Very constructive!

Since my post, I’m now using Adobe Lightroom 2 which allows for a nice balance between embedded metadata and an external database.

Further: Pulling the data out of the file is slow, especially compared to a database. The ideal solution is to have belt and suspenders: It’s in a database for fast access, it’s embedded in the picture tags for robustness. So you work with your images in the database, but your software has a separate application that can run in background or as a service/daemon that syncs the database and the pictures.

Good DAM needs a couple other features:

1. If I copy an image, the information gets copied with it. With embedded tags, this happens automatically.

2. If I edit an image, the system needs to figure out what was done.
* Adjusting tonal values — processing tag changes, subject tags don’t change.
* Resize. Diminsion tags, and posibly suitibility tags change.
* Light Crop — Amber warning. Subject tags may change.
* Heavy Crop — Red warning. Subject tags almost certain to change.

For these warning situations, the two images should be presented to the editor and ask to verify the tags.

3. External programs. Dealing with other programs that can rummage trough the same filing system is tricky. This is one reason that embedded tags are preferred. Some external programs play fast and loose with metadata. Cautious testing required.

A valuable feature in a DAM program is the ability to copy/paste metadata. Some metadata you want to apply to a group of pix. E.g.
You want to say that ALL of this folder should be tagged “Yugoslavia 2008″ Or if you used Photoshop to turn a color print into a black and white pic, you want to copy most of the metadata from the original to the copy.

Good DAM systems allow flexible keyword=value tags. For example, you may require that every photo has a value for the keyword “Location” This forces you to explicitly say that it is ‘unknown’ if you don’t know. With GPS enabled cameras this will be increasingly rare, but it will still be necessary to translate 48.999932 -115.334821 to “Grandmother’s farm”

If you run a tree farm (as I do.) you want a keyword “species” for a lot of your pictures. It should be able to take multiple values (If you have a mixed group of spruce and fir…)

I’m finding that the more metadata I can assign to a photo, the more useful the photo becomes. If a picture is worth a thousand words than a picture with metadata is worth a million.

The template for this blog is available at WooThemes and it’s called Fresh News.

I’ve been using Photoshop Elements Organizer with some success, but fear the problem that you cite: It doesn’t store the hierarchical tags in the photo itself.

Further, I run Linux, so finding exactly what I want is often difficult (that’s not to say that there’s not great stuff on Linux — au contraire — just not for this particular use-case.

Keep us all posted!

-Tim

Since I wrote this article, I’ve been informed of The Metadata Working Group which is a consortium of some companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Canon, Nokia and Sony.

The main purpose of this group is to clean out the mess mentioned in my post. To that effect, a guideline has been published in September 2008. Alas, at the end of page 32 of this guideline, it says:

« Hierarchical keywords are not covered. However it’s well understood that this is an important use case even in the context of the consumer and will be added to future versions of this document. There are existing solutions available e.g. Adobe Bridge, Adobe Lightroom as well as Microsoft Expression Media and Windows Live Photo Gallery that have introduced hierarchical keyword workflows specific to their needs. »

I guess it will take some months before they act on this problem and set a standard for hierarchical keywords.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a free solution and that you’re on a Windows box, I would go for Windows Live Photo Gallery where hierarchical keywords is neatly implemented!

Thanks for your comments!

I just wish I could find some free (or cheap) hierarchical tagging software that saves the tags in the photo files.

Thanks for the article…

-TS