Useful Stuff

RAW Workflow 2

  OK, I know a little bit more about the workflow now... this is a continuation of the post on my new RAW workflow.

   A. Because DNG files carry keywords with them when saved as JPG, the next step should be to assign your keywords before creating the JPG files, otherwise you'll double your work. I'm using Photo Mechanic, which is favored by the news industry. I'm now in the process of building what they call Structured Keywords, which is a hierarchically-arranged list of keywords. This means that you can have thousands of available keywords, but only have to look at a handful at any given moment. This is an extremely cool feature, far more powerful than anything I've seen in Adobe's Lightroom. Lightroom has a much prettier interface, but it's amazingly slow compared to Photo Mechanic, and requires you to add all your images into its database, a process that could take hours, while PM just loads individual folders as needed.

   I should note that I've been contemplating building an image database for years, but it's always been such a daunting task that I've put it off for another day. But Structured Keywords eliminates the need for an outside database (with all its potential linking problems, size, etc.) and allows me to put keywords and other IPTC metadata directly into the image itself, so that the images themselves become the records in the database. And because this is an industry standard, lots of entities use the same metadata. I use Zenfolio to host my photos online, for example. Once I get keywords on my images and get them uploaded, anyone on Zenfolio can find my images if they search for a keyword I've used. I'm not sure if this also works when searching outside of Zenfolio (like with Google) or not, but suspect that it might.

   B. After keywords and other metadata are added, I will create JPG files from all of the images I want to upload or otherwise distribute. The reason for waiting until afterwards is because PhotoShop (the software I use to create the JPG file) saves the metadata to the JPG, too... so it makes for half the work.

   I'll post more info on this workflow as I develop it further.

Image Keywords

  I've finally got my keyword system running... I first blogged about it in Image Management Breakthrough a few months ago. Later, I blogged about my image taxonomy, but that was before I bought a taxonomy from Controlled Vocabulary. What's an image taxonomy? It's a system of classifying and arranging things. As you might guess, I've spent a lot of time since then weaving the Controlled Vocabulary taxonomy into my own. It takes a bit of time to but the entire world into order. My top-level categories, FWIW, are:

Architecture

Art

Building

Creature

Environment

Event

Issue

Location

Object

Plant

Scene

Texture

Thoroughfare

Transportation

   Obviously, this taxonomy is built around architecture and urbanism, as some of the categories would never be top-level in a comprehensive system. But that's the important thing... having a taxonomy that works for you. Because the point is to be able to put the proper keywords in place as quickly as possible. Here's how my system works at this moment:

   I do all my keywording in Photo Mechanic, which I'm growing to love more all the time. It's similar to Lightroom, but while I'm normally a big Adobe fan, this is one instance where a competing product is clearly better, faster, and more nimble.

   I begin by selecting all images in a folder, which in my system, means that they all were shot in the same location. I click Command-I, which brings up the IPTC Stationery Pad. It already contains my name, copyright, and contact info... all I need to do is to select the location under Keywords. My taxonomy includes Continent, Nation, State or Province, County or Region, City, and where applicable, Neighborhood (or other notable feature.) This is the first pass.

   Next, I go through the images of buildings, selecting all buildings of the same type, and assigning the appropriate keywords, where the top levels of my taxonomy are:

Building

    Massing (subcategories not shown)

    Part (subcategories not shown)

    Type

Agriculture (subcategories not shown)

Attachment (subcategories not shown)

Business (subcategories not shown)

Civic (subcategories not shown)

Curious

Education (subcategories not shown)

Industry (subcategories not shown)

Infrastructure (subcategories not shown)

Live/Work (subcategories not shown)

Medical (subcategories not shown)

Mixed Use (subcategories not shown)

Recreation (subcategories not shown)

Religious (subcategories not shown)

Residential (subcategories not shown)

