Street Photography Magazine

Image Database Software | Test

Media Prohas a checkered history. Microsoft

acquired the originaliView Media Pro in 2006

and marketed it under the Expression Media

brand before selling it on to Phase One in

2010. The new owner has integrated the
      Capture One RAW engine into Media Pro, but
      not its editing functionality. Media Pro is
      capable of working in tandem with Capture
      One or other external image editors, but is
      not a genuine all-in-one solution.
      Media Proimports images by creating links
      to the original file locations. The process is fast
      and recognizes a good range of standard
      image format, but produced poor RAW
      recognition results. This is because its default
      settings rely on the RAW converter built into
      the operating system. Things look better if

you use Phase One’s own Decoder, but even

this is not up to the standards offered by

Lightroom, Picasaand digiKam.

File management has some issues. For

example, if you create a new folder in the

catalog, it will be created in the physical file

system too. However, deleting a folder only

deletes the catalog entry and the folder itself

remains intact within the computer’s file

system.

On a logical level, you can organize your

images according to keywords and catalogs.

Keywords can be organized hierarchically in

custom thesauri and catalogs can contain any

number of virtual folders.

Phase One’s geotagging functionality is

disappointing. The old Microsoft version of

the program had a direct interface with Virtual

Earth, but this has now been replaced by

a simple text display of GPS coordinates

that can’t even be edited if they come

from an XMP sidecar file. There is no face

recognition, but Media Pro supportsthe IPTC

Core and Extension metadata sets. There is no

interface for image export to the cloud and

the static HTML pages on offer are old hat.

US$169.99 for an image database

application with no added editing functionality

is simply too expensive, especially in view of

the Media Pro‘s limited feature set and clunky

handling. For the same money, Lightroom gives

you a well-developed all-in-one workflow tool

with a full-fledged database and a built-in RAW

editor.

Phase One Media Pro

Media Prois not an integrated workflow

solution and uses the Capture OneRAW

editor as an external tool