How to use barcodes to instantly find images on your computer?

<p>Is there a way to generate a barcode for each image in a folder automatically and produce a corresponding peel and stick label or digitally paste the barcode at the bottom of each picture?. I'll be shooting 1000 kids on a proof system and would like to use barcodes to make finding thier file quicker when filling their order. <br>

Some pro labs have a system, however one has to manually click on each photo to "connect" the picture to the corresponding barcode. If the individual doing the clicking misses a picture or inadvertantly skips a picture the rest will be mis-matched resulting in a mess.</p>

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<p>I recommend a DAM (Digital Asset Management) book.</p>

<p>I know, you probably didn't like that answer. I don't either, but there's nothing else I'm aware to make easier what you're dealing with.</p>

<p>John, I'm not sure if this will work for your situation, but you can download free barcode fonts (such as <strong>c39hrp36dltt</strong>). If you're using Windows, replace the ICON font in the display settings with the barcode font (at least temporarily). You can then see in the folder window the equivalent barcode for each file name like the screen capture below. If you're using a Mac, I can't help but there might be a way to change the system font. Hope this sparks something for you.</p><div></div>

<p>Ed, very interesting. Never heard of these fonts. Pretty cool.</p>

<p>Wonder in what display form (i.e. print or LCD screen) can they be scannable?</p>

How do you envision people using te bar codes. I'm not certain that this will solve your problem.

 

Perhaps instead give each kid a unique code that consists of the grade, home room teacher and a number.

<p>This is kind of a dumb question but ... can the proof system print the file name at the bottom of the proof picture? If so, can you specify the font? If you can, specify one of the bar code fonts (like 3 of 9)</p>

Rent a Canon 7DSV, that is what it is designed for.

<p>I can't find out where to Purchase a 7dsv. both bh and adorama show up 0 results when I search. further more it seems that I'd have to scan a pre-prepared barcode with the kids data before taking his picture. this isn't what I need. that would slow down the shoot to a crawl. All I need is a barcode generated for each shot. say for example the name of the picture is dsc_01 I'd like this to be change to a barcode. it would then be printed on the back of the picture or at the bottom like when one prints a contact sheet through photoshop. when the kid returns the proof i'd scan the barcode on his proof which would bring up his picture and his package could be ordered. This seems simple enough. </p>

<p>I'd be wary of the 'quick' solution of just representing the file name as a barcode using a font. Barcodes tend to expect to be numeric, so if they're representing a file name, then the digit they produce from an alpha character may be somewhat random.<br>

I don't think there's any reliable quick method - you need to generate the bar codes yourself with reference to a look-up table of file names versus code numbers.<br>

You may want to look at QR codes also as they're replacing bar codes for many applications, can be any alpha/numeric character (and a lot more such as urls)</p>

<p>John, I tried to print a contact sheet through Lightroom 3 using the bar code font but I could not find how to change the standard font in Lightroom. It may not be possible with that software (but may work in Photoshop). This might be only half the battle, though. You would need a way (a script or macro?) that takes input from a bar code scanner plugged into your PC and runs a search to find the right file. I'm sure it could be done but that's a bit out of my league.</p>

<p>Does this work ...?<br>

A. Johnny comes up for his picture and hands you a notecard (name, date, etc.).</p>

<p>B. You have pre-printed labels and you put one on the card that will corresspond to the camera file number. (presuming each and every kid gets one shot). You keep the card with the name/address or school which then allows the proof prints to get to the parents.)</p>

<p>C. You print out proofs DSC-4400 thru 4479. You stick the 2nd copy of that same label on the proof picture (obviously need to keep things in 1-2-3-4-5 order). The proof gets sent to Johnny's parents (or the school).<br>

D. Johnny's family wants a picture. They tell you it is "<em><strong>DSC_4555_XYZ.Co</strong></em>" ... whatever (suffix optional).</p>

<p>E. You get to that file and work your magic and make the sale.</p>

<p>Cumbersome perhaps and totally non-elegant, I admit. A program like Avery DesignerPro (free download) has the ability to print sequential serial numbers to a sheet of return labels, e.g.</p>

<p>In my factory we serialize a part with the box that it goes into this way (one label on the part, the other eventually on the box).</p>

<p>Sample print out below (would be an 8.5 x 11 sheet).</p>

<p>Jim</p><div></div>

<p>Oh yeah ...<br>

Barcode 39 allows for the following characters only -<br>

<strong>01234567890 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ .,%$-/ </strong>and the space character.</p>

<p>The code can be of any length. It's an older style but used an awful lot still for legability's sake.<br>

You can download fonts from the web. They function like any other font, e.g. Arial, New Times Roman, etc. and allow for them to be used in any application that has access to Windows fonts.<br>

As mentioned a barcode scanner would need some software to be able to integrate with a process.</p>

<p>Jim</p>

<p>When I bought my barcode scanner a few years ago, it came with a manual that showed what kinds of bar codes it was automatically compatible with. The scanner hardware itself will interpret the code and return the value as a string. It'll be to the computer just like typing the characters with a keyboard. It'll often be recognized by the computer as a keyboard device.</p>

<p>When I scan a code in to a terminal or word processing program, the string is printed exactly as if it were typed in by the keyboard. When I write simple programs to receive keyboard input, they accept the bar code scanner just as if I am typing on the laptop's keyboard itself. In effect, the bar code scanner is a keyboard input device to the computer.</p>

<p>So, the bar coding is just a mechanically quicker means of entering the same types of numbers you might type yourself. This is kind of an elementary but very important point about the inventorying systems because the real work of instantaneously finding something on your computer will rest with the software scripting or finding process itself. The bar codes and scanners just make the input mechanically easier if you have a lot of them to do. The real work will rest with coordinating everything.</p>

