Adobe Photo Downloader Dock IconI recently updated to the newest version of the Adobe Creative Suite and was pleasantly surprised by some of the great new features to be found in the whole range of Creative Suite CS3 applications.

One of the most impressive that filled a real hole in my digital asset management workflow was the new Adobe Photo Downloader software that comes bundled with Adobe Bridge CS3.

The Adobe Photo Downloader application will for many, solve the issue of how to handle moving photos from camera to computer and keeping things organized. The Photo Downloader will not only pull your photos from the camera, but will also perform several other key functions including the creation of date named folders, rename the files themselves, convert the images to DNG, make a backup copy and apply a meta data template to each file.

This for me is awesome, since I am a die hard creative who has a hard time doing the small things consistently, like making sure my photos are all properly marked with copyright info and renamed consistently. This solves this problem for me in a big way.

BUT, and here comes the rant, Adobe unwisely did not allow for any usage option other than to import photos from a camera. This means that all of the photos I have taken prior to updating to CS3, are all hopelessly lost in disorganized hell. I am unable to utilize this awesome tool to go back and process my old photos.

I shoot with a Nikon D80 in NEF RAW format, so image conversion is part of my regular DAM workflow. Previously I used the Adobe Camera RAW application in Photoshop CS2 to process my RAW NEF files. With the new Photo Downloader, this chore has been simplified and enhanced, but still no solution for fixing the 30,000+ previous images in my library.

The DNG converter utility works good for straight conversion, but does not perform the other advanced functions that Adobe Photo Downloader does. My logic was if I could get Adobe Photo Downloader to see my other folders I could process those images, applying current metadata, convert to DNG files, organize in date named folders and rename consistently, all in one shot.

I tried several things including moving the old files to my external media, then using the Photo Downloader software to move them back to the computer. But with over 80 gigs of NEF files, this would take forever.

I then started trying some things, like creating DMG disk images, mounting them and then copying the files over. But the Photo Downloader software would not recognize the mounted disk image.

Then I stumbled upon something while reformatting a thumbdrive, I have to format the thumbdrive as DOS in order to move files between Mac OSX and my work computer which is Windows XP. When I formated the drive, I noticed it was recognized as a device in Adobe Photo Downloader!

Whooo hooo … so that was the answer, just format a drive a DOS and copy the file over. Unfortunately, I don’t have any spare drives just laying around. My next thought was to create a DOS disk image, but unfortunately the Apple Disk Utility does not allow any format other than HFS. Crap!!!it

Then I did some digging on the web and found this [url=http://www.neilturner.me.uk/2007/Jan/10/creatingfatdisk_images.html]super helpful post[/url] by Neil Turner showing how to create a DOS formated DMG image. A quick launch of Terminal, a single command hdiutil create -megabytes 3000 -fs MS-DOS -volname DOS-DRIVE -o /Users/jamie/desktop/dos-drive
mount the DMG on the desktop — worked like a charm. Photo Downloader pulled the photos right through. Though 8 Gigs is the max size for a DOS image, this means I only have to move the files 8-9 times rather than several multiples of this.

I really wish that Adobe had either included a more robust DAM function like this in Bridge or given the ability to select local disks to process images. Maybe they will read this and make a tweek in the next update.

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