

New: The "Find Folder" command (Ctrl+F in the Database View) now allows to search for friendly folder names.

New: Changed the processing of windows file system notifications:

This chance has been introduced to improve the cooperation with some other applications which use rather unique renaming/temporary file schemas.

If you (or an application) renames a file in a folder indexed by your IMatch database and IMatch is running, IMatch will rename the file in the database to match the external change. IMatch needs to do this in order to keep track of the file. But this schema can cause problems when you work with applications which rename files (even temporarily) to an extension not supported by IMatch, e.g. from "1.tif" to "1.bak". If IMatch processes this change it moves the file "out" of the database because the extension ".bak" is not a supported file type.

With this update, this no longer happens. If Windows sends IMatch a "file was renamed" event, but the "to" extension is not a supported format (and hence would cause IMatch to remove the file from the database), the file is instead kept as an off-line file. If the other application renames the file bak from "1.bak" to the original file name, IMatch will bring the file back on-line automatically.

This chance has no impact on the standard background event processing in IMatch. I have just added a special case for this special situation. Everything else works as before.

Note: In order to make this work, you have to disabe the automatic folder refresh (Under Options > Preferences > Thumb View).

Bug: Windows context menu button not working in Datbase Tree and Thumbnail window. Fixed.

Bug: Under certain conditions and combinations of daylight saving time and local time zone settings, IMatch did not insert a + sign before the time zone offset value when converting EXIF timestamps into XMP timestamps.

Bug: DCF-compliant detection of Adobe RGB color space was not always working in third party imaging library. If an image does not contain an embedded profile but used the DCF extension method to record an Adobe RGB color space, this color space was not always applied when the producing application did not stick exactly to the methods described in the DCF spec.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.64/63

New: IMatch now supports the mouse wheel even better. By default, the mouse wheel acts on the window "under" the cursor, which means you no longer need to activate/click a window to make it react on the mouse wheel. You'll see the same behavior in other applications, e.g. Internet Explorer.
If you don't want this behavior, or it causes problems on your system, you can disable it under Options > Preferences > General.

New: Added the IsDataDriven, IsDataDrivenRoot and IsDataDrivenChild methods to the Category scripting class. These methods allow you to determine the data-driven attributes of categories. See the IMatch help for additional information.

New: Added support for other PCD file format variant.

New: Added support for a couple of new lenses in the EXIF parser.

New: Added support for a range of new RAW formats from different vendors.

New: Added (preliminary) support for the new Nikon NEF variants, e.g. D700
To use images created with these cameras, make sure you disable the support for Nikon libraries under Options > Preferences > File Format Preferences.

New: Support for several new maker notes from several vendors.

New: Added support for more varieties of previews embedded in ORF files. Olympus uses different ways to embed previews in their various RAW formats, and IMatch now knows most of them. This is a big speed improvement for users of Olympus cameras.

New: Some performance improvements for databases with very large folder structures sitting on remote drives. IMatch now even better caches the drive, file and volume information. This is a noticable improvement for users connecting to a database via a WLAN or other "slow" connections.

New: Fixed a data type conversion problem for the scripting HasImageReference method. The method accidentally returned a string value instead of a Boolean value.

New: The "Orientation" View Filter did not work correctly for images rotated based on the EXIF orientation tag. The image file usually reports the "original" width and height, without accounting for EXIF orientation. The view filter used that interformation to determine if an image is landscape or portrait. Now the filter uses the actual thumbnail as recorded by the IMatch database, applies virtual transformations and filters on the final dimensions. This is a bit slower, but accurate.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.60/59

Click here to open the Download Center to download this update

New: Added another "drop mode" for the SBS window. By holding down the <Shift> key while dropping files you can now add new images to the SBS window, adding new panels up to the maximum number allowed as needed. See the IMatch help on the SBS window for full details and all available keyboard combinations.

New: Updated Canon SDK DLL versions. Some new Canon RAW formats (G9) supported.

Change: Added mapping for the PENTAX-FA 50mm F1.4 lens in the EXIF maker note parser for Pentax models.

Bug: The IPTC editor under some circumstances interpreted ASCII/ANSI IPTC data incorretly as UTF-8, causing problems while converting data in non-ANSI character set to the internal UNICODE representation used by IMatch.

Bug: Deleting images from the SBS window while in single panel mode may cause IMatch to close.

