Dear Tom On Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 09:07 pm, wagner wrote:
Thanks to all for their continuing comments in the workflow software realm.
Bob, your comment above raises the question of how tough is it to transition
between products? Ie: when you swapped in from your now unused Extensis to
Cumulus, had the Extensis database been at all compatible/transitional to
the Cumulus?
Thanks, tom wagner
Dear Tom
To be honest I was having a totally intractable problem with Cumulus which I have used for years and decided to switch to Portfolio. I then found out that Portfolio didn't do quite what Cumulus does so decided to persevere with Cumulus. I eventually found the answer to my problem was nothing to do with Cumulus but was an Adaptec Toast problem. With a previous version of Toast and Cumulus I could burn catalogue CDs from an external HD. With a Toast update it appeared that I could burn them exactly the same but I was getting an error message in Cumulus making it look as if Cumulus was at fault. When, by accident, I burnt a catalogue from the internal drive everything was OK again. That small problem cost me hundreds of pounds in wasted time.
It is possible to move databases from Cumulus to Portfolio but the programme that does it was only in Portfolio 4. You have to find a nerdy friend who stores the old demos stuck on computer magazines. I think the new update of Cumulus will allow lots more import functions.
Depending on how many images you want to catalogue and how they are organised in folders it is very quick to enter images into Cumulus. You start by dragging and dropping CDs of images or folders into the programme and after that drag and drop into the keyword panel. I limit dragging and dropping for keywording to 50 images at a time to avoid the computer hanging although it will take 75 or more. Another thing I learnt after expensive time wasting and head scratching is to be consistent about file name lengths and suffixes. Always use up to 8.3 and no more and always keep .jpg and .tif the same. Don't mix .TIF and .tif.
Where are you? I could post you a CD catalogue. Are you Mac or PC?
Yours
Bob
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