Tagging photos with keywords and later finding them

<p>Hello,<br>

I got my first D-type Nikon three months ago. I have a collection of manual focus and af- lenses. There is no problem with them.<br>

As my digital file collection is increasing I need some method to keep them in line. Folder structure alone may not be enough for a long run.<br>

I have a master classification - folder structure - based on dates. I use naming conventions to aid recognition later.<br>

As I am using Capture NX 2, I am able to give ratings - stars - to picture files. Also I am able to define keywords and assign them to a selection of files. These keywords are tags. ( Use CNX2 coloured labels to make a suitable selection and then I give appropriate keywords for the selection.)<br>

Assigned keywords and ratings are shown on Win7 photo files in MyPhotos library. I am able to sort a folder content based on a rating or by tags.<br>

Win7 claims that search by a tag is possible.<br>

However, I am not able to search a file by a tag or by a rating.<br>

How to solve this problem, if possible, using the tools that I already have?<br>

<br /><br /><br>

Cheers Kari</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Windows 7 basic search function can easily find <strong><em>embedded keywords in JPG file</em></strong>s. I use it to great advantage.<br /> In other image formats, not. I use Photoshop Bridge to add keywords to all of my image files (raw and jpg).<br>

<br /> All of my photo image files (over 140,000 and growing) are in a large folder structure (by year for the past 20+ years) and then by date within each year, more or less. Finding photo subjects over the years thru the simple Win 7 search is a trivial action.</p>

<p>So Ken, out of 140,000 images how do you remember what you have so you know what to enter in a search? And how would you know if one went missing due to minor hard drive corruption?</p>

<p>Like for example some one calls you up and asks for a copy of an image you shot 5 years ago of some dude in a red shirt holding a weird looking fishing pole. Would you have used keywords/tags like "weird fishing pole and red shirt"? Now if you did and there wasn't anyone to remind you to look that up using those terms, how would you have remembered you had such a shot? You would've had to wait ages for someone to call you up asking for a copy using those descriptive words.</p>

<p>It boggles my mind culling through my 1000 or so images I've shot so far in the past 4 years. I can't imagine rummaging through 140,000. It seems we've created a monster sized database to keep us working overtime just to keep track of it all. If I lost one image out my 1000 I wouldn't even know it went missing. You know, out of sight and out of mind kind of thing.</p>

<p>That's a very good point, Tim, and shows how completely dependent we are on appropriate keywording, and even if we are diligent at this, one still shouldn't expect 100% retrieval success (ie, no false positives and no false negatives) without some input from human memory, without grunt work like successive refining of the search based on the results of initial searches, etc..</p>

<p>I can't imagine entering keywords for every single image I take, but I do enter KWs for groups of photos, and, in fact, also (ie, redundantly) enter date and event info as an integral part of my directory structure.</p>

<p>So, if you asked *me* for that photo, I'd probably enter a broad date range (eg, "over 5 years ago" - in case my memory about the date is wrong) and just one or two broad keywords, e.g., "fishing" instead of "fishing pole", and maybe a second, fairly broad event based KW such as "vacation". I would then be presented with a reasonably small set of thumbnails that I can quickly scan through by eye.</p>

<p>My archive is probably about the same size as Ken's, so, for fun, using Extensis Portfolio, I ran the search {"5 to 10 years ago" AND "fishing" AND "vacation"} on my archive. In a second or two, it came up with 38 hits ( ... I obviously don't do much fishing ;-) ). One of them is attached below, a shot of my daughter in 2002 on Fuji NPH 400 (or it's predecessor) fishing. Skimming through the thumbnails by eye, I immediately can be quite confident that I don't have any fishing shots with a red shirt or a weird fishing pole.</p>

<p>I find that in archives of this size, constructing searches with a combination of somewhat broad search terms avoids the issue of whether or not I used some highly specific term such as "weird", as a KW, or thought (at that time) that a red shirt was sufficiently important so that I entered this term as a KW. This, however, comes at the price of having to scan through a modest number of thumbnails, but I find this a very reasonable trade-off. In fact, I even do something similar when I am constructing Google searches. It's a minor art form to construct searches that are optimal w.r.t. not missing entries in the archive, but yet, not being deluged with too many irrelevant hits.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>PS - I haven't recently looked at the last of my film shots (ie, from the late '90's through the early 2000's) and after digging up this old family shot was reminded of just how nice emulsions like Fuji NPH and NPZ dealt with skin tones, high contrast situations, etc. That negative was scanned on an old HP s20. Hummm... I may have to dig out my old F100 and buy some film.</p><div></div>