Bug: Batch Processor did not process variables correctly under all conditions.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.58/57 (May, 14. 2010)

New: IMatch now supports UTF-8 encoding in the IPTC editor not only for reading but also for writing. You can enable this feature via Options > Preferences > IPTC.
If you enable UTF-8 encoding for IPTC, IMatch will store textual data using the UTF-8 encoding always, which allows you to use non-ANSI/ASCII charactes in IPTC, without the need to rely on specific code pages. You can even store Japanese or other wide-char character sets in IPTC.
IMatch can import UTF-8 encoded IPTC data into XMP, and also use it in all features, from usage in variables to sorting or searching.

If you do not enable this option, IMatch will write standard ANSI/ASCII IPTC data, except the IPTC record already contains UTF-8-encoded data. In this case, IMatch will save the data in UTF-8 automatically.

A wide range of professional applications can work with IPTC data encoding using UTF-8, including Adobe products, ExifTools etc. Web sites working with IPTC data usually also support UTF-8 encoded data. Anyway, some older workflow systems or application versions may not be compatible, so you should test carefully and talk to your photo agency and clients to ensure they can handle it.

Storing data in UTF-8 also seems to "fix" the problem Google's Picasa seems to have with plain ASCII IPTC data. While they cannot read standard IPTC data in ASCII/ANSI encoding, they can read the UTF-8 encoded data.

New: Added two more options for XMP Options > Preferences > XMP which allow even finer control about IMatch imports IPTC and EXIF data into the XMP record.
These two new options are used in conjunction with the IPTC and EXIF import options. By default, when you let IMatch import IPTC/EXIF data and you also set the option to "Replace existing XMP metadata", IMatch will work as follows: When importing IPTC, IMatch will remove existing XMP properties for non-existing or empty IPTC/EXIF fields. This ensures that if there is no field "X" in the IPTC/EXIF record, there is also no "X" property in the XMP record. This is the default behavior and ensures proper synchronization between IPTC/EXIF and XMP.

By setting the option "Retain XMP data for empty/non-existing IPTC/EXIF fields", you tell IMatch to retain whatever is stored in the corresponding XMP property for an empty or missing IPTC/EXIF field. If you work with applications which update XMP, but not IPTC, this will allow you to keep exising XMP data written by these applications while still being able to run an automatic IPTC import.

New: Added a new method to the Database scripting class. The method "MD5Calculate" allows to you calculate a MD5 hash for a file. The returned MD5 checksum (a String) is compatible with all other MD5 applications. Using this method you can, for example, fill properties with checksums, to detect changes made to files or data corruption.

New: Updated and added support for new RAW formats from Olympus (E3) and models from other camera vendors.

New: Added support for Nikon D300/D3 lens data and f stops maker notes

New: The SBS window now uses the color managemenbt settings available in IMatch under Options > Preferences > Color Management.

Change: Switched back to the July 2007 Nikon Software Development Kit. The December 2007 version of the Nikon DLLs is just too buggy and causes too many crashes. Nikon is aware of these problems but I have no idea when they will release an update...

Until then, and in order to support all cameras up to the D2Xs with full access to soft edits made in Nikon applications like Capture NX, I decided to switch back to the old version of the SDK. This SDK does not support the D300 and D3 models, but at least it does not crash. Of course IMatch itself does support D3/300 NEF files via its internal NEF processor (see below).
Hopefully Nikon gets this fixed soon. When they ship a new, more stable version, I will include that version with the next IMatch service pack.

For D3/D300 users (like myself):
Please go to Options > Preference > File Format Preferences in IMatch and make sure the usage of Nikon software libraries is disabled. This will allow IMatch to process and display your D3/D300 NEF files without problems. It' s faster too.

Change: IMatch no longer emits "empty" IPTC data into XMP. Although allowed and covered by the XMP specification, recent Adobe products may issue a warning message when loading image files containing XMP data with empty XMP properties, e.g. an empty photoshop:Urgency property.

Change: Integrated updates for various third party components used by IMatch.

Change: Result Set limits for the standard Search tools extended from 10,000 to a maximum of 32,000 matches per original, or 32,000 maximal hits for search functions without original images.

Change:Tools for the SBS window status bar now use a more sophisicated algorithm to avoid obscuring the "hot" area when there is no room below or on the right side of the SBS window for the tooltip.

Bug: Under rare conditions, the error handling for XMP errors reported by the Adobe toolkit could cause IMatch to crash. Fixed.

Bug: Property window not updating when the SBS window is displayed.

Bug: CategoryUpdated enum type not available in the Scripting Editor.

