I use IMatch for many years, primarily, for the picture management. Till present with IMatch there is nothing what not anyhow is to be solved. Many achievement signs have been realised in the topical Verion. If then something really exotic is required, this can be realised very well about the available Script possibility.

I first encountered IMatch while working in a University-based department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine. The program was very inexpensive and yet powerful, letting me manage the diverse digital resources of twenty-five teaching physicians and thirty residents. Unlike other programs I found, IMatch did not have problems with very large collections of digital assets. A few hundred thousand images, documents, videos, Powerpoint shows and more could be managed with great flexibility. Specific items could be found rapidly by searching the files and all their metadata.

The main advantages are the speed with which it allows searching the photos in the database and its ability to convert in situ metadata.

Its impossibility to import the photos and videos from the camera directly and export to social networks once edited.

If you can do serious work without an asset manager like IM5, good on ya. I'm a geologist and commonly bring 3-400 images back from a day in my volcanoes. I can spend as much time cataloging, categorizing, and keywording my images as I did shooting them. But, I can find what I need rikki-tik when I'm writing. No asset manager this good can be "easy to use," it does too much and offers too many opportunities to do new things to call it easy. Once you get a good workflow going, it is easy, but establishing that workflow is difficult and takes a lot of time. In the best of all possible worlds, Mario Westphal (IMatch), Axel Rietschin (FastPictureViewer) and the Lightroom team would go into a room and come out with - The Best of All Possible Worlds!

This software and it's prior version has given me the ability to find images very rapidly for various photo projects. My workflow includes an IMatch, Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC grouping. This combination works seamlessly together. It is the essential DAM portion of my image environment.

I have used IMatch for 8 years. I started with 3.6 and now enjoying the excellent features of v. 5.7

Ability to look at image details and search categories. On a thumbnail I can see camera type, exposure, shutter speed. I can categorize an image and then locate it using multiple search options.

Learning curve can be a little steep, however the forum is very supportive. As it is active a search can find a solution to most issues. If not found then users and especially the developer is very active. One usually gets a response in a few hours... more often less than an hour.

Friends come to me asking for pictures of a certain moment, or a certain place. It takes 5 sec to find them.

The ease of use. I'm an amateur, but still, a get along very well. You can tailor it to your needs, e.g. I have written some applications in JavaScript. And the help and the on line community) is impressive : you get very fast and very to the point answers.

It has so many possibilities, i think i do not use 10% of it. On the other side : i consider it as a challenge to learn something out of my confortzone.

If you are willing to spend on the pricetag of this product, then you will love it. It has a wealth of features and options that is comp to Photoshop. That being said, there is some learning curve to it.

I am using imatch since version 3 and am VERY happy with the new version 5.

I have used Imatch for nearly 10 years to manage a collection of about 180,000 images from digital cameras, scanned photos, slides and negatives as well as movie clips.

The applt is awesome with its wide variety of features which would never urge users to look for other applications to meet some specific needs

Nothing has been observed as con. Just need to focus on performance improvement.

Best Tool for organizing my Photo collection

Handles large Collections of photos

Data base file in my opinion is large

I tried several DAMs before, when I tried IMatch, I was simply overhelmed by the power and possibilities of IMatch.

I have used IMatch for nearly 10 years to manage over 250K image files (plus nearly 10K others such as music, video, and documents). Over the years it's been great and just keeps getting better and better. I couldn't imagine doing without it.

Whenever I am looking for a new program I use to write down my requirements. For a DAM program these requirements are: 1. It should allow me to find any image in my collection based on criteria defined solely by me. 2. It should play nice with the raw processors, image editors and printing software I use in my workflow. 3. It should not lock me in, so that I can move on should the program be no longer supported or when my requirements change. 4. It should be fast, not slowing down to a grinding halt when my image collection grows. 5. It should be expandable, when a specific function is not provided 'out of the box' it should be possible to add functionality by means of scripting or plug-ins. 6. It should be actively supported by the developer, no 'abandonware'. 7. It should be affordable, no business model which forces customers to pay for a new version which just fixes long outstanding bugs.

