How to replace Iview Media Pro?

A couple of ideas ...

You can migrate directly from Media Pro to Capture One ... as long as you are on High Sierra or Mojave. So you would want to do the migration before updating your Mac beyond Mojave. (And you would need an older version of Capture One (v20 or v21) both of which are still available.) Once the migration is complete and you have your new Capture One Catalog you can update your Mac & Capture One to a more recent version.

Avalanche can migrate Iview Media Pro catalogs to Capture One, Luminar 4/AI, Apple Photos and Lightroom. Avalanche will run on Mojave (macOS 10.14)

What exactly do you mean by " import my thoundsands of photos in the same order as they are currently in" ?

I found these instructions in the NeoFinder user's guide -> 31 From iView to NeoFinder

It's worth trying out. And, iView owners qualify for a crossgrade license at $25 instead of $39.99

I also used to use iView Media Pro. Then Microsoft bought it out and renamed it Expression Media. Did little with it and sold it to PhaseOne, who named it back to Media Pro. They had it for a while and then killed it, forcing users who wanted to continue without losing their database to upgrade to the very expensive Capture One software.

No way. After testing many alternatives, I went with much less expensive NeoFinder. Behaves nearly the same as Media Pro, only costs $40 for a single user license, and isn't subscription software. Took me a while to re-catalogue my disks, but it was worth the time.

I just used my Blu-ray backup disks as an example, but you can drop in the items from any source. So dragging in folders of photos works just as well.

It can't hurt to try it. There's a trial period so you can test the app and see if NeoFinder will fit your needs. I switched back in 2019 and have been using it since.

Brisjit wrote:

How does the migration work? Do I have to make new catalogues? I hope that there is an easy way, because I have tens of thousands of photos and quite some catalogues.

If you migrate from Media Pro to Photos/Lightroom/CaptureOne your catalog sets, keywords, etc. will all be migrated to the new app although some terminology may change. For example, Media Pro catalog sets become albums or collections in the new app.

If you just start using another app (NeoFinder, Mylio, DigiKam, Bridge, etc.) there is no actual migration; you essentially start all over from the beginning.

Also, you commented that you plan to purchase Adobe programs, I assume that means Photoshop. Reminder - the Adobe CC Photography plan includes Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic & Photoshop CC all for $9.99/month. Avalanche is $59. It would seem to me the best & least expensive way to go.

BTW, if you go with CaptureOne, you don't even need Avalanche because C1 can directly import a Media Pro catalog.

Those are the only options I know about if you want to migrate your library from iView to one of the other apps I mentioned.

You can do a free trial of Avalanche to see if it does what you want it to do.

• Apple Photos is free and included on all Macs
• The Adobe CC Photography plan includes Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic & Photoshop CC ($9.99/month)
• Capture One Pro is currently $109/year subscription or $299 perpetual license
• Luminar is not a viable alternative for iView Media Pro; its asset management capabilities are weak

I used Apple Aperture for many years until it was discontinued. After looking at alternatives for managing my image collections, I finally chose Capture One and have been very happy with its capabilities and performance.

You may be in luck here. I tried (quite a while ago), to import PhaseOne's Media Pro database, but it didn't work. However, the import feature says it can read in iView Media Pro and Microsoft Expression Media databases.

Definitely worth downloading the NeoFinder demo to see if it works.

Unfortunately, there is no simple migration from a Media Pro database. What I did was export the Media Pro field descriptions to a text file. Then I just catalogued the Blu-ray data backup disks into NeoFinder.

Once a disk was finished, I then retagged each job's worth of items from the exported text so I didn't have to physically retype everything. Right now, I don't even recall how I did it, but I was able to tag related items all at once.

This was thousands of mostly photos. It took me about 5 days, 3 to 4 hours a day to finish. But an added bonus is size. The Media Pro database was a ridiculous 23 GB. All of the same images and data in NeoFinder was just over one gigabyte.

There is no easy and direct solution. Some work is involved.

See MartinR's post above. He provided a link to NeoFinder's site that shows how to migrate an iView Media Pro database to NeoFinder. They make it as simple as possible.

Brisjit wrote:

My thousands of photos are in folders on my mac. And from there they have been imported into different files/libraries in Iview. I am just curious whether all the links stay and all the files stay the same?

Read the information in the links I provided. Both apps are designed to preserve your Media Pro library organization.

Make sure you set up your new app to use a "referenced library" - that will allow your images (files) to stay in their original location(s). For example, in Apple Photos the default is a "managed library" which means your photos would be imported into the Photos database. You can change the settings in Photos to make it use a referenced library (what they call outside Photos).

Seeing that page reminded my why I switched, and it wasn't just to avoid the pricey subscription fee. When Apple went to all 64 bit, Phase One's version of Media Pro was 32 bit only, and they made it perfectly clear in their user forums they had no intention whatsoever of upgrading the app to 64 bit. The Windows version they would, but not for the Mac. After that, I didn't want to use anything they had just out of principal.

Kurt Lang wrote:

Seeing that page reminded my why I switched, and it wasn't just to avoid the pricey subscription fee.

For me, CaptureOne was the best answer to Aperture. I had invested heavily in my Aperture implementation and needed something comparable. CaptureOne and Lightroom were the only apps that even came close to being what Aperture was. Lightroom didn't make the cut - I disliked the UI and having to toggle between the different modules all the time.

CaptureOne has all the asset management capabilities I need and then some; as a RAW editor it scores way above Adobe Camera RAW; and as a photoeditor it has almost completely displaced my use of Photoshop.

Aha! I remember how to do the tags for NeoFinder. I haven't catalogued anything for over a year now, so I had to think about it. You tag the images on the Mac first, then drag the folder into NeoFinder.

This is much easier than it sounds. I'll post instructions tomorrow when I'm back on my Mac.