The User space is where you the user are able to work with the archive. These spaces is divided into functional areas. All of which are optional. These spaces are detailed as follows:
The Work Space - This is used for working-on or editing of images. Images can be checked out of the archive for editing then after editing can be checked back into the archive as as a new version of the unedited image.
The Picture Catalogue - This is where a copy of the images hold in the archive are made available for browsing. The images contained are the images that are directly contained in the archive. These images may be a mix of viewable and not be directly viewable images. i.e. this catalogue contain may contain the raw camera image files.
The WWW Catalogue - This is a catalogue that can be directly viewed using a web browser.
By default all the spaces are under the main ImgArchive folder. This folder will normally be in your main user folder. However this folder can be moved to another location. may be because your local user folder has not the spaces required for the required number of images. In addition any of the spaces can also be moved because you may what to store say the picture folder on another drive but keep the workspace in the user space folder.
How the user spaces is used is up to you the user. For example: you may keep a small set of working images in the workspace, have the pictures on another drive and the WWW space on a networked drive so a second PC may run a web server using the shared WWW space.
If the Work space is automatically populated with the complete contents of the archive then there is little use for the Picture Catalogue. In addition, if there is not a web catalogue then the WWW Catalogue is also not needed.
How the images are managed
One of the main principles of ImgArchive is to keep your images save from harm. All the spaces are populated from the Vault. If any of the images in the spaces are damaged or deleted a fresh copy can be uploaded from the Vault. This also means you can delete images that are not required. If they are needed again then a fresh copy can be made from the vault.
This means you can deduce image is the workspace to a working set of images and not the complete archive. This can also only keep say this years images in the pictures space and an edited set of images in the WWW space.
Metadata
ImgArchive keeps the master image metadata in the Vault. when an image is uploaded from the vault the metadata associated with the images is also uploaded. The Metadata takes only a small amount of disk space and as the user spaces may not be located is the same place each user space will contain copy of the metadata for each of the images contained in that space.
The Metadata is normally not viewed by the users so is hidden in a sub-folder named “.imga” this contains a copy of the metadata in CSV, XML, JSON and Html,