Bug: Fixed a rather rare and obscure problem with injecting IPTC data into TIFF files with "Mac" encoding and certain IFB boundary alignments.

Bug: Fixed a problem with the selection feature for properties.
If a search pattern with multiple sub-expressions and the "must include" operator + was used (e.g. +red +blue), and one or more of the search patterns appeared multiple times in a property text (e.g. red and some bluish red), the selection may have returned the image as a match even of the second pattern ("+ blue") was not part of the text.

Bug: Calling AddFolder from a script for an already existing folder caused the existing folder to become empty.

Bug: Updated Basic Engine. VarType returns now 9 again when an object doesn't have a default property.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.53/54 (May, 14. 2010)

If you work with NEF images, please see the comments on the current state of the Nikon software libraries which can be used in IMatch in addition to the built-in NEF processor.

New: The slide show toolbar bitmap is now part of the application file, and not longer stored in a separate file on disk. This solves the problem for the few users who cannot see the toolbar in the slide show. This is probably caused by a strange security or access privilege issue.

New: Increased the usable file size range for the "File Size" selector.

New: Added a "filter" to the Sort Presets dialog. This filter allows you to restrict which XMP fields are displayed. This makes it easier to find the field you're looking for.

Bug: The SBS Window crashes on close for a small number of users. This problem was caused by a security problem with on of the Windows functions used in IMatch.

Bug: IMatch fails to copy XMP data in the batch processor if the resulting output file is not in a folder indexed by your database.

Bug: Filter dialog does not restore the selected labels when a filter preset is loaded.

Bug: Text Overlay gadget in SBS window not visible if images are loaded in full-resolution.

Bug: Deleting a file in the SBS window and answering the prompt with 'No' will put the SBS window behind the IMatch application window.

Bug: Updates to bookmarks not reflected in the SBS window status bar.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.51/52 (January 2008)

New: Added a Side-by-Side Comparison feature. This is a new free-floating window which can display up to four images at once, with synchronized zoom and pan.

This new window is ideal for comparing and culling images. The window can be moved to a second monitor for an unobstructed view on your images. You can freely switch between single image and multi-image mode, use the windowed or full-screen view, or bring up the loupe to enlarge selected areas. Of course you also have direct access to the most frequently used commands, including Copy, Move Delete, Rate, Label, Open, Goto, Bookmark, ...

Smart helper tools like a histogram, a pan navigator, the grayscale preview, a grid, display sharpen or auto-enhance make this window even more flexible. With the text overlay you can display IPTC, EXIF or XMP data on top of your images. Please see the IMatch help for full details. Please note that I consider the SBS window as a technology preview. Bugs and problems are to be expected.

New: Some rather large enhancements for the View Filter feature in IMatch.
You can now enable multiple filters at the same time, e.g activating a filter which shows only images with a certain rating and also activate a filter which shows only images within a certain date range. This makes the filter feature even more versatile.

View Filters now have built-in support for XMP rating and labels, without the need to use the special XMP categories for that purpose.

Use <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<F> to drop down the filter menu (or click the down arrow next to the filter button in the toolbar). Here you can enable/disable individual filters.

Use <Ctrl>+<F> to create, edit and delete filters. Use <Ctrl>+<Shift>+<F> to "clear" (deactivate) all filters. For more info, see the IMatch help on Filters.

New: The Filter dialog box now automatically saves and restores the state of the "Auto-Preview" option.

New: The Folder and Category Search (Ctrl+F in the Database View / Category View) now also allows you to search in the folder commends / category descriptions.

New: Added a new option to data-driven categories. The option Treat value as numeric tells IMatch to convert the XMP field contents to a numerical value. This new option is very useful for some XMP fields with floating-point data, e.g. Exposure Bias.

XMP stores floating point values like 0.6 as "4/6", or -1.33 as "-5/3". This is not really intuitive and may lead to "unreadable" category names. Using the new option allows you to tell IMatch to convert the native format into standard floating-point values or integer values. These numbers will be formatted using the current user's default number format as configured in the Windows Control Panel.

An XMP value like -5/3 will hence result in the category name "1_33" for a U.S. number format, and in "1,33" for a German number format. Please note that since "." is not allowed for category names, IMatch will replace it with an "_".
Although this is a big help for certain situations, it is not the final thing yet. Data-driven categories will see several enhancements over upcoming IMatch releases.