<p>Hello,<br>

So far I am with you.<br>

I did some testing: Win7 did not find anything based on tags if I had .NEF and .JPG files in one folder. Strange!<br>

When I moved the same .JPG files to a dedicated subfolder and tested finding a file by using a tag, it worked. Win7 could easilly fing my tagged file in a .JPG only folder. Win7 did not find anything in a folder above if this folder included .NEFs too.<br>

Actually I'd like to keep .JPGs and .NEFs together. With current understanding I am then not able to make searches based on tags.<br>

Do you have ideas to go around this?</p>

<p>Kari, just to be funny, I'ld suggest maybe you ought to have Google send its spiders to index your entire hard drive considering it can find tons of data indexing millions of servers world wide in just seconds.</p>

<p>Maybe there's a System Preference in Windows that gives it permission to index changes and additions to files that might occur when entering tags. Not sure about this but it might be worded in some dialog box that goes something like..."Index File Contents".</p>

<p>I remember back in Mac OS 9 there was a Disk Utility preference worded similarly that allowed "Find By Content" when doing a Finder search. It was either turned on to do automatically, on a schedule or manually according to a specific folder because it would take a long time to index the entire hard drive and would cause interruptions and slow downs due to limited system resources if set to Auto.</p>

<p>Tom, interesting search test you conducted. Not what I was getting at though. I'm pointing out the elephant in the room concerning how shooting and archiving digitally has created a potential for a lot of content to be buried like a needle in a haystack the larger the databases become.</p>

<p>It really isn't about the amount of content that accumulates through the years that's the problem, it's how to come up with a sorting and naming convention routine that allows fast searches and retrievals when attempting to find that obscure and long forgotten needle in a haystack.</p>

<p>It's kind of like the scene at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where the Ark is buried and hidden among thousands of similarly looking wooden boxes in a huge warehouse.</p>

<p>Professionally and commercially in the ad biz artwork and photography was tagged numbered and associated with an invoice number at least that was the system I was operating under at the time as an employee. There was no reason to pull image slides or artwork from a filing cabinet or flat file unless a client presented an invoice for a reorder. When I had to file artwork I produced for clients usually from clipart or custom it was tough to decide if I should file it under a visual description (graphic of a deer, calligraphy, ornate lettering, etc.) so I could call it up when another client wanted the same type of generic artwork or only associate it with that client's invoice number. </p>

<p>Hobbyists don't use invoice association when organizing their filing and archiving system. They have to use visual descriptions. And dates are really hard to remember when a relative or friend calls up wanting a copy of that one image that was taken long ago. </p>

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>And thank you. There is some progress, but the status remains.<br>

What I found out was that folders created via ViewNX2 are not indexed by default. At least searches do not function in those folders. If I transfer manually (cut&paste) all picture files in one folder to another, manually created, then search is possible.<br>

However I am not able to initiate the indexing altough I have folder->properties->advanced-> allow folder and file content indexing - checked.<br>

And Yes, I did press the button hard enough.</p>

<p>It was actually years (7) ago when I heard about google indexing ones computer content. I did not warm up on that then and not later. Google knows already better than I, what I am missing.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Solved,<br>

Thank you for your contribution. What I could gather was that in a library like MyPictures the indexing should be on by default. It seems that the default did not hold.<br>

I have and I had folder->properties->advanced-> allow folder and file content indexing - checked. It seems that only after unchecking and rechecking of "allow indexing in this folder" restored the situation as it should be - indexing is on.<br>

After activating indexing on the whole ViewNX2 folder I still had one folder without search capability.<br>

So actually I should have not ever been in this not-indexed situation - by default. Have to keep my eye on this PC as I lost one harddrive already.</p>

<p>Hi Tim - I think I understood the point you were getting at, but unfortunately , my first reply was obviously not sufficiently on-target, so let me try again.</p>

