Cascade meta information

The version panel (click the version icon in the left Explorer bar) offers features to store different versions for an image. Once this is done, IDimager will only show the main version (or the Album display version if defined) in the Catalog Explorer. This way you work with only one version and you won’t get distracted by the other derived versions of the same image.

When you enter additional descriptions or other meta information to an image it will be stored for that image only, resulting in meta information for one image that is not “compliant” with the other versions or main version. This might well be your intention, but if it is not, you can use the cascading feature to dump all existing meta information from one image to all other images in the version set. Another possible reason when you might use this is when you have developed RAW images with a 3rd party tool to JPG or TIF and your RAW converter did not save *all* Exif data to the developed version (like many RAW converters do). With IDimager you can correct this by cascading the meta data from the original RAW to your developed version(s).

Keep in mind that cascading is permanent. Once you have cascaded to the versions it can not be undone.

To cascade your meta data you can click the cascade button in the versions panel

First select the source image for cascading. All versions all in the drop down list (including the main version).

Select the source for cascading	Here you can select the version image that should act as the source for cascading. The source is the image you are cascading the meta information from to the other images in the version set. The drop down includes the main version, as well as all sub versions.
Cascade XMP details to the version set	Select this option if you want to cascade all XMP information to the other versions.The XMP details include descriptive text like you may have entered in the Image Details for you images. Though ratings and color labels are also part of XMP these will not be cascaded with this option. To include them, make sure you select that cascading option as well.
Cascade all ratings to the version set	Select this option if you want to cascade the ratings
Cascade all	Select this option if you want to cascade the color labels
Cascade all Exif and IPTC to the version set	Select this option if you want all Exif and IPTC details to be cascaded to the version set
Cascade to	Here you can select which versions the selected info should be cascaded to. By default all will be selected. You can deselect versions to exclude by clicking the checkbox in front of each line. By clicking the "all" button you can quickly (re)select all versions. This list contains one grayed out (and italic) entry. That is the source version as you have selected in the drop down list. It indicates that this image will be skipped in the cascading process.

Another (and quicker) way to cascade meta information from one image to the version set is to right click on a thumbnail in the version panel and then select "Cascade with this image" from the context menu.

Once you have used the cascading feature, then IDimager will remember the last used settings for the cascading options. You can then use a "default cascade" operation. Right click on any version that you'd like to cascade from and then select "Default cascade with this image". IDimager will then ask for a confirmation.