# Need a replacement for obsolete Image Ingester app



## J.W. Wall (Sep 30, 2017)

I have been using a very handy app called Image Ingester for years. It copies my photos from SD cards, changes file names, puts backup copies on two drives, and converts a copy to DNG with Adobe's app.

Image Ingester is gone with MacOS High Sierra. I really need something that will do these things automatically when I click the start button. Lightroom 6 CC doesn't handle all these functions. Any suggestions?

Thanks!


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## clee01l (Sep 30, 2017)

Lightroom only puts backup copies on one drive, but it does all of those other things.  If you want images in three places (HD and two backups) then your System backup app should handle the missing part of your workflow.


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 30, 2017)

I use a small system preference app called 'Hazel'. It's an incredibly useful tool, that can watch folders and perform actions based on what happens in those folders. So if you let Lightroom copy the images from the SD card, you can let Hazel make the additional backups you want.


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## clee01l (Oct 1, 2017)

Hazel may not yet work with High Sierra either.  However,  there is a likelihood that the app will be patched to run with MacOS 10.13


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 1, 2017)

Hazel is already compatible with High Sierra. Noodlesoft – Noodlesoft – Simply Useful Software


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## clee01l (Oct 1, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> Hazel is already compatible with High Sierra. Noodlesoft – Noodlesoft – Simply Useful Software


As of version 4.2 released on 9/25 Noodlesoft Forums • Search


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## Replytoken (Oct 2, 2017)

J.W. Wall said:


> I have been using a very handy app called Image Ingester for years. It copies my photos from SD cards, changes file names, puts backup copies on two drives, and converts a copy to DNG with Adobe's app.
> 
> Image Ingester is gone with MacOS High Sierra. I really need something that will do these things automatically when I click the start button. Lightroom 6 CC doesn't handle all these functions. Any suggestions?
> 
> Thanks!


I was going to ask if Marc had any updates, but I see that he is no longer supporting the program after the end of this year.  It looks like I am in a similar boat and will need to give this some thought.

--Ken


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## J.W. Wall (Oct 2, 2017)

Yes, his web site says that he withdrew it from the market awhile ago, and will not be able to support it after the end of this year.

ImageIngester | Marc Rochkind's Blog


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## Replytoken (Oct 2, 2017)

I am sure there are several ways to try and reproduce what IIP did, and I am just now beginning to mull over my options.  I see there is a program called FastPictureViewer that might offer some similar features, but I have not had a chance to look at their website in any detail: https://www.fastpictureviewer.com/ .  What I liked about IIP is that after I culled through my images, I could just place them in a single folder, plug in my hard drives and let the program rename the files, create the needed date-based folders, back up the files to a second hard drive in their raw format, and then create DNG files with the same name in both the back-up drive and the working drive, all in the push of one button.  This allowed me to have both versions of the files for future use (with the same name), and an identical directory structure of DNG files in case my working drive had any issues.  It worked for me, although I am willing to re-examine my work flow a bit.

--Ken


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## dasuess51 (Oct 2, 2017)

Take a look at DIM, Digital Image Mover. It’s not a viewer, but an ingest/move/rename app. I have been using it for years and it does everything I need. Not sure it is still being actively supported, but it works on High Sierra.

DIM: Digital Image Mover


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Gnits (Oct 2, 2017)

It is such a pity that Adobe ignores their customers to such an extent that basic features in the Import module are missing.

I gave up on Adobe a few years ago and wrote my own card to hard disk Ingestor.  I would much prefer that the basic functionality would be a native part of Lr.  I have been asked a few times to release my own app but I know it is not robust enough for general circulation and multi platform support.

I am hoping the occasional Adobe consultant may read these forums and encourage Adobe to respond to the multitude of good requests lying for years on their Official forums.


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## Replytoken (Oct 2, 2017)

dasuess said:


> Take a look at DIM, Digital Image Mover. It’s not a viewer, but an ingest/move/rename app. I have been using it for years and it does everything I need. Not sure it is still being actively supported, but it works on High Sierra.
> 
> DIM: Digital Image Mover
> 
> ...


