Pacific Northwest Images

In a previous post I discussed using a commercial application for downloading images from camera memory cards. My gradual (but not complete) switch to Linux is causing me to look for alternative applications that fit my workflow but run under Linux. It’s important for me to find applications that fit MY workflow and down’t require me to change the way I like doing things.

I’ve found DIM to be very capable of handling my image downloads. That’s good news but what’s even better is that DIM is free and it works on pretty much any system that supports the JAVA runtime environment (Apple, Linux, Windows).

DIM scans your camera memory cards recursively so you don’t have to worry about sub-directories being skipped, it will get all of the images. I have DIM setup to use the EXIF data contained in the image files to save each image into a directory on my computer that corresponds to the date the image was taken. DIM can also rename the image file according to criteria that the user sets up but at this stage of the workflow, I keep the camera assigned name. There are so many options for naming and directory structure in DIM that it really should fit the needs of most photographers. One option that I may try out in the future is to have DIM prompt me for a “Job Name” and then append that name to each image filename.

The other option that I use in DIM is to automatically create backup files while it DIM downloads the files from the camera memory card. I tell it to backup the files to a network drive then write-protect those files.

I’m very happy with DIM as my image downloading software. My next step is to find a good image management (RAW and jpg) and cataloging system (let me know if you know of any).