Keywording!!??

[arthurking83]

Looking for experience with keywording my images.

I usually know where all my images are stored and generally by date, and location. My folder structure is working perfectly and so far I've yet to fail in finding the image I'm after. But I'd like to make it easier on myself sometimes, and want to start using keywording in the XMP/IPTC fields in either ViewNX or Capture.. but I always seem to get stuck for a decent description other than:

<location>(easy for me as I'm a location based photogrpaher, and that's how I usually find my images)
<obvious subject matter>
<sometimes lens specific data> like a particular set of variables if I'm trying to work out where a lens works better or comparing lenses.

so here's a sample image...


Ok, no snide remarks about using two many Cokin GND's and pointing into the sun to create a blood red magenta hue in the sky

Some of the words I used for keywording were: melbourne, train, tracks, clouds, sunset, weather beyond that I get lost and block(photographers block). I can now see curve, bend, and maybe the letter 'S'

what else?

Oh, and I think I may try to use a program from the makers of BDSizer called idimager to do my searching and maybe any other useful cataloguing stuff that it may be able to do. From my minimal reading up on the software it sounds quite good, main basis for that observation is in their description of the way in which it works....

From the base up, IDimager is designed with an open cataloging architecture in mind. This means that you will be able to extract your information at any time, even without IDimager....

If there is a better program that costs way less(as in free) now would be a good time to share that information

I'm in no rush, I'm probably going to take at least a year to seek out and tag every image I have on my system. But I should get into a better routine of tagging the images as they get sorted in the download process. Batch inputting the metadata into the images is easy peasy using either of Nikons softwares,and it's directly into the NEF(which is my preference)

OK.. that's it.

... any input is muchly appreciated.

[MarkChap]

Thats about what I do Arthur.

I also add in colour information - ie:- colour, mono, sepia etc
So that if I wanted to find for instance all my Black and white silhouetted trees I could type those keywords into Bridge and just have it find them only

[farmer_rob]

I use Photoshop Elements for its tagging capabilities. I have categories of tags such as location, subject, topic, animals, people. Often a photo will have tags from a number of categories. So, I have sets of storm photos or horse photos, and can find storm photos in melbourne or horse photos with 08 foals in seymour.

The trick is to be consistent in the tagging, and think about the types of sets you want to retrieve.

You had tags of "melbourne, train, tracks, clouds, sunset, weather" - are you likely to want to retrieve all photos of trains? or would you be better to tag with "curve theme". "weather" strikes me as useless - what sort of weather?

Be careful of tagging some as cloud and others as clouds - this is where consistency is important and software should be helpful.

[Calxoddity]

Arthur,
I've only got a few minutes to post this, so sorry if it doesn't completely make sense.

If you're serious about using keywords, you need to approach it in a structured fashion, otherwise it all ends up as a bucket of mush. You might have heard of taxonomies and controlled vocabularies - these give you a standard structure and hierarchy for keywords.

Start with a set of top-level keywords - I use People, Places, Events, Objects, and Themes. Under these, I create keywords for the particular things I want to keyword, and other sets of keywords under them. In a competent tool, if you do a search on a specific lower level keyword, it will return only that result. Searching on a broader keyword will return all images with keywords belonging to that category, even though they may not have been given the broader keyword specifically.

The structured approach might take a little time to set up, but you get a nice, logical, and scalable model for managing keywords. If you're interested, I might be able to extract my keyword hierarchy as an example (never done this bit before but willing to have a go).

Regards,
Calx

[arthurking83]

....

You had tags of "melbourne, train, tracks, clouds, sunset, weather" - are you likely to want to retrieve all photos of trains? or would you be better to tag with "curve theme". "weather" strikes me as useless - what sort of weather?

Be careful of tagging some as cloud and others as clouds - this is where consistency is important and software should be helpful.

Thanks for the tips Rob, but the reason I added weather in this is that there is an element of 'weather' about it, with the cloudy/overcast sky, and that's the routine I want to get into.

My sis asked me the other day do I have a pic of ......... and I found it easily, but I'm thinking that if at some point, with well over 10K images in my archives, someone asks me do I have a pic of trains with an element of mood or typical Melb weather, then any non big blue sky shots would be worth looking through. or if they asked me for a shot of curves(most of which would be roads) but with a sunburst through the clouds, then the sunburst would come under the keyword of weather.

So weather is a general keyword I'd use to describe any sort of non blue sky atmospheric condition.. rather than get too specific on what the actual weather conditions were.

The reason for this is ease of batching.
I can create batches of keywords(the real main point of this question) and then save them. Re-use them in an instant to any selected image or folder full of images. The keywords would be arranged in a hierarchy manner(structured as Calx mentioned) and weather could be a general topic, but there could be variations of the general theme and clouds or sun or storm..etc would also be included in various batches. Then it's a matter of picking the appropriate batch and applying it.

it looks all to easy, but my issue is what to add, and how to keep it on a consistent manner.

Calx, an idea of how to structure the batches would be very helpful, and at your leisure. There's no rush.



thnx folks

[farmer_rob]

...So weather is a general keyword I'd use to describe any sort of non blue sky atmospheric condition.. rather than get too specific on what the actual weather conditions were....

My bad. As long as you know what weather means in your archive, and you are consistent in its use, that works.

I like Calx's thoughts about the structure, and is a more formal version of my approach.

[Calxoddity]

Hi,
Back home now - here's a screen grab of my keyword list - it was too long to grab completely, so it doesn't show all the levels. Enjoy!

[MarkChap]

Yep thats much the same way as I have mine set up.

Provides great consistancy to the structure of the keywording

[beaco]

You could also try finding a tool that actually searches on the shapes or colours in an image. I think google images can search for primary colours in an image. tineye.com also allow some interesting searches.

[ricktas]

You could also try finding a tool that actually searches on the shapes or colours in an image. I think google images can search for primary colours in an image. tineye.com also allow some interesting searches.

tineye has nothing to do with classifying your own photography library, it is for finding 'copies' of your photos on the internet.

[coolie21]

I know the original post was a while ago, but doesn't idimager do pretty much what the Aperture keywording does? And it is windoze only...