I'll take a look, as I like software from small companies when it is well done.  My biggest concern, though, is it being dropped like IIP.

--Ken


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## Replytoken (Oct 2, 2017)

Gnits said:


> It is such a pity that Adobe ignores their customers to such an extent that basic features in the Import module are missing.
> 
> I gave up on Adobe a few years ago and wrote my own card to hard disk Ingestor.  I would much prefer that the basic functionality would be a native part of Lr.  I have been asked a few times to release my own app but I know it is not robust enough for general circulation and multi platform support.
> 
> I am hoping the occasional Adobe consultant may read these forums and encourage Adobe to respond to the multitude of good requests lying for years on their Official forums.


If you ignore something long enough, you might not even know that it exists.  I love many things about LR, and I tolerate many others in the name of "Adobe logic", but there are some things that I just do not understand, like LR creating a copy set on backup.  IMHO, this is neither fish nor fowl, and with a bit of work, could offer some useful features to the user base.  I do not expect 100% satisfaction, but I do not know of anybody who finds the current copy set useful.  Experienced users usually look elsewhere, and new users often confuse it for something it is not.  It could really use some attention, or perhaps just be dropped altogether with the advisement that users should craft their own backup solutions.

--Ken


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 2, 2017)

Replytoken said:


> ...but I do not know of anybody who finds the current copy set useful.



I do, but only in the context of what I believe was the original thinking, i.e. a copy of the contents of the source card. Thus two copies of the card data are created, which allows the card to be reformatted and reused if needed before the next "regular" system-wide backup is run. It was always expected that users would indeed take responsibility for backing up their important data (including, but not restricted to, image files), so this "second copy" option was included to protect the card contents while allowing the card to be re-used. 

That's all I think it was ever intended to be, unfortunately some users wanted to use it as their one and only backup and so were frustrated by the fact that they couldn't control the folder structure that was automatically created. Personally, I don't particularly need it to be given any attention (other than to change the date format of the folder name to numeric), though I acknowledge that other users do, and I suspect that there are long-standing feature requests to that effect still lingering on the official Adobe site. I also think it would be a pity if the option was ever removed (which I doubt will happen).


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## clee01l (Oct 2, 2017)

Jim Wilde said:


> I do, but only in the context of what I believe was the original thinking, i.e. a copy of the contents of the source card. Thus two copies of the card data are created, which allows the card to be reformatted and reused if needed before the next "regular" system-wide backup is run.


I'm with Jim here. I use it to have immediately 2 copies of the card contents to free up the card for re-use. The key phrase in Jim's comment is ""regular" system-wide backup".   Lightroom never was intended to contain all of the functionality of a system backup app.  And there are plenty of system backup apps that handle that function that it really is unnecessary for Adobe to "reinvent the wheel".


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## Replytoken (Oct 2, 2017)

Well, given the number of comments that I have seen over the years on this issue, I suspect that there are number of people in a number of camps on how they feel about this issue.  The issue I find frustrating is that Adobe offers you a variety of file handling features, like renaming and moving, when ingesting, so, to some of us, it would seem natural that they might offer to place the backups in a similar folder structure so we can proceed ahead knowing that we have taken appropriate precautions about managing and backing up our files before we begin working on them.  Yes, it can be handled outside of LR, but if we want our backups done up front, as I would suspect is a good practice (and my personal preference), we have to leave LR and handle this backup process with other software.  Alternately, some of us looked to programs like IIP as they offered a one-stop solution prior to ingesting that allowed us to ingest and then proceed knowing that we have done what we need to do (backup our image files), but sometimes put off or forget about as we move ahead.  It's a workflow preference issue, and for my preference, I always like to know that my images are backed up prior to my working on them, as it provides me with peace of mind.  Of course, YMMV.