I used ACDSee, Idimager and Photosupreme by the past. I switched to IMatch about 18 months ago, and I am completely satisfied.

No where else can I colate 75,000 photos like this

The ease of use, it just works as advertised, no hassle. What other software do you feel as the number one user.

Pro:

I use IMatch for: - managing my potos [with long science categories]; - better Windows Explorer for all kind of files [Office-Documents, videos, graphics, QuarkXpress and Adobe files,...]

When you work with large image collections we would say IMatch from Photools does the job. It doesn't crash! We used various well known DAM solutions and they all crash regularly. Queries receive a quick response, issues are solved. The software is powerful and reliable, all this for a low price. Highly recommended!

It has a learning curve. It took a while to figure out how to perform fast searches on a large batch of images.

- Its possibilities seem infinite

Its one of the very best DAM tools for cataloguing and analyzing photos. It can also be used to sort and organize many other document formats including PDFs, .docx, odt

Easy to use exif data tool that I use to edit "date of capture" metadata when I take photos in different times zones, but forgot to change the camera's regional settings.

There's very little to dislike about Imatch. As of 2017, a lack of detailed training videos probably detracts or inhibits more users from using it. IMatch has many advanced features and learning how to use these will take a considerable investment of time. A Linux and Mac version would be great. by photools.com on 13/12/2017 Please note that there is a constantly growing collection of free training videos available for free in the IMatch Learning Center: https://www.photools.com/imatch-learning-center/

Love that it supports wide range of formats. I mostly work with Raw and JPG and never had any issues importing images. Makes editing easy and able to add pertinent info in the IPTC field such as copyright, photographer byline gps coordinates ETC. Easy to tag photos and add to favorite and edits.

With this software gave you the chance to upload images directly from cameras, or SD cards. I first have to upload them to my External Hardrive and then export them. seems like an extra step that adds a bit of time in the long run. Specially after shooting a 2000 image wedding. Also it does not have image editing capabilites which can come in handy for small image tweaks like cropping or color correctiong. This would help avoid the dreaded lightroom editing rendering time.

Finally got to organize my lifetime collection properly, with categories, timelines and comments. Was able to put proper dates into the EXIFs of scanned old photos to put them in the proper place chronologically. Enjoyed following the forum threads to learn more.

It can be customized to one's liking and is extensible with scripts and apps.

I use IMatch as my picture database for more than ten years and am still delighted about its capabilities and the tremendous support, provided by his maker Mario Westphal. The variety of product features is second to none, such as the ease of tagging pictures with keywords and categories or exporting pictures with reduced resolution. Complex renaming is extremely easy and the search speed (I manage more than 100.000 photos) is incredible. I haven't found a competitive product that provides such a flexibility, ease of handling and product support for such a price. I am looking forward to exciting future developments.

Suporte

That a lot of people don't know it!

IMatch is a phenomenal piece of software that I've used for several years. The dynamic categories provide an intuitive way to organize your photos. That coupled with the filters, metadata, ... make it extremely useful. It's a tremendous asset in cataloging and managing images of any kind. I have a collection of about 100,000 photos in it now, and I also use it with scans of business cards -- they're assigned categories and the contents entered, so now searching either via name or categories (e.g. restaurants in Bangkok I've rated 4 stars) is a breeze.

Have around 200.000 Images in my database. Have been a user for over 10 Years. Very happy I use this sw... very powerful if you need it to be, but can also be used "as-shipped". It's as simple or complex as you need it to be.

I have tried a few different image management programs and was the happiest with IMatch. The latest version is a real home run. I like the ability to change layouts based on the type of work that I am doing and to save those layouts and bring them up when necessary. I also like the ability to move parts of the program to a second monitor. Keywording is easy, especially with using the letter key to bring you to keywords that start with that letter. Adding child elements in singularly or in groups is a real plus. Using templates for commonly used information is great. If there is a downside to IMatch, it is that it is so featured-loaded that it takes some time to master it. I am nowhere near mastering it but when I have problems, I turn to the user forum or email the program's creator to help me find my way. I would highly recommend this program.

