To create and view a catalog:
Open the Portfolio application by double-clicking its icon. When the Welcome dialog appears, choose “Create a new Portfolio catalog,” then click “OK.”
Tip: If you’d like to learn about Portfolio but don’t want to create a catalog yet, you can use the Sample Catalog located on the Extensis CD. If you choose to use the Sample Catalog you can read through steps 1 through 5 and examine the examples, or go straight to Gallery Views.
Choose a name and location for your new catalog.
Portfolio creates a blank catalog, then opens the catalog and displays the Gallery window.
Drag and drop selected files or folders into the open Gallery window.
You can also add items to a catalog by choosing “Add Items” from the Catalog menu.
When you add items to a catalog, the Cataloging Options dialog is displayed, allowing you to choose a variety of options for the cataloged files. You can keep the Cataloging Options dialog from opening automatically by selecting the appropriate option under Edit > Preferences.
Tip: If you have a catalog that you use frequently, you can specify it as the default catalog and have Portfolio automatically open this catalog when you start Portfolio. Open the desired catalog, then choose “Open Catalog at Startup” from the File menu.
Select the desired settings from the Cataloging Options dialog—or simply allow Portfolio to use the typical default settings—then click “OK.”
The Cataloging Options dialog allows you to determine what information will be cataloged with the image, how the thumbnails will be created, and whether the records should be updated. You can access and set these options at any time by choosing Catalog > Cataloging Options [or press Command+J (Mac OS) or Ctrl+J (Windows)].
Since Portfolio creates catalogs using the image thumbnails rather than by importing the entire image, updating is re-quired when any of the images have been relocated; updating allows Portfolio to update the pointers to the image files.
Note: Even if an image has been moved and the link to it lost, you can continue to view and work with the image in the catalog. It is a simple matter to update links to images using the Update Items option from the Catalog menu.
Portfolio will begin cataloging the items, keeping you posted in its progress.
See the following sections for more information:
Cataloging Options - General Tab
Cataloging Options - Update Tab
Cataloging Options - Mappings Tab
Cataloging Options - File Types Tab
Cataloging Options - Exclude Tab