New: IMatch now can optionally create thumbnails for NEF files using the Nikon SDK.
You can change this settings under Options > Preferences > File Format Preferences. If this setting is enabled, IMatch will use a the slower thumbnail extraction via the Nikon software libraries. This ensures that the thumbnails visible in IMatch reflect all the extended options that are available in Capture NX or some other recent Nikon camera models.

If you don't need this (you don't use Nikon software to process your RAW files), you should keep this setting disabled because it slows down thumbnail generation quite a bit. If the thumbnails in IMatch look different than what you see in Capture or other Nikon products (e.g. wrong orientation, different colors etc.), enable this setting.

New: Updated to the latest set of Canon RAW software libraries to include support for the latest Canon models.

Support for Nikon NEF files via the official Nikon software libraries

Included the latest set of Nikon RAW software libraries to provide support for the latest Nikon models (D3/D300). Please note that these new DLLs may be a bit unstable under certain conditions, especially when a larger number of NEF files is processed in a row, or there is not enough available memory. There are also reports that the current NEF libraries from Nikon do not handle all (older) NEF variants anymore.

If you run into problems processing NEF files, crashes or other unwanted behavior, disable the usage of Nikon libraries under Options > Preferences > File Format Preferences, restart IMatch and retry. IMatch will then use its internal NEF processor, which is not only much faster, but also much more robust.

Since these DLLs are shipped by Nikon "as-is", I can only wait until Nikon ships a new version with bug fixes. As soon as this happens, I will ship an IMatch service pack.

New: Added support for Olympus E-510 ORF format

New: Added support for the Leica M8 DNG variation

New: Added support for Digital Picture Exchange Format (DPX) format.

New: The Text Export now has two new category attributes. You know can choose between only directly assigned categories, or also include categories which refer to the exported image by a formula.

New: Some performance improvements for accessing XMP variables in scripts. IMatch now caches a bit more information internally to reduce the number of database accesses while parsing XMP variables you use in your scripts.

New: Added native support for the Nikon D3 / D300 NEF format variant.

New: Added support for the Sony DSLR-A700

New: Added some new maker notes and lens types for various image formats, some new Nikon D3/D300 maker notes, EXIF formats and maker notes formats, fix for Nikon flash compensation value, special case for D70 added.

New: Added support for some Sony maker notes. Sony maker notes are undocumented and very little information is available on the Internet. Furthermore, Sony seems to encrypt most of the maker notes. Anyway, IMatch can display some of the non-encrypted information now, including the lens information.

Bug: Improved the stability when handling large files (500 MB or more). Previous IMatch versions sometimes stopped a folder scan because one of the underlying image engines failed to process an image. This is not longer the case. In the worst case, IMatch just displays a standard thumbnail for the given image if it cannot be processed otherwise. Unrecognizable, damaged or unsupported images are still skipped.

Bug: Scripting Engine: Class_Initialize called twice sometimes. Fixed with the new WinWrap Basic version shipped with this version of IMatch.

Bug: IMatch not always recognized databases already opened in "writable" mode and allowed multiple users to accidentally open the same database for writing. This has been corrected.

Bug: IMatch did not always return the "default crop size" for DNG files as the image dimensions. It returned the original image size instead, which could be larger than what you see in other applications (due to the way Adobe's DNG converter adds border pixels during the conversion).

Bug: Database scripts were not executed again when a database is loaded multiple times within one IMatch session, or when multiple databases are loaded/unloaded.

Bug: IMatch did not always allow editing of data in unknown namespaces in the XMP editor.

Bug: Fixes a potential problem while applying XMP templates.

Bug: Text Export exports all referring categories for an image, not only the categories to which the image is directly assigned. This has been fixed. There is also a new option (see above) related to this bug.

Bug: IMatch did not always correctly identify EXIF subsecond records while converting EXIF timestamps to XMP. This has been corrected.

Bug: Lab ICC profiles or other ICC profiles in grayscale TIFFs were not returned in the Image.ICC.ProfileName variable.

Bug: Scripting Editor did not preserve font face, size and attributes.

Bug: EXIF ISO speed for Nikon cameras not always correct. Several Nikon models don't use the official ISO field in the EXIF record, but instead they write the ISO used only to the proprietary maker notes. IMatch detects this case and fills the official ISO EXIF field from the Nikon maker note. Under some conditions IMatch did not correctly update the EXIF ISO field, and the ISO was reported as "100" in these cases. The real ISO value used by the camera is always correctly displayed in the maker note.

Bug: nik ISO Speed requested maker note: Nikon stores two 16-bit integer values in this field. Usually only one of these fields is filled, giving the ISO speed dialed in at the time of shooting, the other value is 0. IMatch did not choose the correct value sometimes, accidentally displaying the ISO maker note as 0.

