Importing and Exporting Images

Photovault supports two different ways of adding images to its database:

• Importing an image copies it to the Photovault database. When adding completely new images, this is usually what you want. However, if you already have a large collection of images importing them to Photovault database essentially doubles disk space usage.
• If you already have lot of existing images in a directory you can index the directory and create an external volume. In this case, Photovault creates only thumbail images, meta data and links to the original in its database. Of course you as user are then responsible for maintaining the original image directory. Photovault will however be able to synchronize its database if you add, remove or rename the original images.

Importing images

Importing images is easy:

1. Select File->Import image...
2. Choose the file(s) you want to import in the file selection dialog
3. After Photovault has imported the image files it presents a dialog for editing metadata for the added images. Add the information you want and press OK. As a minimum, it is recommended to add the imported photos to some folder so that they are easy to find later.

While importing, Photovault automatically extracts the available metadata from imported images if they have EXIF data. If the images do not have EXIF data Photovault stores the "last modified" date of the image file as shooting time.

Indexing an existing directory

1. Select File->Index directory... and select the directory that contains your photos.
2. By default Photovault creates folder called extvol_<original directory> under the top folder and a hierarchy of subfolders below it that matches the directory hierarchy of the indexed files. If you don't want this or you want to name the folder differently, change the behaviour by clicking "Options" button in the file selection dialog.
3. After clicking OK Photovault indexes the files. If there are many files this will take some time. You can follow the progress in a status dialog.

If you make any changes in the directory that contains the original images you should update the information in Photovault by selecting "File->Update indexed dirs". Photovault is able to detect

• New image files added to the directory
• Renamed and/or moved files
• Deleted files

Photovault updates also its folder hirearchy to match any changes in original directory. However, even if an original file is removed Photovault still retains the metadata and thumbnail of that image. If you later add the original file back to any external volume or import it, Photovault will recognize the file and associate it with the existing metadata.