10 Replies Latest reply: Feb 9, 2008 4:22 PM by (M._Mayer) RSS

    DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location

    SimonTindemans Community Member
      Lightroom currently presents the user with two independent methods to assign photos to a hierarchical structure: collections and keywords. Unless I missed something, keywords do everything that collections do, and more.

      In addition, there is one structure that is inherently hierarchical, but is not currently implemented as such: the IPTC (metadata) location. For instance, the city of Amsterdam lies in the province of North Holland in The Netherlands, so entering Amsterdam in the 'City' field implies a province and a country.

      Based on these observations, I have a couple of suggestions:
      * Enhance the usability of collections with a few of the keyword features: listing all assigned collections upon selection, and dragging collections onto photos to assign.
      * Allow users to convert collection trees to keyword trees, and possibly back (convenient for import/export, or changing ones mind as to what paradigm to use).
      * Allow users to either export a keyword tree to the IPTC location fields, or to make a dynamic link between the two (i.e. updating the keyword would immediately affect the location data). This feature would also require an 'exclusivity swith', see below.
      * Introduce an 'exclusivity switch' for keywords or collections, implying that you may only assign *one* keyword in its sub-tree to any particular image. This makes sense for location, because an image was made in a particular location, but it can also be used other contexts. For example, to indicate where the latest version of a file has been backed up to, or what the status (imported, selected, processed, finished) of a file is.
      * Introduce dynamic collections *and* dynamic keywords. I have read things about query-based dynamic collections coming to Lightroom, but please also create 'dynamic keywords'. This would allow keywords to remain the catch-all organization structure, instead of dividing functionality across collections and keywords.

      I think these features could make a significant contribution to Lightroom's DAM capabilities. If implemented alongside improved search capabilities, they would allow me (and possibly others) to stop using my stand-alone DAM application.

      Simon
        • 1. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
          john beardsworth Community Member
          What you have missed is that collections, as well as being individual workflow rather than public-facing like keywords, also store information about the collective output (certainly Web and Slideshow too IIRC). So I don't think we should blur the line between collections and keywords, but should enhance it. For instance, Collections should have flags indicating that they have Web and other output properties (eg Books) attached.

          I do think you make good points - eg drag and drop of locations (a different issue?), conversion between collections and keywords, exclusivity for collections. You overlooked the lack of custom fields - like collections, they provide users with alternatives to polluting their keywords with workflow entries.

          What you are mainly addressing is locations and keywords - collections are really a side issue. Maybe what we need is a preference "automatically export locations as keywords"? And then each location would have an Edit dialog where you can enter its synonyms? This seems neater than changing the Edit Keyword dialog so it includes a setting that connects the keyword to an existing location (it would have to deal with multiple Amsterdams).

          Also, we need metadata presets to remember that keywords are metadata. So you might have an Amsterdam preset that also populates the keywords.

          I'm not convinced what would be gained by dynamic keywords - dynamic collections are a must - so can you explain more what you mean? And what would they add in terms of locations, given other approaches such as those I've raised? My feeling is that more would be gained by adding a rich scripting interface where adding a keyword is a trigger or event - so users could make Lightroom do all sorts of things (not just descriptive metadata or locations) if they chose a particular keyword.

          John
          • 2. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
            SimonTindemans Community Member
            John, I had forgotten the fact that keywords do not have any output settings associated with them, unlike collections. I support your idea of indicating which collections have these settings attached to them.

            Still, except for this point, keywords can currently be made to do the same things that collections do. You can even keep them private by choosing not to export certain keywords. Note that even though this is the case, I do not ask for the abolishment of collections per se, because it is convenient to maintain the *conceptual* difference (in addition to the output metadata in collections).

            On the locations, I don't think the 'problem' is solved simply by exporting the location data to a keyword tree. It's the other direction that would greatly speed up the workflow. For example, dragging Amsterdam (potentially one of many Amsterdams) onto an image, would automatically assign the higher level fields as well. A metadata preset would indeed do the same, but only after one has created such a preset for every location, which can quickly add up.

            Also, I did not mean to imply that dynamic keywords would be beneficial for keeping track of the location metadata. In general, dynamic categories (collections or keywords) are very useful for saving searches or keeping track of an internal workflow (like: if an image is not in a backup collection, it is not backed up). Specifically, I can imagine someone wanting to couple a search result to an exported keyword. For example, for a personal website or a Flickr account, you may want to tag images with the keyword '5stars' that is automatically generated.

            The way I see it, there is currently no real difference in the logical structures that can be constructed using collections and keywords. The distinctions between the two are in the input or output phase. It would be a shame to see the logical capabilities of collections enhanced with 'smart' collections, whilst leaving keywords behind.

            By the way, I'm all for a scripting interface, but I think that it's best to get the basics implemented in the right way first.