There are so many facets to this amazing resource that it is not possible in a review of this type to cover them all. Many aspects are covered by other reviewers, so I will concentrate on what is the most useful to me - the thesaurus.

IMatch has been (and still is) my DAM of choice for more than 13 years now. Most important for me:

Managing photos in IMatch5 is easy and intuitive, making it a snap to use by beginners. Under the surface though, there is a highly sophisticated and powerful piece of software that enables more advanced users to search, categorize, and catalog their photos in incredibly versatile ways. If there is a particular "view" you want of your photos, IMatch5 can be adjusted to provide it. In fact, you can define as many views as you like, then call them up as your needs change. If you really want to customize your use of IMatch5, it has a very powerful scripting and app templating feature. The program is exceptionally well supported by the vendor, and has a large, active, & knowledgeable user forum. The vendor provides product updates on a regular basis, and the help system is one of the best I've ever experienced - detailed, deep, and updated in sync with every product update. Highly recommended.

Over the past years I've amassed about 30k photos and videos that were basically just sorted by date. While I had dipped my feet in organizing my photos many years ago using the previous IMatch 3, I didn't pursue the matter to no fault of the software, but because I had overly complicated my own workflow. A while ago I started over with the new IMatch 5 and while there is a bit of a learning curve while you get to know its features, it's amazing to see how flexible and customizable IMatch is. If you have an existing workflow, you should be able to adapt to your needs as the developer made sure that IMatch fully makes use of the existing metadata in your files, and is also compliant when writing back metadata for use with your other programs.

I'm a professional Sports, Festival and Press photographer meaning I have to manage and tag thousands of pictures every year. I also need to find specific pictures in my archive very quickly... with just a couple of clicks.

I spent six years searching for a program to help me organize my image files. I downloaded and tested all I could find. After Christmas of 2000 a friend recommended IMatch. I downloaded and installed the trial version. The first thing I did was to read the Tutorial which gave me the basics I needed to begin using IMatch. I quickly learned that I had found the program I wanted and in less than two weeks I bought my license.

I have been using IMatch 5 since the first beta version became available and with every new update it is getting better. I use it exclusively to catalog my photographs (RAW and jpg files), but it supports many other file formats. The search and filter functions, key features for my workflow, offer a great number of options so you can easily search for various combinations of metadata. The program offers seemingly endless number of settings and customizations which includes also the user interface. Thus, thumbnails can be customized to display metadata of your choice. This can be further combined with color codes which makes orientation in the list of thumbnails even easier. For more advanced users the software offers scripting thus broadening its versatility even more. Finally, I should mention excellent support provided by the software developer. Questions posted in the user forum are usually answered within couple of hours. Moreover, bugs are fixed fast, the more annoying ones (they are very rare) immediately, others are being corrected continuously with every new update (usually every one or two weeks). Updates often add various useful improvements. It is very hard for me to find any con, but if I really have to name some, it is probably a relatively steep learning curve. But it is a trade-off for a complexity of the software which in a long term is very useful for every serious user.

I use IMatch to manage a collection of nearly 50,000 images from digital cameras and scanned photos, slides and negatives, as well as a separate collection of over 5,000 audio files. IMatch allows me to tag, sort, filter and organize my files in a variety of ways, using open (not proprietary) standards. It facilitates an efficient and integrated work flow for new images, including 'developing' of RAW images with DxO Pro, Lightroom, Photoshop and other programs and organizing the 'developed' output images. IMatch can be used 'out of the box' to manage files and can also be extensively customized to suit a user's specific needs. The developer is very responsive to user needs and requests and ships frequent updates of the program. The user community is also very responsive and helpful. A 30 day trial version is available to let potential users make a thorough evaluation before purchase. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that this is a superb program for managing digital data.

Having worked with a lot of Digital Asset Management software aimed at professional photographers I have to say nothing comes close to IMatch for flexibility in storage and metadata search . I currently have over 100,000 RAW, TIF and JPEG images within a single database and retrieving the correct images is super fast. I can search by client, keyword, date or any metadata item that you care to mention or want to create for future reference.

Extremely competent and extra-ordinary versatile product for managing pictures. Is also capable of managing other types of files (although I don't use it for that purpose myself).