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Tag Archives: Metadata
Yet More Problems With The Media Library in WHS 2011
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some of the errors and design issues I was seeing when using the Media Library within Windows Home Server 2011. Since then, another issue has made itself known, and I’ve had yet … Continue reading →
The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011–Revisited
A week ago, I blogged about my first impressions of using the Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011. My experience wasn’t entirely positive, as I found a couple of wrinkles when I was accessing the server via the Remote … Continue reading →
Guidelines for Handling Image Metadata
The Metadata Working Group (an industry consortium including Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony) have just published the second version of their Guidelines for Handling Image Metadata. In their own words, it’s “a major new version of the Guidelines”. … Continue reading →
Tagging Digital Photos – Part III
As a result of my last post on tagging, I’ve had a couple of questions, so I thought I’d answer them in this post. The questions were:
Say I went on vacation and came back with a whole bunch of pictures. How do you relate those pictures to each other? I.e. is there a way to do some kind of “Description tree structure” effectively?
I’ve seen that many users of JRiver Media Center (JRMC) use the hierarchy structure in keywords that you describe above (they usually call it nesting). In JRMC this is displayed nicely in a tree structure. How portable is this hierarchy structure? How does it display in IdImager, WPLG, or in any of the Adobe applications?
Question 1 is a bit like a combination of “how long is a piece of string” and “what’s the best way to skin a cat?”. I can only answer it by describing what works for me, but I would not claim that it’s the most effective for everyone. So, here’s what I do when I get back from a vacation…
First, ingest all the photos from my camera(s) into the tool that happens to be my choice for the heart of my digital workflow: IDimager. Other folks will have their own choices such as Adobe Lightroom, or even free tools such as Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG). I’ve ended up with IDimager simply because, for me, the combination of its flexibility and power combined with a reasonable cost gives me the biggest bang for the buck of all the tools I’ve looked at.
During the ingestion process, IDimager renames all the photos from the camera’s IMGnnnn format to my preferred date/timestamp format of yyyymmdd-hhss-nn, and also places the photos into a folder structure that is ordered by date to three levels: year, month and day. If a particular folder does not already exist, IDimager will create it on the fly. At the same time, the first pass of assigning metadata to every image is done by IDimager. This is to add the Contact Info, Copyright Notice, Usage Rights, and Title fields to the images.
The next step is to cull the obvious failures from the set of images using the Light Table view of IDimager. Then I’m ready to do the first pass of assigning the detailed metadata to the working set of images. Since these are vacation photos, they will all have the Events/holidays/vacation Keyword assigned. I will also add location information, simultaneously to both the IPTC Core Location metadata fields, and as a structured Keyword; e.g. Places/Europe/Spain/Catalunya/Barcelona/Las Ramblas. Then I’ll do a few more passes, adding further Keyword metadata as appropriate, until I feel that sufficient metadata has been added. The last step at this stage will be to add geotag metadata, if I’ve had my GPS logger with me.
The “Description tree structure” (a.k.a. the “Keyword” or “Tag” tree structure) that I have is as I described in the last post. It’s effective enough for me, but I won’t claim that it will work for everyone. Still, if you build up your structure following David Rieck’s suggestions, then I think you’ll have a good start. I’ve also just found a short article that gives some guidelines about how you might go about designing your own controlled vocabulary and taxonomy for digital images.
Now I have the starter set of vacation photos. Further steps in the workflow will be to choose the best, with further processing and editing as necessary, by assigning ratings, using the “power of 10” or “pyramid” rule. This is described in Peter Krogh’s “The DAM Book” . The rule is that each additional “star” rating will have an order of magnitude fewer images in it. For example, if you have say 100,000 images in your total collection, then 10,000 might be rated with 1 star, 1,000 rated with 2 stars, 100 rated with 3 stars, and so on. Of course, at this rate, I’ll be lucky to have even a single image that is worthy of 5 stars, but that’s the idea – be aggressive to drive up your idea of quality.
Because this starter set of vacation photos has sufficient metadata (for me), I’m able to select them quickly out of my total collection using either IDimager or WLPG. For simple queries, either will do; e.g. select vacation photos taken in 2006 in Barcelona. But for more complex queries, then I have to use IDimager; e.g. select vacation photos that show ball games but not tennis… There are other things that IDimager can do that less capable tools (e.g. Picasa and WLPG) simply can’t. Synonyms and relationships, for instance. Synonyms mean that if I search my image collection for cars, for example, IDimager will also suggest synonyms for the search term, e.g. automobiles. Relationships means that, for example, People/Family/John is related to People/Family/Anita as “husband to wife”. By creating relationships between your keywords, you are able to switch instantly to related keywords. If the keyword John is selected, you get instant access to Anita because Anita will be included in the sub list of John.
