photools.com today announced the release of a new IMatch 3, the complete digital image management suite that offers an easy and affordable way to archive, manage, and mine digital image collections. Version 3's new productivity features make it a value-packed program perfect for photographers, graphic artists, Web designers, and digital camera users.

"By combining the feature set of high-end (and high-priced) image management systems with an easy and comfortable user interface, IMatch demonstrates the commitment of photools.com to the digital image management community," says Mario Westphal, lead developer of IMatch. "This release not only contains the latest stage of photools.com's proven image matching technology, but also many productivity features and tools required to manage digital image collections of all sizes".

IMatch is built on secure and scalable system architecture, with an Open System approach. Using an XML-based metadata repository, IMatch allows users to associate all kinds of information with the images in a database. A variety of import and export modules enables IMatch to exchange data with all types of applications. IMatch natively supports all important metadata formats, such as XML, IPTC, EXIF, ACDSee(tm), CRC, and CSV, for both image attributes and metadata.

One of the highlights of the new IMatch is its unique Dynamic Category concept. This new methodology extends the static keywording concept used by most other systems with a much cleaner and more flexible approach. Using Dynamic Categories, users can create multi-hierarchical virtual views on their image collections, independent from the actual physical storage location of the images. Users now are able to create categories based on image content, topic, theme, project, and customer--all at the same time. Using formulas, dynamic categories can be built by combining other categories with Boolean operations like AND, OR, and NOT.

IMatch special strengths show up when it comes to handling off-line images on removable media. All features of IMatch that don't require direct access to the original image work perfectly even when the images are off-line. IMatch automatically prompts the user to insert the correct media, supplying all information required to identify and insert the correct media.

The Contact Sheet Builder is only one of the professional tools that are in the box. This flexible and powerful tool allows creating contact sheets (index prints) for all resolutions and with customizable layouts. Professional users will love the ability to create pre-press ready contact sheets at every resolution.

With the Batch Converter module, IMatch users are able to convert images into more than 50 image file formats, perform image manipulation on the fly, and add borders, backgrounds, watermarks, and copyright information in a single step.

The outstanding productivity feature of IMatch is the built-in scripting language. Using this simple yet powerful BASIC language, even entry-level users are able to automate frequent tasks, customize the IMatch front-end, and add specific functionality not contained in the original product.

Experienced users can create scripts to produce HTML pages, XML documents, and to interface with databases, and other applications available under Windows that support OLE automation. IMatch serves as a central solution for creating sophisticated custom applications in all areas of digital image management.

IMatch 2 is known as one of the best products to perform image matching under Windows. The ability to search image databases for similar images based on features like color, shape, and texture made IMatch rather unique. Version 3 of IMatch not only contains the latest developments in the area of pattern recognition, but also includes a complete set of tools and productivity features to serve as a complete solution for all digital image management tasks.

IMatch runs under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.x, Windows 2000, and all compatible platforms.

IMatch 3 costs USD$49.95 for a single-user license. The update from earlier versions is available for USD$29.95. Site licenses are available on request. Contact sales@photools.com for details.

For more information and to download the evaluation copy, visit our Web site at www.photools.com.