Building a Media Center image library. -
This is long, and complex and might not be for you. The next couple of paragraphs may help you decide whether or not you wish to read any further...I'm just your average family guy, with a wife, 3 kids and a dog! I have a relatively cheap digital camera. It's a Canon
Digital Ixus 700. It produces either .jpg files or .avi files, and that's it, no RAW support.
At the time of writing, my knowledge regarding working with digital image files is what I'd describe as 'very basic'. I take way too many photos. Always an extra one, in case that on doesn't look quite right!! I delete many of them, but keep way more than I delete. For a long time (years) I've struggled to keep some form of control over my digital photos with very little success, always struggling to find "
THAT" picture quckly. I've trialled umpteen different flavours of photo catalogue software, every one of which promised to be the answer to all my digital image problems, and for me, they all turned out to be empty promises. One came close, real close, but in the end, that failed me too...
I spent several months using Adobe Photoshop Elements before deciding that, despite having a few features that I really liked, it still wasn't doing a good enough job for me, so, once again, I turned my attention to a program that made no such promises, just that I could have it "
my way". This proved to be true for my audio files, so, how about my image files? I'd tried, and failed, a few times in the past already. Two of the main features that drew me to Elements, and kept me there as long as it did, were version tracking, and image stacking. They are very simple concepts that Elements maintains itself, and makes it easy for us to manage. While I wanted Media Center to do similar things plus a lot more too, I decided that if it could
at least handle stacks and version sets, I might move to using it for my images, full-time.
The Media Center developement path is not something that's publically available, so we generally cross our fingers and hope for the best which can often be extremely frustrating. As v11.1 developed, and
database expressions were made available in new areas of the program, namely panes, thumbnail text areas and custom library fields, it slowly began to dawn on me that it might just be possible to get Media Center to take care of stacks and version sets, and in turn, make image management using Media Center a viable option.
First of all, for those that have never heard of them, a few words about stacks and version sets:
Stacks:
About stacks
You can create stacks to visually group a set of similar photos together, making them easy to manage. Stacks are useful for keeping multiple photos of the same subject in one place, and they reduce clutter in the Photo Browser.
For instance, create a stack to group together multiple photos of your family taken with the same pose; or for photos taken at a sports event using your camera’s burst mode or auto-bracket feature. Generally, when you take photos this way, you end up with many similar variations of the same photo, but only really want the best one to appear in the Photo Browser. Stacking the photos lets you easily access them all in one place instead of scattered across rows of thumbnails.
Stacking photos saves space and keeps related photos together
Version SetsA version set is a type of stack that contains one original photo and its edited versions. Version sets make it easy to find both the edited versions of an image and the original, because they are visually stacked together instead of scattered throughout the Photo Browser.
When you edit the photo by choosing Edit > Auto Smart Fix, the Organizer automatically puts the photo and its edited copy together in a version set. When you edit the photo in Standard Edit or Quick Fix, and choose File > Save As, you can select the Save In Version Set With Original option to put the photo and its edited copy together in a version set.
If you edit a photo that’s already in a stack, the photo and its edited copy are put in a version set that is nested in the original stack. If you edit a photo that’s already in a version set, the edited copy is placed at the top of the existing version set. Photoshop Elements does not nest version sets within version sets—a version set can contain only one original and its edited versions.
Get the idea?
Now, without some help from the developement team, there's no way Media Center could handle everything as smoothly, but, I wondered, how close could it get?
What follows is really, a major project. It involves manipulating filenames en-masse plus extended use of database expressions, and when all's said and done, I'm still left asking if it's all really necessary. I mean, why bother? Why not just delete the files rather than hide them? I don't have an answer for that yet.
What I do know is this:
For the time being, I want to keep everything, and I want everything to be available in my Media Center catalogue. I
don't[/i] want everything showing up by default though.
Another thing that may or may not apply to you with regards to the tagging tasks is the two very specific tagging stages. Stage 1 being the probably massive task of tagging the many thousands of existing images you have in your library, followed by the ongoing task of tagging newly aquired images. I find that the two stages require subtley different view schemes. I treated the schemes I used for stage 1 a bit like scaffolding, and removed them once the task was complete.
What can be done with Media center to mimic the features? Stacks are simple sets of photos, and can so can be grouped in Media Center using a simple custom field, like a custom [album] field, only called [stack] instead. version sets, are similar, but, I want minimum user workload, so I looked for a way to have the newly saved, edited file, be part of the [version set] as soon as it was saved and imported, this is also important as the new file might not have any tags, a major point that only the dev team could help with.
I guess, if you're still reading, you're still interested, so let's get busy...
Laying the foundationsStep 1: FilenamesThere are several approaches possible here, but, for better or worse, I chose to build off the filename. I found that for me, image filenames really don't mean much at all. I identify an image by its thumbnail, not its filename, so, I figured that's an unused rescource that could be leveredged.
My current camera saves files using the format IMG_0001, IMG_0002, IMG_0003 etc. etc.. When creating a version set, Elements keeps the filename, and appends _edited-1, _edited-2 etc. to it. This means that all files in a version set have the same 1st 8 characters in their names, and this is where I kicked off from.
Now, the above theory is great for my current camera, but not so great for any other images previously aquired that don't follow the same naming format. Enter, stage left, KingSparta, with a plugin called
Replace Master. This tool will allow you to manipulate your filenames in just about any way you fancy, without losing any existing database tags.
I used it to set filenames on all my existing images following the format used by my current camera. I chose to use the first three letters as an identifier:
IMG_ = canon camera
KOD_ = kodak camera
MUM_ = photos from my Mum
DAN_ = photos from my brother
WAL_ = wallpaper pictures
VAR_ = received via email, or other miscellaneous sources