<p>If you want to generate your own bar codes, there are programs that can do that for you; I mean besides the integrated features that may be in this other inventorying software y'all are talking about. I mention this because I used to see ads where companies would charge upwards of $100 for pre-printed rolls of bar code stickers and such; they usually accompanied inventory software sales; those kinds of things had limited utility. When I saw those ads it looked to me like people needed some scripting or basic computer programming help more than one or two rolls of preprinted stickers. These are tasks you can learn to do yourself if you don't already have software that's going to do it for you.</p>

<p>So, in and out, years ago the hardware was capable of handling 13 different kinds of code systems straight out of the box. I could only afford the cheapest of technologies: average cost for that was $35 for a little USB reader that plugged into a computer. Nowadays, I think my little sister has a phone with a QR scanner that provides this kind of technology as part of the phone itself.</p>

<p>I don't know a lot about the pro-photo-related databases, but I suspect that you might need to look around for prefabricated programs that will do this type of stuff for you. Those are probably the DAMs Tim was referring to, above. Programming a database for a business can sometimes be a big deal. I mean a big deal as in: it could take over a year. It's plausible to learn to be able to do a quickie table in a weekend. Most businesses, though, don't need the quickie table. They need the mammoth digital inventory that grows into its own monster much more quickly than its owners initially imagined.</p>

<p>In order to get that growth to go right, it needs to be stable. If it's not planned well, then all of a sudden the "find it fast" computer program becomes its own unsolvable maze. Part of what you're paying for in an inventorying system is the idea that, hopefully, a good programmer gave you a good lead on building up the structure of those file systems. If you only have a few hundred, then maybe a scanner and a common search of your hard drive will work. If you have filing cabinets full of this stuff to digitize per year, you need to think about getting professional help.</p>

<p>If you have a real commercial need for this library, then you have a real need for a programmer. The most likely way you can get a programmer to help you is to buy a prefabricated program that does this kind of stuff.</p>

<p>I recommend books by a guy named "Pratt" if you're going to do any SQL. He was a leader in textbook writing on SQL since the early 90s. I think he's from Ohio or Michigan. Some other writers like Peter Chen and E.F. Codd wrote some stuff about organizing databases, but they are so abstract that they're not good beginner documents. </p>

<p>Beware that database construction can be such an involved topic that you can pick up a master's in Computer Science on it. It could be real easy to get sucked in to a project that never ends if you insist on doing this by yourself for yourself. One of the first database concepts you might run into are groups of ideas about "normalizing" the database; these are do-able topics to learn about, but as you can see they can involve many hours of planning to get it right enough to be a commercially stable solution built to last for many years. These days, there has got to be a prefabricated set of software packages out there for you.</p>

<p>Overall, you may want to plink around and read up. This will be more of choosing the kind you want and coordinating its implementation before you carry it out on a large file collection. Set yourself some limits if you are going to try this yourself.</p>

<p>Coincidentally, this website is one of the better photo databases on the face of the Earth. It doesn't use bar codes to find pictures. If they added bar codes, though, it wouldn't matter much because they built the database to third and fourth normal form. The searching mechanisms are programmed to smoothly provide effective answers. Notice that we don't see amateurish problems like duplicates, cartesian products, extraordinarily long search durations, unpolished jumbles of answers, and so on. Those kinds of things are examples of what can go wrong if you build it yourself and do a clunky job. It's the structure, more than the search data, that makes the database's operation smooth and stable. Photo.net is an example of good, stable database structure. At least, that's the way it looks on the user's side.</p>

<p>If you had a scanner, the absolute simplest way to try it out for file finding would be to save a file with a number that matches a code. Then go to your existing "Search" function for that hard drive. Put your cursor in the blank like you were about to type the number. Scan it in. You should probably see the number appear in the text field. See if the computer finds the file or not. This would be a very basic example of bar code searches.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Let me warn you, though: beware trying to use that simple trick more than occasionally. It'll work for some pictures in a small collection. If you have to wait a few minutes for an answer sometimes, who cares? However, in a commercial system, primary key search data will be controlled programmatically. You will want it assigned programmatically when it's coordinating multiple objects: like, the multiple objects of computer files, some bar code on a card and a customer account order, and so on.</p>

<p>The first time an id number gets mis-assigned: that's when your database begins to contain false information. So, the actual moment of assigning an id number to a file and to a bar code will often be done programmatically.</p>

<p>If you just arbitrarily assign the id number yourself, and the first search fails to return the correct answer, what then? Will you know the answer is wrong? Will that be hidden from a customer? And so on.</p>

<p>Did you have customer account information coordinated with the image file in a way that lets you find the picture if your special id number fails to get the image you want? If the expected primary search term fails, what about other ways of getting the data? And, how are those tables going to be kept straight? Not just on initial entry, but on subsequent updates and edits: how will the database remain searchable and stable and efficient? All of those ideas go back to database design.</p>

<p>If you just put each job in its own file, then after a while you will amass many files. If it's a few a month, then it's no problem. If it's hundreds of photos per job, many times a month, many months a year: then you end up with the same "flat file" organization problems businesses had before using DBMSs.</p>

<p>So, just beware. Yeah, your hard drive is, in a sense, a database already made. It has searches. It has files. Yeah, you can take that bar code and scan it in next to the search icon. If you named the files to match, it could go okay. But, should you bet your paycheck on that? It depends. You're in charge of your computer over there. Good luck.</p>

<p>client of mine normally simply use a personal code like #schoolwhatever_date_grade00_01</p>