Ingestamatic 2.30

Transfer your photos from cameras or other devices to your Mac. Rename, sort images into folders, and add metadata, including caption, keywords, copyright notice. Add geotags to you photos manually by selecting a location on a map, marking them with their latitude, longitude, and altitude, or use the automatic option of copying data from a GPS track log. Create backups and convert RAW files to the Adobe's DNG format.

Ingestamatic is an image management tool.

It's easy enough to copy ("ingest") photos from your camera, card, or phone to your computer: Just mount the camera or card as a drive and copy them, or use whatever came with your computer, such as Image Capture on the Mac.

But all that gives you is a copy. Ingestion is a great opportunity to do more, before it's too late. Look at a preview to decide which photos you want to ingest. Rename the image files and sort them into folders (by date, for example). Make a backup copy. Add metadata: caption, keywords, copyright notice, and so on. Geotag the images from a GPS track log, to mark them with their latitude, longitude, and altitude. Convert raw files to Adobe's DNG format.

While you can do some of this later, it's best if you do it during ingestion. For example, you want the caption and the geotagging with the image, not just in Lightroom's or Aperture's database. And the sooner you get a backup, the better.

I've been developing ImageIngester, the most advanced ingestion app, for over six years and I've learned a lot about how photographers want to do ingestion. But over those years ImageIngester has gotten overly complicated: too many setup panels and presets, too many rarely-used features, and too much required training to use all those features. Now I've come up with a much simpler, yet in many ways more powerful ingester called Ingestamatic.