--Ken


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 2, 2017)

I use the second copy as intended like Jim and Cletus, but I have to admit that I don't like that the second copy can't be used to make a real backup with the same folder hierarchy. The reason why I don't like it is because a backup of your main photo disk is a backup of images that have already been copied once (from the memory card to that disk). If an image got corrupted during that first copy process, all your backups of that image will also be corrupted, no matter how many backups you make. If you would make a backup copy directly from the memory card on the other hand, then the chance that _the same image_ gets corrupted again is virtually zero. To do the math: if we assume that the chance of corruption during copying is 1:100,000 (just for the sake of doing the math), then with a 'normal' backup system you would have one corrupted image per 100,000 images, that has no good backup copy either. If you used the second copy as backup, then the chance of having a corrupted image without a good backup copy would be one in 10,000,000,000 images.


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## rob211 (Oct 4, 2017)

I'd suggest FastRawViewer for those that want an ingester to supplement Lr. It works on Mac and PCs back to XP. $20. About | FastRawViewer

It doesn't have much in the way of backup or renaming or other management tasks, but it can copy to a drive and separate out the culls. And that's where it excels over Lr. It's a browser, and is extremely fast. It shows histograms of images based on the raw, and previews that are more accurate than Lr's. So it's a good way to cull before importing into Lr and devoting the time to say 1:1 previews. And since it's designed to work with Lr, you can make WB, exposure, and some other changes before importing. That's especially helpful with say brackets of ETTR photos that have horrible looking previews out of the camera.

Like Johan, I use Hazel on my Macs and it copies my Lr backup catalogs to an archive. I also occasionally use it with photos folders, and it could easily handle some of the backup tasks. I have folders set up as drag and drop so that if I export into them they'll automatically be imported into Photos, say. I also had a Hazel rule that could sort things into dated folders like Lr does. I haven't tried it with say doing a copy off an SD card, although thinking about what Johan wrote it might seem that using Lr to do a second copy to a folder with Hazel rules might be a nice option.

Does anyone use the convert to DNG as a way to insure integrity? would you get a fail message if the converter encountered a flawed image file as it copied off the SD card? I know you can run the validate command, but if Lr converted a borked image could it pass the validation test?


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## Roelof Moorlag (Oct 4, 2017)

rob211 said:


> Does anyone use the convert to DNG as a way to insure integrity? would you get a fail message if the converter encountered a flawed image file as it copied off the SD card? I know you can run the validate command, but if Lr converted a borked image could it pass the validation test?


 I'm not sure if Lightroom does this but i know that Adobe's DNG converter does. Before the validation option in Lightroom i used it to test the integrity of my images that way. If you have some corrupted images you could test it of course.


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## J.W. Wall (Oct 23, 2019)

Would it work to run Image Ingester Pro under Mohave using Parallels, then switch to Catalina on the Mac? I know this is a old thread but, with Catalina, the crisis is hard upon us. Thanks.


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## rob211 (Oct 23, 2019)

J.W. Wall said:


> Would it work to run Image Ingester Pro under Mohave using Parallels, then switch to Catalina on the Mac? I know this is a old thread but, with Catalina, the crisis is hard upon us. Thanks.


Boy, that's a lot of effort and expense for a dead program. I'm not sure how you're using Image Ingester, but there are other alternatives. We've mentioned Hazel, but it's not yet Catalina compatible. If I was going to spend money on it I'd just get Photo Mechanic instead of Parallels, since it can do much more than Image Ingester and is currently supported.


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## J.W. Wall (Oct 28, 2019)

Thank you. As far as I can tell, Photo Mechanic doesn't use DNG Converter to make and save a DNG backup (like Image Ingester does) file that is separate from the "second copy" function of PM, which makes a RAW file backup. PM only uses DNG Converter to render RAW files. Is all that right?


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## rob211 (Oct 28, 2019)

It uses DNG Converter to render previews for images, yes. It can also use it to convert files. But it's not part of the ingestion process. I've seen that suggested before, but I think the consensus is that it slows down ingestion and if one wanted to do that, Lr does a good job. The focus is on speed and adding metadata from templates, etc. And in case Adobe's DNG Converter allows for batch conversions anyway, so there's already a tool for that. I used to have a Hazel rule or something that did something like that, but after some oopsies I decided I wanted to review images after copying off cards to insure they were OK BEFORE then backing up DNGs.


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