            Simon

            PS - You pointed out the existence of custom fields as a workflow solution. I have no experience with them, and don't have access to Lightroom on this machine, so I'll get back on that later.
            • 3. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
              john beardsworth Community Member
              Simon

              I agree there's currently little conceptual difference between keywords and collections. But that's because collections are, in the absence of "smart" user-definable queries, pretty dumbed down.

              I'm still unclear what exactly you mean by "dynamic keywords". But if it meant that you could define a keyword so it was dynamically populated with "5 star images with keyword including weddings and ..." then that would further confuse what keywords are for. It's including personal workflow, in this case a star rating, in what should be a purely descriptive property of the image that has public meaning. using keywords this way has been an ugly kludge - eg in Lightroom before 1.1 introduced virtual copy names, or in data interchange between programs where keywords are a common language. But we simply shouldn't be encouraging people to pollute keywords with non-descriptive data.

              "It would be a shame to see the logical capabilities of collections enhanced with 'smart' collections, whilst leaving keywords behind."
              This is really where we differ. Development work on keywording needs to focus on input efficiency and consistency (eg spell checking), not on further blurring the distinction with collections (which should be enhanced) or encouraging bad practice.

              John

              ps Drag and drop to/from the metadata browser is something that has been discussed. Personally I'd prefer a dedicated Location panel (actually I'd really prefer to drag and drop to/from a zoomable map).
              • 4. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
                SimonTindemans Community Member
                >I'm still unclear what exactly you mean by "dynamic keywords". But if it meant that you could define a keyword so it was dynamically populated with "5 star images with keyword including weddings and ..." then that would further confuse what keywords are for. It's including personal workflow, in this case a star rating, in what should be a purely descriptive property of the image that has public meaning.

                I agree with your basic premise, but what I'm saying is that sometimes you want to have a *public* (i.e. exportable) property that derives from a logical query. In particular, I mentioned Flickr, which many people are using as a sort of online photo club. During the upload process, it can transform keywords into tags, and these tags can then be used for sorting and selection purposes. For example, you could define the following keyword to appear as a tag (in pseudocode):

                BestOfIndia = rating>=4 AND location.India

                Obviously, this particular example is not something you'd want to do for submissions to stock houses, but I'm not convinced that the need for such 'smart' keywords would never arise.

                >But we simply shouldn't be encouraging people to pollute keywords with non-descriptive data.

                Another option, that would probably address both our concerns, would be to allow users to mark specific collections (maybe only the smart ones) for export. In this way, they could be made to act like keywords, for *export only*. They would specifically have to turn on the export function, so it wouldn't pollute the files either.

                Simon
                • 5. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
                  As I highlighted in an earlier request WRT smarter management of locations, a proper location taxonomy would provide other benefits.

                  1. It could catch assignment errors where people could accidentally assign the incorrect State/Province to a City.

                  2. It could make geocoding (assigning latitude and longitude to EXIF information) easier. If the location is managed as a proper hierarchy, then if I have the following IPTC Location say 123 Main Street, Anytown, AProvince, SomeCountry, then I could assign a latitude/longitude to that specific location, and anytime I tag an image with that IPTC combination, that doesn't have EXIF lat/long, Lr could assign the EXIF lat/long by looking up the location hierarchy.
                  • 6. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
                    Why don't keywords have any output settings available? i want to be able to display the associated keywords beside each image and whilst viewing the thumbnail image in the index.

                    At the moment, the only way i see of working around this obvious oversight, is to manually mimic all of the keywords relating to each image into the IPTC Caption field, and then Custom Text output the "Keywords: {Caption}" on the image page.

                    However, this still doesn't solve the problem of viewing keywords on the index page.

                    Any help?
                    • 7. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
                      Gavin, I totally agree with your suggestion of smarter management of locations. Especially integrating the location with geocoding would make geocoding so much easier.

                      As keywords are not created from location fields when exporting to SmugMug (as opposed to Flickr, where keywords are created from country, state/province and city on upload) the only way to find photos based on location is geotagging (or manually entering location BOTH in the location IPTC fields AND as keywords).

                      I also agree that there needs to be some kind of integration between location and keywords (which kinda disqualifies my argument for deriving geocoding from location, although that is still very useful when wanting to find photos on a map).

                      Lastly, I think that being able to enter location or city would automatically fill in state/province and country if the same location or city already has been used before.

                      Of course, if a location or city is named the same in different provinces or countries, the latter two should be possible to override. And in this case auto-filling state/province and country naturally wouldn't work.

                      Just my $0.02
                      • 8. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
                        Community Member
                        Bump. Mac OS X 10.5 is going to support lat/long EXIF metadata.

                        http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#preview

                        > GPS Metadata Support
                        > Get real information from your photos. If your image has embedded GPS
                        > metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that perfect photo was
                        > taken. Open the Image inspector and select GPS. Preview pinpoints the
                        > location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can
                        > even open the GPS location in Google Maps.
                        • 9. Re: DAM: integrate/harmonize Collections, Keywords and IPTC location
                          As a smugmug user, this would be handy feature.

                          madcar.smugmug.com