<p>After the image archive of an individual photographer grows past a few hundred to a few tens of thousands of images (depending on the memory of the photographer), IMHO, one really should change their POV and regard their own image archive much in the same way as they might regard a stock agency's archive, or even the ever-growing Google Images archive. By this, I mean that one is essentially forced to downgrade their expectations from expecting to be able to find <em>"a single obscure and long forgotten image"</em>, to <em>"let's see if there is anything in my archive close to what I am looking for"</em>. You certainly wouldn't know <em>a priori</em> if there was a image of a fisherman in Getty Images carrying a weird fishing pole and wearing red shirt, and, because of your assumption of being long-forgotten, you can't expect to know if it's in your archive either. The best you can do in both cases is to perform a query on the DB to see if there is anything close to what you are looking for. </p>

<p>What I was getting at in my previous post was to describe a technique, namely, using multiple broad common keywords AND'ed together in the search criteria, followed by a quick visual search through a reasonable number of thumbnails. This way, the first (ie automated) part of your search doesn't exclude images which may include fishermen with the highly specific characteristics you seek (but you didn't bother to include these specific characteristics as keywords when the image was first entered into the system), whereas the second part of the search, ie, a visual scan through a reasonable number of thumbnails will allow you to see if any of the images have exactly what you want.</p>

<p>You are correct that the larger an image archive becomes, the more difficult it can be to find a highly specific image, but with a good keyword entry strategy and a good search strategy one can minimize this. </p>

<p>This is not a simple topic, so I hope that was a bit clearer.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>I find it hard to believe one photographer could accumulate and necessitate 140,000 keepers. But hey, that's just me.</p>

<p>Hey Kari, glad to see you got it worked out. Dang! Can't believe I guessed right on that one. I wasn't even going to mention indexing because I wasn't sure Windows had that feature or if it was possible to index tag/keyword data. I only thought that worked on typed documents.</p>

<p>Wonder if embedded EXIF data can be indexed and made searchable by the OS?</p>

<p>Tim, to my knowledge, tagged keywords only, by OS, like Win7.<br>

As I had trouble in getting the indexing on I found that Microsoft has a repair and checking tool for indexing - MicrosoftFixIt downloadable. So it seems that the indexing may have trouble sometimes in some environments.<br>

-- Kari</p>

<p>Good to know, Kari. This is going to help a lot of others with the same issues who might not have even considered this to be the solution.</p>

<p>Thanks for the updates.</p>

<p><em>I find it hard to believe one photographer could accumulate and necessitate 140,000 keepers. But hey, that's just me.</em></p>

<p>You call them keepers... cool. I call them photos. You never know when one of those 140,000 crap shots are something you need later on for whatever reason, high art or not. I don't do High Art and don't toss non-mistake, well exposed photos. For what reason? Storage is CHEAP. (and correct, folders can have their indexing turned ON or OFF in Win 7)</p>

<p>That's just me too. I also have document files that document where I shoot stuff -- for the past 5-8 years it's incredibly detailed so if I failed on my index searching thru keywords and filenames via Win 7 and can revert to the doc files to pinpoint whereabouts. everything is backed up and files never go missing. (I am a solid I.T. guy, so disk errors, file corruptions never get past me; computer systems are not mystifying in any sense...)</p>

<p>Also, another shout-out to Microsoft's SyncToy for backups to external drives... I've not found anything better:<br /> <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15155">http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15155</a></p>

<p>Never implied "keepers" were high art.</p>

<p>Just wondering why one photographer would need to shoot and archive 140,000 images if they're not even sure whether they're keepers or not. What's being communicated that's never been communicated before that requires that many images?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>You never know when one of those 140,000 crap shots are something you need later on...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If you can remember what they look like and can find them buried among 140,000 ten to twenty years later, that should be the criteria on whether they're keepers. How's that?</p>

<p>Frankly, I don't even want to think about having to cull through that many images to check which are keepers.</p>

<p>Stop me before I build!</p>

<p>Since Macs were mentioned, thought I'd note that Spotlight seems to retrieve image files indexed with keywords in metadata. (OS 10.6 Snow Leopard)</p>

<p>That was helpful, JW. I didn't know Spotlight does the actual indexing at least thats what I read in a Snow Leopard Spotlight Help search.</p>

<p>Sometimes I just have to stop and get to know my computer. Good grief, so much to read and so little time. </p>