Question 2 is somewhat difficult for me to answer, because I don’t use JRiver Media Center (JRMC). So I can’t say for certain how JRMC will expose the keyword structure to other tools. But any application has in theory two possible approaches to this. The first is a static approach, whereby you can export the structure from tool A into an intermediate file that can then be imported into tool B. The intermediate file usually takes the form of being in CSV or XML format. These two formats are pretty widely understood by a variety of Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools. Being static, it’s generally best used to set up a new tool, or to take a snapshot of your current structure, either for archiving purposes, or for sharing with other people.
The second approach is a dynamic interchange, whereby all the DAM tools being used will track changes to the keyword structure preferably themselves, or with minimum user intervention. Because we are dealing with photos here, we do in fact have the possibility of achieving that dynamic interchange by using the photo metadata in the files. So, for example, if I make a change to the keyword structure in IDimager, I will then synchronise my image collection with the new structure. IDimager then writes out changes as necessary to the metadata of files that are affected by the change. WLPG monitors for changes in the metadata of images and reflects those changes in the metadata and keyword structure displayed in WLPG and held in its database. This means that both tools should show the same keyword structure. Here’s an example looking at part of the Places hierarchy with both IDimager and WLPG (you may need to view this post separately in a browser window to see the full width of the images):
You’ll notice that although the subtrees for the Glenfaba and Michael Sheadings (the Manx equivalent of State) are shown expanded in the IDimager screenshot, and not in the WLPG screenshot, both do have the same structure. And on the right, you can see that both have the same keywords. Also note that in IDimager, the full delimited keywords are shown (e.g. Places/Europe/Isle of Man/Middle Sheading/Baldwin, whereas in WLPG only that leaf of the full delimited keyword is shown, e.g. Baldwin. WLPG is reading the whole delimited keyword, and using it to recreate the keyword structure shown on the left (in this case under the Descriptive Tags heading).
So in this case, IDimager and WLPG are able to share the keyword structure dynamically. I’ve been able to set it up this way, because I’m able to tell IDimager to use delimited keywords, and that the delimiter character to use is “/” (which is required by WLPG).
If JRMC can write out delimited keywords into the IPTC Core metadata of your image collection using “/” as the delimiter, then WLPG should be able to reconstruct and track the keyword hierarchy on the fly. Be aware that not all tools use the same delimiter. For example, Lightroom always uses the pipe character ( | ) as a delimiter for its hierarchical keywords. In addition, Lightroom uses a separate XMP property to store these hierarchical keywords separated from the normal keywords. That’s why IDimager also supports the hierarchical keywords method as used by Lightroom as well as delimited keywords written to IPTC Core specs. So portability between tools is by no means guaranteed, but often a way can be found if at least one of the tools is flexible enough.
Hope this helps. Continue reading →
Tagging Digital Photos – Part II
I’ve been asked by someone for some detail on how I tag my digital photos. I thought that it might possibly be of some interest to others, so here’s the answer as a blog entry.
The starting point is that I tag my photos using some (but by no means all) of the data elements specified by the IPTC Core standard. The following table lists the elements that I use; the descriptions that I have provided are drawn from the excellent Field Guide provided by the PhotoMetadata.org web site.
Element Description Title This field is a shorthand reference for the image or “photograph” – primarily for identification. The title of an image should be a short, human-readable name – text and/or numeric reference – and may take several forms.
In my case, I now use a date/timestamp to uniquely identify all my photos, i.e. a title has the form: yyyymmdd-hhss-nn. Description The Description field, often referred to by applications as “Caption,” should report the who, what and why of what the photograph depicts.
I don’t always follow the guideline given by the Field Guide’s explanation, I usually just rely on the fact that this metadata is covered by the Keyword and Location metadata content for my image:
”If there is a person or people in the image, this caption might include their names, and/or their roles in any action taking place. If the image depicts a location, then it should describe the location. Don’t forget to also include this same “geographical” information in the appropriate fields (location, city, state/province, country) of the IPTC Core. The amount of detail to include depends on the image and whether it is documentary or conceptual”. Keyword Terms or phrases to describe the subject of content in the photograph. I have cobbled together a controlled vocabulary (see later) for my own use here. Copyright Notice The Copyright Notice should include any legal language required to claim intellectual property. It should identify the photograph’s current holder(s). Rights Usage Terms The Rights Usage Terms field should include free-text instructions on how the photograph can be legally used. The majority of my photos are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Contact Info
The Contact Info fields provide a generic structure for storing basic information that should make it easy to reach the person or organization that created this image.
Note: “City,” “State” and “Country” used in Contact Info should not be confused with fields bearing the same names that refer to the picture’s origin.
Address (Contact info)
Address is a multi-line field.
City (Contact info)
Enter the name of the city where your business is located.
Country (Contact info)
Enter the name of the country where your business is located.
Email(s) (Contact info) Enter your business or work email address, such as name@domain.com. Separate multiple email addresses with commas.
