I don't know why but I've only just started tagging and key wording my photos in my library. Mostly I've never seen the point to it since I know where everything is stored and I have a decent file management scheme that works for how I work.
However, I've now decided to update my website to read embedded keywords and tags which was up till now just mostly a novelty. But, in the process of updating my website's back end I've pushed the key wording to the forefront so as the pages are created (everything is back end php I just upload the photos and the php creates the pages and all the necessary links) they make use of the keywords in the page name, the title, the meta tags, the resized image, et cetera...
The keywords played a small part prior to this, but now I've really taken it and made it more important. In that vein I've decided to have a new page created that will allow you to browse by keywords, or at the very least see other images with the same keyword... But, in doing so I've 'discovered' that my tagging leaves a lot to be desired... And going back through my massive library and updating the keywords now is a slow process.
ANYWAY... What effort do you put into your key wording and metadata? Is it important to you or not? Love to hear your thoughts.
John M Hoyt
Posts: 284
Greenville, South Carolina, US
Paul Pardue Photography wrote: ANYWAY... What effort do you put into your key wording and metadata? Is it moorland to you or not? Love to hear your thoughts.
Zero effort... I guess with a library of archived photos spanning several decades, it would be nice, but I've done zip.
Now my music on the other hand is tagged with crazy data. In addition to the artist, song name, album and genre, I've gone nuts with year, copyright holders, publishing companies, band member names, instruments, locations of live stuff, tempo, key signature, and even if a song sounds similar in structure to another. That all has helped me transistion one sng into another, building awesome molodies.
A graphics artist buddy does that with every photo and piece thy work on.
He puts details like themes, histogram info, color hue, Pantone, even where the light is coming from and perspective and then details of contents... "Log, outdoors, blue sky, cloud, tree, summer, stream, topless, Annie".
Then when someone says, "can you put my kid in a cool forest scene?", he does a quick search based on the criteria that fits the pic he is given. It's amazing to watch the process.
I actually just went through over 70,000 photos to find family photos that I had been sloppy in keywording. I was being lazy on import and using generic keywords and not keywording who was in them. Took me 2 days and a bout of carpal tunnel and mouse finger but now I can more easily find particular images.
It's definitely a work in progress. I'll see if I decide to keep it or not. Would be nice to pull up by different lighting or modifiers or something so that after the fact I can look for all the photos that have Rembrandt light or something I don't. Maybe it's more useful to me to have that stuff than it is to have it on my website.
Veit Photo
Posts: 563
London, England, United Kingdom
I like the keywording and search tools in the Library module of Lightroom. It's one the main reasons I've stuck with that software although I have a lot of respect for CaptureOne. I particularly like the fact that in Lightroom you can take disks offline and their contents remain searchable in the Lightroom catalogue.
When importing I name each shoot so that at the very least I have custom filenames for each shoot. The text search in the library can look for filenames.
I usually add keywords while importing, sometimes I go back and keyword.
It's easy for me as I usually shoot models and actors in the studio so I just add the person's name. When I shoot anything on location I include the location and client. I also use a few genre words like landscape, headshot, beauty etc.
Veit Photo wrote: I like the keywording and search tools in the Library module of Lightroom. It's one the main reasons I've stuck with that software although I have a lot of respect for CaptureOne. I particularly like the fact that in Lightroom you can take disks offline and their contents remain searchable in the Lightroom catalogue.
When importing I name each shoot so that at the very least I have custom filenames for each shoot. The text search in the library can look for filenames.
I usually add keywords while importing, sometimes I go back and keyword.
It's easy for me as I usually shoot models and actors in the studio so I just add the person's name. When I shoot anything on location I include the location and client. I also use a few genre words like landscape, headshot, beauty etc.
And that's just the beginning!
I use aperture and so in a lot of ways it's the same. For me I've always organized by folders and cared little about any keywords since its never been anything that I've wanted or needed to be able to search by. If I'm looking for a person I shot with I just go to their folder, if I want to pull up the photos from my last foray into landscape photography I just open that folder.
