Nested KeywordsI keep "People", "Places", "Events" and "Rating" nested in my Keywords field. Why?
Because MC stores its own versions of these fields in a proprietry <MJMD> tag block that only it can read.
MC keywords are written out to IPTC keywords, which everything reads.
I've also found that I really like having (mostly) just the one field to maintain.
The workflow I use has worked for me for ten years or more. I'm old and inflexible so will only try something new here
if it's instantly helpful and requires no new learning curve on my part. My MC image library is great, I love it. Others do to, but
I baulk when they ask me what I use to achieve it because setting it up 'just the way you like it' requires a fair bit of tinkering
under the hood. off the top of my head, while I type this, I'm thinking things such as...
Expressions and font colouring I've employed in thumbnail text to provide me information and warnings regarding tagging states etc.
Expressions to build fields from data mined from keywords.
Stack management (
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=105662.0)
Creative list grouping employed here and there.
I have a slideshow expression here that I think Matt said contained a net 73,000 characters. Matt knows this because at one point, it brought
my image library to its knees, so Matt fixed it. All those characters make it so that when ever someone views a picture that has any of our
grandkids in it, the caption will display, amongst other things, their ages. It's neat, viewers like it, but they have no idea what it is in
the background that makes that happen. I don't try and bore them with it, I'm just glad they like it. Now that all of the expressions and other
trickery are in place, all of that stuff just works. Like 'set and forget' except the 'set' part takes a bit of work. If after reading that you
are still interested, here's the keywords and subsequent extraction bits, and yes, I did ask myself whether this was worth it given that MC
provides stock fields anyway, and for me the answer was still yes...
If you apply a keyword to a file like so: !People\Rod; !People\Jane; !People\Freddie
MC displays them as an expandable tree...
The same applies to other categories, such as Events and Places. I add a preceding exclamation mark to keep all of the tree 'branches' at the
top of the list. Having them in a single Keywords pane running up the left side of the view makes tagging via pane tagging (tick the boxes) quite
a quick and simple affair, but...
Off the bat, if you employ an "incoming photos" workflow, whereby MC watches a folder for new arrivals, which you then tag, and then move out of said
folder once tagging is done, you will quickly bump into an issue... namely that the keywords field will be empty as none of the incoming files will have
keywords yet, so, you won't be able to use pane tagging. My solution to this was to build a view that contains all of my photos. As an aside, many of us
may have more than just photos in the image library. I do. I have icons and clipart and so on. I tag these with a field I called "Type", and then set up
specific views dependant upon type. The tag on import feature is your friend here. Getting back on track, the list that contains all my photos is great
because now I have a fully populated keywords field, so pane tagging is a breeze, but the list itself is not best organised for the task in hand. You
want all the photos that are not in the 'incoming' folder grouped together at the foot of the list. Their only purpose for being there is to populate the
keywords field. How?
We can group a list using any library field we choose, so, create a field using an expression that derives groups you want. The expression below works for me:
ifelse(
isequal([filename],incoming,8),Not Tagged - formatdate([date,0],yyyy//MM//dd),
isequal([filename],lightroom,8),Not Tagged - formatdate([date,0],yyyy//MM//dd),
isequal([filename],Nero,8),Not Tagged - formatdate([date,0],yyyy//MM//dd),
isequal([filename],iCloud,8),iCloud /(filefolder()/),
isequal([filename],Google,8),Google /(filefolder()/),
1,Finished
) iCloud and Google are used for different views where I manage files on those services.
I group by this field, in descending order, so, "Not Tagged" are grouped above "Finished" in the list, and by including the date in the "Not Tagged" groupings, the
"Not Tagged" photos are grouped by date, above the finished files. Once done tagging a group, select the files and move them using the RMC tool, then refresh the view.
Those files will now drop out of view, somewhere in amongst the other "Finished" files.
Next up... Mining keywords for HTPC friendly views...
Author
Topic: Using MC to tag JPG images ?? (Read 7763 times)