appending metadata to an existing field (description)

[Per-BKWine]

Rather than digging through the doc or trying randomly, I'll ask the question:

 

Is it possible to append metadata to an existing field in multiple files at the same time?

 

More specifically, is it possible to append data to the description field?

 

Why?

 

Here's why:

 

Description is one of the most important fields. Together with Keywords it is a must have (in order to sell the images). Other fields are 'nice to have' but not vital.

 

When I apply metadata to my images I do it in batches that can include several hundred, maybe even a few thousands of images. The images usually come from one or several shoots / a trips.

 

Description has to be applied to all images.

 

Say, I have been to Bordeaux and to Burgundy (two French wine regions).

 

I have images of vineyards in Bordeaux and vineyards in Burgundy.

 

I have images from wine cellars in Bordeaux and in Burgundy.

 

This is what I do:

 

1. I select all "vineyard" pictures and apply "vineyard" to the description, in Bordeaux as well as Burgundy, with a command that applies the same description to all selected images.

 

2. Same with "wine cellar".

 

3. I then select all pictures from Bordeaux (both vineyards and wine cellar) and APPEND to the description "in Bordeaux". Thus I have the description "vineyard in Bordeaux" and "wine cellar in Bordeaux" to the respective images.

 

4. I do the same thing for Burgundy.

 

This is a BIG time saver instead of having to apply the full string of description in one go. (The example is simplified. It can get more complex than this.)

 

So, is it possible to APPEND data to the description field to multiple images simultaneously?

[Murat]

I understood your suggestion, but right now it's not possible.

 

We'll consider adding such functionality to future Daminion versions. May be as in some cases a location that you need to append to the end of the description can be saved separately as a Place? But anyway we'll discuss about this feature on the next meeting with our team.

[Per-BKWine]

OK.

 

It is actually a very important feature. For me. Others may work differently. I'll explain why:

 

I save an enormous amount of time with it. Adding a short text at the end of the description may not seem like a big thing but when you have to do it a thousand images it makes a big difference if you need to do it a thousand times or just once. And then when it is not just one piece of text but perhaps four or five different pieces of text, to different groups of images, then doing it once for a group is a huge time-saver.

 

Using "another field" (e.g. Location) is not meaningful. Other fields than Description and Keywords are not accepted by the agencies (that I work with).

 

That's the only two fields that they read and that they feed their databases with when I send them images. It is also the fields that go into their searchable index.

 

Also, it is not necessarily always location that is appended. It can be any description that applies to multiple images.

 

In fact, most of my "descriptions" are made up of a series of appended text so they look like this:

 

Unique Text, Append1, Append2, Append3

 

Where AppendX are applied to groups of images, but 1, 2, 3 are different groupings.

 

To give you a real live example:

http://bkwinephotography.photoshelter.com/image?I_ID=I00007JsG..8ClD0

has the description

"Vineyard. Winery building. Alpha Estate Winery, Amyndeon, Macedonia, Greece"

 

Each of the separate parts of this description was added to a group of images in a Greek batch:

Vineyard - This was applied to all images with a vineyard

Winery building - all images with a winery building

Alpha Estate Winery - all images from that winery

Amyndeon - all of the several places I visited in that region

Macedonia - etc

Greece

 

Each of these were *appended* to the description.

 

You can imagine how much longer it would take and how much more spelling errors I would get if I had to add "Amyndeon, Macedonia, Greece" (etc) to 800 different images individually rather than once to a group of images. And then "Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece" to another 800 images... Instead of doing it in two easy steps with "append to description".

 

I'm not sure how easy it is to follow my logic here, but I hope I've explained it clearly.

 

Again, I can refer to Extensis Portfolio:

 

Some fields, when you edit them, you can only:

- Replace or

- Delete.

E.g. Camera make.

 

Some fields you can:

- Replace,

- Delete or

- Append.

E.g. Description

 

Some fields you can

- Replace,

- Delete

- Append, or

- Add

E.g. Keywords.

 

It depends what kind of field it is.

 

I think you would find it interesting to take a look at how they do things with fields, and in particular how they handle custom fields.

 

In fact, this is such an important feature that it will probably prevent me from using Daminion, if there is no way to do something similar. I will continue to experiment a bit but if I can't find a way to do something similar to this I am not sure I can use it when the next few thousand images are up for keywording.

[Murat]

I have an idea for your scenario:

 

You have a deal with description chunks. And you compose descriptions for images based on these chunks, right?

There are some minor drawbacks in this scenario: what if you need to search for images of "Winery building" at "Greece" or "France"? You can do this, if you already have added them as separate tags.

 

So you need to enter these chunks twice: one as a part of the description and then as a separate tag (let's say keyword). And you do this only because of your agency requirement. Right?

 

Another issue is: what if you need to slightly change a chunk. You need to revisit all images where this chunks were entered.

 

Please consider the following suggestion:

Compose a list of description chunks as separate tag values, let's say Categories. And compose descriptions for your images based on these chunks (categories) during the export.

 

 

The benefits:

- You add description chunks once

- You can search for your images using various chunk combinations

- You can easily change a grammar mistake in a single chunk without reviewing all images where this chunk has been used

- You can customize your export preset, and truncate your camera info, so your exporting images will contain only descriptions and copyights and not shooting info.

 

The drawback:

Right now it's not possible to use tokens like %categories% in the "Tag preset" panel, but we can consider to add this feature.

[Per-BKWine]

OK, let's call it "chunks". What they are vary from batch to batch (shoot to shoot if you wish).

 

Yes, most (perhaps all) of these chunks are also added as Keywords.

 

No, it is not only because of the agencies' requirement.

 

It is also because Description is the text that potential customers see when they look at the image, either on one of my agencies sites or on my one online photo site (that you saw if you clicked the link in my previous message). The customer needs the Description to know what the image is showing. If I can't get the information into the description field, then the customer don't know what the image is about.

