I'm sure this is mentioned by one or more people somewhere else in this huge (although admittedly searchable) forum, but I have an idea for managing and creating the different file type property display options.
Would there be a way to have functionality like this?:
1) I right click on a main node, so in this case, let's use the "Images" node as an example. Upon r-clicking on the node, a contextual menu appears and one menu item is "File Property Scheme". This would bring up a new dialog box that would look similar to the "Tree & View Settings" of the "Tools", "Options" section. First, there would be a dropdown combobox or something similar from which we could select the main file property sections, such as "General", "Extended", etc., and even perhaps an dropdown option called "EXIF" for viewing (but not editing) the EXIF information for the picture. When one of the items is selected from the aforementioned dropdown, a "Library Fields" section would refresh to display the default fields that pertain to, say, the "General" section, or the "Extended" section. And just as we can do now, we can add fields to each section, edit the existing ones, etc. So, that's my idea.
I currently use a program called JASC Paint Shop Photo Album, and (having used just about every other photo program) I think it is probably the most robust yet still easy to use program for photo managment. I am going to post some screenshots on my website
http://pictures.chriswigley.com/JASC/ to show what I am about to describe. When the photo app loads, there's an explorer-type folder tree view on the left listing all of the devices (hard drives), folders, etc. just like Windows explorer. When you select the main folder where you store all of your pictures (assuming you keep your pictures within subfolders that are within one main folder - although you don't have to store your photos this way), the right-hand side of the screen shows 1' x 1' thumbnails of each photo. Let's assume, for sake of example, that I have not organized my photos into subfolders within the primary folder where my images are stored, such that I have 400 pictures in one folder. From within the photo album app, if I r-click the primary folder, a menu appears and I can select "New Album...", and a dialog box appears allowing me to type the name of the album and what folder I want the album to be in. This process is really creating a new folder on my hard drive with the name that I type in, and it will be created in whatever directory I specified when I entered the album's name. Once the new album (new folder) is created, the right-hand side (used to display all of the pictures in my primary folder) splits into 2 horizontal panes; the top pane continues to display all the pictures that are in the main folder (or whatever folder I have highlighted in the explorer-like tree view on the left), and the new bottom pane is the area into which I can drag images from the top horizontal pane. Once I select the images from the top pane (typical options, shift+click, ctrl+click, ctrl+a, etc.), I can drag them into the album pane and the files are tagged with that album name and they are also physically moved into that directory (whose name is the same as the album's). So I've doen 2 things at once really. I have organized a subset of pictures into their own folder, and I have tagged them (for the photo album app's purposes) with an album name. Once I move the pictures into the photo album (or before, it doesn't matter), I can select one or more of the pictures and then select the "Keywords" tab from the left-aligned vertical tab bar (featuring tabs such as "Browse", "Info", "Keywords", and "Search"). Selecting the "Keywords" tab presents me with another tree view that replaces the explorer-like tree view that appears when you first load the program. This tree initially has 4 main nodes, "Location", "Occassion", "Photographer", "Subject", and each main node has a checkbox next to it that you can check to indiacte that you want that keyword to be applied to the selected photo(s). For example, if I expand the main "Subject" node, I see 2 sub-nodes, "People" and "Pets". I think there should be a "Place" sub-node under the main "Subject" node, but there's not by default. So, I l-click once on the "Subject" node and type "Places" in a text box at the bottom of the tree view and then click an "Add" button to the right of the textbox I typed "Places" in. Now, there are 3 subnodes under the "Subject" node. If I click the "Places" node, I can then (in the same way I added the "Places" node) add several subnodes to the "Places" node, so I add "USA", "Europe", "Asia", etc. As you can imagine by now, I can select each one of these subnodes and create nodes under them, etc., etc. Once I've done all of this, I can then go through my pictures and apply the keywords to them. So, for example, I have a folder full of pictures of my dog (a white boxer named "Guinness"), so I select (Ctrl+click) all the Guinness pictures, then I check each checkbox next to a keyword (remember, each node in the keywords tree view has a checkbox next to it) that I want to apply to the pictures I have selected. So, I click the "Guinness" keyword (node) that I created under the "Pets" node, which was a default node under the "Subject"node. I can stop here, or I can further categorize my pictures. I notice that the first 3 pictures of the 40 I have selected are from his most recent birthday party. So, I re-select only those 3 pictures. Under the default "Occassion" node is a node (again, remember that node = keyword) called "Birthday", so I check that checkbox too. That's good enough for me, so I stop there. Now, I can do this for all the photos I have, and then I can test out the search capabilities. I click the "Search" tab and I can specify whether I want to search by keyword or by EXIF information. I choose the "Keyword" radio button. On the "Search" tab pane, there is the same tree view as was in the "Keywords" tab pane, only it's slightly shorter. I can select keywords from this tree view just as I did when I was adding the keywords to my photos. I check the "Birthday" and "Guinness" checkboxes, then click the "Search button" and the right-hand side now splits into 3 horizontal panes. The top one shows my search results, the middle one continues to display all of the pictures that are in the folder I selected from the tree view when the app first loaded. The bottom one shows all the images that are in the last photo album that I created. What's really cool is that there is a "Save..." icon on the left side of the new "Search Results" pane. Clicking the "Save" button displays a pop-up menu with options such as "Copy to new album", "Move to new album", and "Save as slide show". I'll stop here because this has become to long, and I'll post some screen shots like I said for anyone who's interested in looking at this further.
Thanks for reading all of this...
Wobbley