Media Center and Images (Primarily photos)Experience with
creating / setting up views and custom library fields is assumed.
Over the years, I have added quite a few things to MC to make it work for me and my photo library. Some of what follows may seem like too much hassle to set up, but think of it this way... Once set, you really can forget about it. When writing this up, I had to retrace several things to remind myself why this or that works, and has been working for so long, I also had to check a few things I couldn't remember were defaults or not. The bits and pieces were added over some time, as I found I needed them, and you are going to get them all at once. Depending how you're wired, your mileage may vary here. Let's begin... (all images can be clicked for a larger view)
Setting Up the viewMC arrives with some stock image fields. Things like People, Places, Events and of course, Keywords. My own personal experience was that trying to tag like this, via the tag window, or via pane tagging was cumbersome and error prone. Something was always getting missed, and once the fields filled up, scrolling in the little panes to find the desired tag got quite old quite quickly, so I decided I would ditch them completely and move everything into the keyords field.
Here is my working "Incoming Images" view.
I also have images other than photos in my MC library, things such as clipart, wallpaper, screenshots, album art and so on. Each of these subsets have their own keywords, but, if they're not in the file list, their keywords won't be shown either, so, when setting up the view, use the "Set rules for file display" option to exclude any other image types, and only list photos. Personally, I use another custom field called Type. All the others are assigned a type, photos are not, so, for me, "[media type]=image [type]=[]" will only return photos. You get the idea?
Only add the 'Keywords' field. I find it works best for me down the left hand side. I was never comfortable with Elements' 'Down the right hand side' approach.
We can group by any library field, so I created one, solely for this purpose.
if(isequal([filename],incoming,8),Not Tagged - formatdate([date,0],yyyy//MM//dd),Finished)When applying the grouping, be sure to choose the "z-a" option, otherwise, all the stuff you want to work with will be at the bottom of the list.
tadaaa!
All new photos are saved to "D:\Pictures\Incoming". You do not need to copy this, all that's important is that all the new stuff starts off in the same folder, or subfolders of that folder, and have MC watch it with auto import. Adjust the code for the grouping field above to single out your chosen location.
Everything above "Tagged" resides in "D:\Pictures\Incoming\". After tagging, I run the 'Rename Move and Copy Files' tool over the tagged images, moving them out of the Incoming folder, and having done that, a refresh drops those photos into the "Finished" group.
Why is this set up this way?
If the view only listed files in the Incoming folder, then the keywords field would be empty (assuming the files are completely keywordless) or only contain keywords currently applied to those files, meaning that to tag with a keyword you know already exists, you need to hit "New keyword" to add a keyword that's well, not new. I want all photo keywords in that list, which means I need all files in the view, not just the new ones. The grouping option outlined above keeps all the new stuff at the top of the list, grouped by date, and lumps everything else together at the bottom. The tagged files are only there to populate the keywords field. When you are done, there will only be one group, and it will be called Finished, until more photos are added to your incoming folder.
That's the view set up, get tagging...
TaggingWith a file (or files) selected, little boxes appear in the Keywords pane.
They are initially greyed out. They are activated by pressing the F4 key, or by simply clicking inside one to apply, upon which, before applying the tag, MC will prompt you...
I start off like this, with thumbs, and batch tag things such as Events or Places. Once that's done, I like to right click the thumb slider to fit the image, tag it, cursor key down to move on to the next one, and so on.
Only click inside the tag boxes to apply the tag. If you click the tag itself, the view will filter by that tag and your place wll be lost, requiring you to reselect "All Keywords" and find your place in the list.
To add a new keyword, scroll to the bottom of the list and tick "New Keyword". Type your new keyword into the field that pops up. If you want it nested, enter the new keyword in the form of a Windows file address. If you type !Places\Edinburgh then when you press OK, Edinburgh will be added, nested under !Places. If you're starting from scratch, this may feel slow to begin with, but as your keywords list fleshes out, you'll be adding less and less, needing only to tick the box to apply the tag.
To remove a keyword, simply click in the tick box again.
I prefix the root of all nested groups with an exclamation mark. This forces them to the top of the list, which feels more natural to me.
Once a set of photos is tagged, select the files, right click, "Library Tools > Rename Move and Copy Files" and move the files to their final resting place. Refresh the view and the files will drop into the Finished group. Any new keywords added during this tagging session are still available for use for the next session.
There you have it, image keyword tagging. Supplementary tags, such as Caption, are filled using the tag window.
I will now outline some other essentials for my MC image library that you may or may not find useful...
StacksI do not use stacks for audio files. Only photos. Back in 2010, I explained
what makes a stack tick.... The information there is still current today.
Here is my "Stack Manager" view.. To be honest, I don't visit it too often, but when I do, it's really handy to have.
"Set rules for file display" is
[Media Type]=[image] -[Stack Top]=-1 ~d=a ~sort=[Stack Top]Grouping is by a custom, calculated library field I called "Stack Locator", using the expression:
if(isequal([stack top],-1),Not Stacked,[stack top])Calender is another custom, calculated field, using the expression:
formatdate([date,0],yyyy\MM\dd,No Date)&datatype=[list]Expanded/Collapsed is an expression based pane using:
if(isempty([stack view]),Expanded,Collapsed)If you choose to set one of these up, please read and understand the 'What makes a stack tick' link above.
I prefer this view over the official "right click > Stacks > Search for stack files" route for a couple of reasons...
1) The searched stack is automatically expanded, but not automatically collapsed. Over time, you'll end up bumping into unintentionally expanded stacks and it will begin to annoy you.
2) If you're not in the default image location in the tree, the search kicks you there. Yes, 'Back' gets you back where you were, but I don't like being bounced about in the tree.
MC has it's own rudimentary parametric image editor. I don't use it extensively as I can't be confident that the edits are applied whenever an edited image is exported via any of the many channels available, Facebook, Flickr, Pix01, FTP, email etc. I know that if you use MC to make a copy of an internally edited file, the edits are not applied to the copy. If like me, you prefer to use an external editor, you can set it up in MC so that when you use the "Send To > External" option, MC will make a copy of the original, appending "_EDIT" to the filename, and stack it with the original, as the stack top. This is really neat. The copy contains all of the tags of the original. Only thing to watch out for is that when you save any edits, tag data is often lost, remaining in the library only until another tag change forces the update, or you manually run the update tags from library tool.
For those sequences of photos where you have several very similar photos, but don't want to delete all but one, select them all, pick the one you want as the 'top file', right click on it, choose "Stacks > Stack Files". MC always stacks the 'right clicked' file as the stack top.
That's stacks. Essential for your image library. I skimmed a bit, so if there's any questions, just ask.
cont....
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Topic: Nested events - how to display, batch delete, batch assign, etc. (Read 3798 times)