 

compose descriptions for your images based on these chunks (categories) during the export.

 

Don't understand what you mean with that. Are you assuming that I export to a csv file the information before sending it? That is sometimes the case but it may also be the case that the info must be embedded in the file itself because that's where the receiving end reads it.

 

(I have not yet looked on how exporting images work. Taking a quick look I find nothing that talks about an "export preset".)

[Murat]

Don't understand what you mean with that. Are you assuming that I export to a csv file the information before sending it? That is sometimes the case but it may also be the case that the info must be embedded in the file itself because that's where the receiving end reads it.

 

Nope. I mean that we could copy Categories to the Description tag during the image exportation. But as I said in my above post we didn't add this feature yet. But it might works for your case if we'll do this.

 

 

 

(I have not yet looked on how exporting images work. Taking a quick look I find nothing that talks about an "export preset".)

 

 

If you'll select images and press the F7 key, you'll see the Export form, where you can select an output folder and a transformation preset (on the left bottom corner, below the small preview). There are a list of predefined presets that can be edited:

 

 

 

There is an "Assign Tags Preset" in the Preset Editor form that is greyed and disabled cause we didn't add this feature to the Export yet, but will do this soon.

[Per-BKWine]

OK, I did not see it because it is not there yet ;-)

 

I did look at the export dialogue but there was nothing about export presets there. Well, since they don't exist yet.

 

So this would then mean that when "exporting" the images Daminion would create the Description field from some other field. And write that to the file. (Embed it.) I guess that would be possible although it would make "export" a slow process.

 

Presumably this would mean that whatever was in the Description field will be over-written. Which means that this field would become rather useless within Daminion.

 

I don't quite see how this would work in practice though.

 

There would rapidly be a large number of "chunks" depending on what the shoot is about.

 

How would Daminion know what chunks to chose for a specific image? It would not be possible to set up a separate preset for each "set of chunks". There would just be too many variations and permutations I think.

 

So, I don't quite see how it could work in practice.

[Murat]

So this would then mean that when "exporting" the images Daminion would create the Description field from some other field. And write that to the file. (Embed it.) I guess that would be possible although it would make "export" a slow process.

 

Nope, becuase the most slower part of the exporting is image transformation and file copying.

 

Presumably this would mean that whatever was in the Description field will be over-written. Which means that this field would become rather useless within Daminion.

 

I guess we can use something like:

Description = %description% - %categories%

 

So your categories can be append to an existing description.

 

 

There would rapidly be a large number of "chunks" depending on what the shoot is about.

 

How would Daminion know what chunks to chose for a specific image? It would not be possible to set up a separate preset for each "set of chunks". There would just be too many variations and permutations I think.

 

You will be responsible for creating and assigning these chunks to images. It's up to you, what chunk to assign for what images. The only problem I see here is the order of these categories (maybe alphabetically)

[Per-BKWine]

slower part of the exporting is image transformation and file copying.

 

Not sure about that. Normally, in my workflow, "export" is a simple issue of copying the image, a file copy. In this case you will actually have to open, embed and resave the image. (but this time issue is not an important aspect)

 

You will be responsible for creating and assigning these chunks to images. It's up to you, what chunk to assign for what images. The only problem I see here is the order of these categories (maybe alphabetically)

 

Here's the big problem. It is not possible for me to set up a general rule as to what "categories" (as you call it) should be appended to the Description. It is different for each group of images and an export can contain many many different groups.

 

And about the categories: there will be hundreds of "categories" (chunks). For any specific group of images there will perhaps just be 3 or 4 "categories" that should be applied. How would it be possible to set up a general rule as to what categories to apply?

 

If I have to create a rule for each image which chunk to apply, then where's the point?

 

I really don't see how this would work.

[Murat]

Here's the big problem. It is not possible for me to set up a general rule as to what "categories" (as you call it) should be appended to the Description. It is different for each group of images and an export can contain many many different groups.

 

And about the categories: there will be hundreds of "categories" (chunks). For any specific group of images there will perhaps just be 3 or 4 "categories" that should be applied. How would it be possible to set up a general rule as to what categories to apply?

 

If I have to create a rule for each image which chunk to apply, then where's the point?

 

There are a set of Categories that you can manage in the left panel named Catalog Tags. But each image has its own set of Categories. For example:

 

Categories

Image1: vineyards AND Bordeaux

Image2: vineyards AND Burgundy

 

While exporting the Categories of each export will be copied to the Description field of each image:

 

Description

Image1: "vineyards, Bordeaux"

Image2: "vineyards, Burgundy"

[Per-BKWine]

I understand.

 

Maybe it is something that could work by my feeling is that it won't, that it will be too complex to manage like that with rules.

 

Perhaps I am mistaken.

 

Nevertheless I would suggest that you consider the 'append' function.

[Murat]

Thanks for the suggestion anyway. Let's wait till we'll implement our approach.

[Uwe]

 

I guess we can use something like:

Description = %description% - %categories%

 

So your categories can be append to an existing description.

 

 

Hi Murat,

 

if you think about to develop this, please check if it's possible to design a much more general solution.

This could be an option to define a "rule" for each tag (not the "technical" tags like "Vendor" etc. in the Properties).

This would solve my problem with the Artist tag. I can define a rule: custom_tag_Artist = %artist%".

I get the content of the Artist tag in the custom_tag_Artist and this tag can be sorted in the List View.

The ExifTool helps a lot with funktions that are not yet implemented in Daminion (e.g. rename) but the custom tag is not part of the ID3 tags in the music files (it's only in the Daminion database and not in the file itself) and therefore the ExifTool doesn't help in this case.

 

Regards, Uwe