Re: Digital Photo Management?
- From: Paul Allen <"paul dot l dot allen at comcast dot net">
- Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 17:08:39 -0700
Jeremy wrote:
"PeteD" <peter.dawson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1145567904.451238.265160@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
What I am concerned about is doing a whole load of work tagging images
then at some point in the future using different management software
which cannot recognise the tags. I understand how fast this game is
changing!!
I use the tried-and-true system of filing each image by date--in subdirectories of year and month. A photo I took on April 20, 2006 might be named as follows:
20060420 XXXX Birthday Party 01
This system has its drawbacks, but at least it is possible to locate a photograph based on knowing approximately when it was taken. Prior to digital imaging, chronological filing was an accepted method of storing negs and prints.
I just now needed an image to test a noise reduction plugin on. I
remembered some shots I attempted of the night sky from the Roza
Recreation Site in the Yakima Canyon. No idea what year that was,
but fortunately my image database lets me add tags such as where a
shot was taken. In about half a second I had a thumbnail view of
all the images I've ever taken from that place. Being able to add
arbitrary tags to images is really useful.
Like you, I have agonized over metadata--and I sense intuitively that all that work will end up going down the drain, as new cataloging programs are developed. At least the descriptive file names, coupled with the date taken, will remain. Everything else might change, but the filename must remain.
The work can't go down the drain if you use software that stores
metadata in an open format. Stashing it away in the image EXIF
structure is one possibility. I use an XML file, and am thinking
of replicating the tag data in each image's EXIF comment field.
That way, if I screwed up and lost the XML file I could reconstruct
it from the images themselves. And if I really screw up and lose
my software, I can easily recreate it because the format of the
XML data is known.
The way to avoid having all your metadata go down the drain is to
avoid software that stores your data in a secret format that you
can't get at without that particular software. It would be best
to use an open standard format that was implemented by multiple
suppliers, but I don't think image cataloging is that far along
yet. Stashing metadata in EXIF is using an open standard, but it
doesn't scale well at all. Embedding tags in filenames has similar
limitations. Imagine searching a terabyte of images for all the
ones with a particular tag. A relational database (or an XPath
query over an XML DOM) can do this in less than a second.
Paul Allen
.
- References:
- Digital Photo Management?
- From: PeteD
- Re: Digital Photo Management?
- From: Jeremy
- Digital Photo Management?
- Prev by Date: Re: Moon shot trivia
- Next by Date: Re: tripod monopod substitute ???
- Previous by thread: Re: Digital Photo Management?
- Next by thread: Re: Digital Photo Management?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