In a lot of ways I never felt the need to keyword because I never felt the need to search by keyword. Now however I'm trying to push the website with more text and having keywords seems like a logical way to add more content. The only problem is that I've always sucked at key wording so most of the photos on my website either don't have any keywords or have keywords that aren't relevant. Now I'm seeing a need to update the keywords in my library and therefore in turn on my website, it's just a daunting task for sure.
I did however think of one instance where having keywords searchable on my website would be useful... Keyword of implied. That way if someone was interested but not sure of what it meant, bam here's a link of all the photos I have key worded implied. Could be useful? I don't know.
Veit Photo
Posts: 563
London, England, United Kingdom
Paul Pardue Photography wrote:
I use aperture and so in a lot of ways it's the same. For me I've always organized by folders and cared little about any keywords since its never been anything that I've wanted or needed to be able to search by. If I'm looking for a person I shot with I just go to their folder, if I want to pull up the photos from my last foray into landscape photography I just open that folder.
In a lot of ways I never felt the need to keyword because I never felt the need to search by keyword. Now however I'm trying to push the website with more text and having keywords seems like a logical way to add more content. The only problem is that I've always sucked at key wording so most of the photos on my website either don't have any keywords or have keywords that aren't relevant. Now I'm seeing a need to update the keywords in my library and therefore in turn on my website, it's just a daunting task for sure.
I have 10 years' worth of digital photos in ~2,000 folders. It's got way beyond the point where folders are any use, although I did use them up until five years ago.
I got an intern in to do some of my keywording and, while her system is at times a little fucked up, on the whole she did an amazing job
I use aperture and so in a lot of ways it's the same. For me I've always organized by folders and cared little about any keywords since its never been anything that I've wanted or needed to be able to search by. If I'm looking for a person I shot with I just go to their folder, if I want to pull up the photos from my last foray into landscape photography I just open that folder.
In a lot of ways I never felt the need to keyword because I never felt the need to search by keyword. Now however I'm trying to push the website with more text and having keywords seems like a logical way to add more content. The only problem is that I've always sucked at key wording so most of the photos on my website either don't have any keywords or have keywords that aren't relevant. Now I'm seeing a need to update the keywords in my library and therefore in turn on my website, it's just a daunting task for sure.
My office is in my home so it's more than just work related photos on my computer. My work photos were always well organized, it was everything else that wasn't organized so well. I tried the organizing by folders thing for a while, it really didn't work well. When I switched to Lightroom I reorganized everything into Camera>Year>Date and my current LR catalog has 8 cameras in it so keywording is essential. Since I'm always editing client based stuff my family photos became an afterthought and they were just keyworded as "family" that wasn't working so well anymore, lol...
As screwed up as my keywording was, it's still easier than going through my crates of prints and negatives trying to find a particular picture...
I use Photo Mechanic for my initial edits, color coding, captioning and keywording. I use Photo Mechanic because it is built for speed and I got used to using it for sports and news assignments at which I must send images from the venue/scene. I ingest the images with Photo Mechanic. From there I import them with Lightroom, which keeps my color coding, captioning and keywording.
If you use a system like Wordpress for your website, consider using keywords and good descriptions when you upload to your media section. I write blog posts that allow me to do well in searches but when I began taking the time keyword and describe the images in the media section things got a lot better.
tags page is up and running... been working on redoing the keywords in my library to something more useful... that's a big project, so I still have crappy tags on the website till I update all the images. But, at least the page works! lol
I do some rather generic keywording on import into Lightroom. It's helpful if I want to do a quick collection of all my wedding photos or senior portraits, etc., but I don't get specific down to the individual image level. The amount of time I would spend doing that vs. the amount of time it might save me isn't worth it.
Valent Lau
Posts: 123
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
I've given up as there is no standard for sorting keywords. If your library software goes broke you loose them. If you move your files you loose them. If you rename a file you loose them.
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