Are "Custom Tags" and "Catalog Tags" the same thing?

[Russell]

Hi Murat and fellow users,

 

I've not found a real answer to the question, "What is a custom tag?" here on the website, but it seems to me that they must be the "Catalog Tags" that are provided on the left side of the screen. Assuming that to be be true, I have a few questions:

 

1. Is there any difference between "Custom Tags" and "Catalog Tags"?

 

2. It seems that some of the "Catalog Tags" are not editable. For example, the "Creation Datetime." For my purposes, I am organizing my family archive - which includes a lot of scans and other media conversions. I'd want the date of these items to be the date of the original media. For example, there were no digital pictures taken of my birthday (I'll admit I'm that old!), so I have scanned images of them - and I'd like to tag them with the date of my birth.

 

With my old software (IMatch), I used to actually tag the date a few ways:

Month

- Jan

- Feb

- March

- Etc.

- Unknown

Year

- 1990

- 1991

- 1992

- Etc.

- Unknown

Verification

- Estimated/Approximated

- Exact

- Noted on Media

 

This last category has to do with how I was able to tag the date information. The "Exact" date photos I can lock down to a specific calendar event, like a "fourth birthday" or "Michael's wedding". Often I have groups of photos (from the same roll of film) that must have been taken around that same time - they get tagged as "Estimated/Approximated." Finally, "Noted on Media" is used when someone penned a date on the back of a photograph or memento.

 

Is there any way to edit the "Creation Datetime?" Or how should I handle this? :-)

 

Similarly, I wish the "Place" Catalog Tag were editable. I'm not a world traveler, and generally not a "state to state traveler" - I realize I can simply create categories under my state, but I give up several lines of screen space that I know I'll never use (slows things down when making assignments). :-)

 

3. It seems that one could simply use the "Categories" area to store everything - including "my version" of the "Creation Date" and "Place" areas. Is this bad practice? Why?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell

[Uwe]

Hi Russel,

 

you can change the Creation Date and Time in the Properties Window (default on the right site).

 

The catalog tags are predefined tags (names and format...) by e.g. international standards. The custom tag can be defined by yourself. You can enter a name of the tag and have to assign a format (text, integer, time, fractional) . You can create hierahies etc. There are users from other industries (architects etc.). The photography, music and video tags doesn't fit 100% for their business. They are free to define their own structures by custom tags.

 

Regards, Uwe

[Mammut]

Hi Russell,

 

3. It seems that one could simply use the "Categories" area to store everything - including "my version" of the "Creation Date" and "Place" areas. Is this bad practice? Why?

 

You can, but it's not the best. The categories are rather bigger things. Like in your case, let's say, Photo Scan, Newspaper Scan, Color, Black and White, or other composition terms.

Or you can put the main theme of the image into the Categories, like Architecture->Buildings and Houses, if it's an image of a building.

But usually you don't have too much categories.

 

You can put the smaller things, the details, into Keywords. Like "red house" or houses->colors->red, or what term do you want to use. The doors, windows, brick walls, or anything which is important to you on the image.

So usually there are a lot more keywords assigned to an image than categories.

 

And of course you can put the Places into Keywords, too.

 

OR you can create a Custom Tag for it, like me.

I created a "Places 2" Custom Tag, because I have a lot of space images and underwater images, and there are countries where there are no states or where the original 4 namespace is not enough, etc., so the original Places tag is not the best for me (at least I doesn't like it). It's a hierarchical text tag (where you can assign more tags to a file, because I have maps, and there could be more countries at once).

 

For the Date... I have Custom Tags for dates (birthday, event date, etc.). My format is:

Year->Month->Full date

Like today...

2012->10->2012.10.12.

This way on the Properties tab I can see the full date, the "2012.10.12" text, and I also have a hierarchical structure on the Tags tab for filtering.

 

Regards,

mammut

[Russell]

Hi Mammut,

 

As I'm working with things, I find the Places tag is a bit restrictive for me too...

 

For places in Hawaii, I'd sure love a place to put the ISLAND; mostly because that makes more sense to me.

 

And city only gets you so far... if you're aren't familiar with Hawaii, there's actually a couple of towns that have the same name - their distinction is that they're the only town of that name on their respective island:

 

There's a Waipiʻo on both the "Big Island" of Hawaii and on Oahu. There's a Waimea on three of the islands (Hawaii, Oahu, and Kauai). There's a Wailua on both Kauai and Maui... and those are just the ones off the top of my head. :-)

 

Looks like a Category or Custom Tag for me,

 

Russell

[Uwe]

Hi Russell,

 

I guess that places can't be adjusted by Daminion because these tags belong to the IPTC standard.

 

http://www.iptc.org/site/index.html?channel=CH0099

 

Regards, Uwe

[Mammut]

Yeah, it's because of the iptc standard.

But the standard can be extended, now with the Custom Tags, and maybe later with Daminion's very own solution. :)