   This is where Photo Mechanic really shines. If you do all further keywording after setting the location using the Image:Structured Keywords panel (Command-Option_K) then the program very intelligently lays the new keywords over the existing so long as you do this: First, click Clear to clear out the current keyword collection which will still be there from the last ones you did. Then drill down to the bottom level keyword you're looking for... maybe it's Building, Type, Business, Retail, [Product], Food, Grocery. Click Add Path. This adds the entire path above except [Product] because square brackets around a word mean that it's just a category, and categories don't get added into the path. So clicking Add Path will add Building, Type, Business, Retail, Food, Grocery to the keyword collection. Then click Apply Path to Selected. This is very important... if you do this, it will add these keywords to your existing keywords for each selected image, rather than replacing them. This allows you to select every image in a folder with a certain characteristic and layer that on. Also, if there's both a grocery store in the picture and also a coffee shop, when you come back and drill down to Building, Type, Business, Food Service, Cafe and do what's described above, it will just add Food Service, Cafe to the end of the existing keywords, rather than adding the entire chain and therefore having duplicates. Very smart, Photo Mechanic! Thanks!

Image Management Breakthrough

Some photo experts may know this already, but this is a seriously big deal for me, liable to save countless hours and also make my work more secure. Here's what's up:

   I'm now beginning to load my photo libraries onto Zenfolio, but massive numbers of images are almost useless to anyone except me if they're not searchable. I've thought about building a database in FileMaker or some other program, but it would be massive, and any proprietary database would have other problems, too. Recently, while working on the Original Green Blog, I've been learning about Tags, and how to make a "tag cloud." This afternoon, it occurred to me: what would happen if I could just tag my photos on Zenfolio? I did some checking, and sure enough, they have a feature called Keywords that allows you to apply tags, or keywords, to each photo.

   Great progress, but there were problems. First, I could be tagging for years... and what if Zenfolio goes out of business? All my work would go with it. Too big a risk. And then it occurred to me... when you click Get Info on an image file on a Mac, there's several pieces of info that come up concerning the photo (image size, date shot, exposure time, focal length, etc.) And then I got to wondering if there might be a place in all this data to store keywords? So I started Googling... and hit the jackpot! There's an organization called the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) that developed the standard for all that photo data... and yes, they do have a field for Keywords! An a lot of other really cool stuff, too. So that solved the problem of where to put the data... just attach it to the photo itself, rather than using any type of proprietary database software.

   But there were other problems... how do you attach all that info in an efficient manner? Keying it all in one image at a time would take just short of forever... which means it would be too daunting to ever tackle. So I started Googling again. At first, I ran across a lot of blog posts saying that there was no good IPTC metadata editor for the Mac. But I kept digging and finally found Photo Mechanic. I've downloaded a trial version, but from what I can tell in the past hour of playing with it, it gives you access to the full range of IPTC metadata for each image... and it allows batch processing! That means I can just click on the thumbnails of the photos I want, then apply the keywords to all of the selected images. HUGE time-saver.

   One last piece of the puzzle: getting that info on the web. I also looked at Flickr (once I knew what I was looking for) and from what I could find, it appears that Flickr doesn't have a good way of extracting the IPTC keywords. But Zenfolio (who I'm already hosting with) appears to do it automatically!

   I can't describe how exciting this is... I've worked for years to figure out a way to make the image information easily accessible and durable... and the method was embedded in the images all along! Makes me wonder how many other cool things are sitting right under our noses...

Time Machine Update

   I had been using Time Machine to do our backups for a little less than a month when the first backup disk filled up. I'm embarrassed because I hadn't counted all the disks in the office that need to be backed up, and 2 terabytes of disk space on the laCie 4Big Quadra simply wasn't enough. Fortunately, the laCie return window hadn't yet closed, and I hadn't even opened the box of the second drive. So I was able to pay the difference and get a couple of 6 terabyte drives instead.

   The problem stemmed from Time Machine's voracious appetite. If you have an external disk plugged into any machine being backed up, it'll assume you want to back up the external disk unless you explicitly tell it you don't. That's generally a good thing in a backup setting, because you'd prefer to catch too much stuff rather than not enough. But just make sure you have enough disk space to support the habit.

   One other thing... my Catalog of the Most-Loved Places had outgrown the 350 gig laCie Rugged drive I carry around with me, so I got a 500 gig Rugged for the images, freeing up the 350 gig drive. It occurred to me on a recent trip that because the drive is nearly double the size of the hard drive on my MacBook Pro 17, it should work for a Time Machine backup. Sure enough, it works like a charm! Then when I get back home, I simply switch disks in the Time Machine control panel, and I'm backing up to the office 4Big Quadra instead.