Bug: Scripting methods ActiveSelection and ActiveThumbWindowSelection returned the same set of images. The outcome should be different, except the a thumbnail window has the focus.

Bug: View window shows a "create cache image reminder message" for off-line images even if there was a cache image already.

IMatch Version 3.6.0.50 (October 2007)

New: Range for WaitDialog... methods in the scripting engine extended to handle values larger than 32767.

New: Added a new filter type to filter files based on image orientation (portrait, landscape). This feature also takes virtual transformations into account.

New: The IPTC import now allows you to choose a arbitrary separator character for the "dot-notation" import. Some tools don't use dots to separate categories on different levels, but use a / or \ instead. The IPTC import can now handle these special cases.

New: The / (slash) character is now allowed in category names. This change also applies to data-driven categories, which now no longer replace "/" with "_" when creating category names from XMP property contents.
This is a big improvement for many cases, especially you create data-driven categories based on properties like Exposure Time, which naturally contain values like 1/300 or 1/8. Before this would have been renamed to 1_300 and 1_8, but now you get the real values. Just refresh your data-driven categories once.

New: You can add keywords in the IPTC editor by typing them into the drop-down keyword box and pressing <Enter>. You can also add multiple keywords by separating them with ; and pressing <Enter>, e.g. "Cat;Hot;Tin;Roof".
But adding keywords this way did not add existing synonyms. This release now adds the <Ctrl>+<Enter> keyboard shortcut. It works the same, but will also add synonyms for the keywords you have entered.

New: Added an experimental option (Options > Preferences > XMP) to enable XMP embedding for NEF and CR2 files. Some applications (e.g. the new Nikon View NX) now apparently support (only) XMP embedding, and hence IMatch also supports it. THIS FEATURE IS **EXPERIMENTAL**.
Neither Nikon nor Canon document how to embed XMP data in their RAW files, so you use this AT YOUR OWN RISK. Only use this on copies of your original images. Sidecar files are a safer way to maintain XMP meta data for RAW files, and IMatch of course does this by default.

New: New Slide Show hotkey to toggle between off-line cache usage and original image usage. With <Ctrl>+<L> you can toggle between using cache images (for on-line images) and using the original image. This hotkey controls the corresponding setting under Options > Preferences > Slide Show.

New: New lens types added for Pentax maker notes. IMatch now also imports the lens type from the Pentax maker note into the XMP aus:Lens property.

New: Added detection code for the OLYMPUS tag mark used in newer Olympus models. IMatch may have failed to correctly process ORF files tagged with the new maker notes.

New: Changed the formatting for some XMP fields in the XMP editor and variables to be consistent with the XMP data generated by other applications, e.g. the lens info.

Bug: Batch processing with the option "Keep meta data" does copy the the meta data to the output files, but not always the labels and ratings.

Bug: Web Gallery Script under some circumstances trimms embedded JavaScripts in HTML templates because of the { and }, which are reserved for variables. This has been fixed by updating the calls to ParseVariables to use False as the last parameter.

Bug: Visual Browser dialog "hangs" on some Vista installations. I found out that this is a problem in a third party component which I used to create the tree in the dialog. Since the component vendor is out of business, and the visual browser dialog will not be used in the next generation of IMatch, I decided to waste no more time with it.
I hence have replaced the visual browser dialog with a normal "Browse for Folder" or "Browse for File" dialog box in the current IMatch version. These dialogs work very nice, and also allow you to browse for files in a "visual" way under Windows XP and later versions.

Bug: If a user removes all keyword (or categories) from IPTC, IMatch should mirror that in the associated XMP record by completely removing the dc:subject array (or the corresponding category array). This did not always happen in the default "Replace XMP data" mode.

Bug: After manually changing the order of thumbnails in a thumbnail window (light table sort order), applying a filter did not restore the sort order correctly. Only after manually reloading the thumbnail window by switching to another folder/category or re-applying the light table sort order the sort order was correct again.

Bug: IMatch did not always add a time zone designator when importing EXIF timestamps in XMP. This could confuse Adobe Lightroom (R)/(TM) and caused it to display the timestamp wrong. I have fixed that. When you manually refresh the XMP cache for the images in question, IMatch will update the time stamps stored in the database / sidecar files automatically. Only needed if you run into a wrong timestamp in LR.

For previous IMatch releases, please see the release notes archive .