Phone(s) (Contact info)
Enter your business or work telephone number here. Separate multiple numbers with commas. Be sure to include the complete international format of a phone number including: +{countrycode} ({regional code}) {phone number} – {extension, if required}
Postal Code (Contact info)
Enter the local postal code (such as ZIP code) where your business is located.
State/Province (Contact info)
Enter the name of the State or Province where your business is located. Since the abbreviation for a state or province may be unknown to those viewing your metadata internationally, consider spelling out the name.
Website(s) (Contact info)
Enter the URL or web address for your business. Separate multiple addresses with commas.
Since I’m not a commercial photographer, I use the bare minimum here: just city, country, email and web site.
Country
(legacy) The full name of the country pictured in the photograph. This field is at the first level of a top-down geographical hierarchy. Use a verbal name and not a code. State/Province
(legacy) The name of the subregion of a country – usually referred to as either a State or Province – pictured in the image. Since the abbreviation for a State or Province may be unknown to those viewing your metadata internationally, consider using the full spelling of the name. Province/State is at the second level of a top-down geographical hierarchy. City
(legacy) The name of the city where the image was captured. If there is no city, I use the Sublocation field alone to specify where the photograph was made. City is at the third level of a top-down geographical hierarchy. Sublocation
(legacy) The name of the sublocation shown in the image. This might be the name of a specific area within a city (Manhattan), or the name of a well-known place (Pyramids of Giza), monument or natural feature outside a city (Grand Canyon). Location is the most specific term, at the fourth level of a top-down geographical hierarchy.
You’ll notice that in the above table, the location fields of ITPC Core (country, state/province, city, sublocation) are marked as legacy. That’s because there’s a newer IPTC specification (IPTC Extension) that seeks to remove the ambiguity implicit in the term “location”. After all, does it refer to the location of the camera, or the location of the subject in the picture? So the Extension defines two classes of location: the location where the image was created, and the location shown in the image itself.
For the moment, I’m continuing to use these legacy terms from IPTC Core (and for the most part, the location of the camera and the subject are the same for all practical purposes as far as I’m concerned). At some point in the future though, I’ll probably move over to using these newer metadata items from the IPTC Extension.
One other thing, I “echo” the content of the location metadata back to a structured Keyword entry. For example, a photo taken in the Dam Square in Amsterdam will have the following items of metadata in it:
Sublocation: Dam Square
City: Amsterdam
State: Noord-Holland
Country: Netherlands
Keyword: Netherlands/Noord-Holland/Amsterdam/Dam Square
This is handled automatically by the application I use in my digital workflow: IDimager. When I tag an image with a known sublocation, then the other corresponding location metadata, as well as the structured Keyword entry are automatically written into the image. Having a structured keyword echoing the location metadata in this way helps when the images are viewed as a collection using an application that does not support IPTC location metadata, but does support IPTC keywords. Windows Live Photo Gallery, for example.
Keywords and Controlled Vocabularies
Choosing the right set and structure of your keywords that are used in your image library is a big topic, so I can only scratch the surface here. I’ve borrowed ideas from a number of different sources to come up with mine.
First of all, I followed the excellent set of guidelines that David Riecks put together on his Controlled Vocabulary web site. Then, having a flat list of thousands of keywords is not very useful, it’s much better to arrange them into a hierarchy that connects related terms together; a so-called Controlled Vocabulary. For example, my keyword cows is actually part of a hierarchy that starts Nature/Animals/livestock/cattle/dairy cattle/cows. That way, when I search for photos (using either Windows Live Photo Gallery or IDimager) with the keyword cows, it will just show me those with cows in them. But if I search for photos with the keyword livestock, it will show me photos of cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and so on. When I use IDimager to tag a image of a cow with the cows keyword, it will automatically add all the parent keywords in the structure: dairy cattle, cattle, livestock, Animals, and Nature.
My hierarchy has been built up from a number of sources:
The sample of David Reick’s Controlled Vocabulary that ships with IDimager,
Elements from the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus,
My own additions and modifications.
I’ve ended up with a structure that has the following items at the root:
Activities
Events
Nature
Objects
People
Places
Science
Styles
Each of these splits down into further categories as necessary as you go down the levels. For example, Activities splits into
Disciplines
Hobbies
Physical and mental activities
Processes and techniques
So then a photo of a tennis match would have the structured keyword of Activities/physical and mental activities/games/sports/ball game/tennis assigned to it.
While setting up a controlled vocabulary takes a bit of work, and it will require ongoing “gardening”, there’s no question but that it’s useful when you have a lot of photos. I’ve currently got in excess of 37,000 photos in my collection and having them all with metadata makes it much easier to manage them. Continue reading →
Managing Metadata
Metadata is “data about data”. While the term is used to cover a wide variety of fields, the one that most interests me is metadata used in digital images. The most prevalent standard for digital image metadata is Exif, implemented … Continue reading →