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Author Topic: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders  (Read 1237 times)

drmimosa

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Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« on: July 25, 2018, 07:12:20 pm »

Hello, I have a folder of Google photo images that all have album tags that correspond to dates, like this:

Name: Img12333.jpg Album: 7/25/2018

I'd like to organize this to have more general albums, and noticed that each photo has an month and a year tag.

How do I make the Album tag = [Month] - [Year]?

[Edit Wait! I think I figured it out: make a custom library field with an expression that generates [Month] - [Year], then copy the field to the Album tag.]
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marko

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2018, 11:00:01 am »

That would work.

If you were quite happy that the generated [month] - [year] tags would be correct for every file, you could cut the middle-man step of the custom field...

select them all
open the tag window
the album tag will show [varies]
click in there to open it for editing
paste in =[month] - [year]
press enter.
job done.

On a side note, [year] - [month] might work better for sorting purposes?

-marko

drmimosa

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2018, 06:26:26 pm »

Marko, thank you! That's a better way to do things, I didn't know you could enter dependent fields directly into the taggin window.

I just saw your post, I had already switched to [year] [month] to get better sorting, yes that works much better.

Question: What is your general workflow/organization scheme for images from camera to disk to JRiver?

For example I tried moving files into album folder structures and got a bunch duplicate files after a copy mistake on my part. I was thinking that storing photos in albums like audio was going to work, but it turned out to be hard to back up and keep on top of new photos.

I think I'm just going to stay with camera/phone based folders (Cannon, Google, iPhone6, etc) and do all the albums tags in metadata, that seems a lot easier to keep track of over time with backups . Curious what your best practices are for keeping track of images from various devices, if you have a system you like for keeping track...

Cheers,
Phil
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marko

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2018, 02:47:55 am »

It's a minefield of a subject eh? :D

I'm not overly fussed as to how they're filed on the hard drive, but I do have a bit of OCD tendancy about keeping a clean and easy to understand file structure, and on top of that, I imagine a time when I'm not here anymore, and figure the kids might appreciate an intuitive file structure too. It's not easy though.

In the last 10 years, I could count on one hand the number of times I've used a file explorer to browse my pictures folder. Literally everything to do with viewing and management is done from within MC. I import to Lightroom, post-process, tag, then export from there to MC, where the final filing job is carried out.

In MC's rename tool, I use one expression for directories, and one for filenames, that cover all media types, as well as media sub types. By doing it this way, I only have to give the before/after list a quick glance, smile at the awesome power of MC when I see it's all still working even after so many years, and press OK.

For images, my logic goes something along these lines...
If it's clipart, put them in D:\Pictures\Clipart\Keywords
If "Occasion" is not empty, put them in D:\Pictures\Occasions\[Occasion]\[year] - [month]
If tagged "Day Tripping", put them in D:\Pictures\Day Tripping\[Location]\[year] - [month]
If [Album] does not contain /, then put them in D:\Pictures\Picture Albums\[Album]
If the photographer is me, then put them in D:\Pictures\Photographer\[artist]\[camera]\[year] - [month]
If the photographer is not me, then put them in D:\Pictures\Photographer\[artist]\[year] - [month]

That's basically it. I do some other queries based around a field I call Source that files images from the internet, into folders such as Flickr, Facebook, and so on, but there's not so many of those.

The logic works like this...
Upon import, the album is auto-tagged using yyyy/MM/dd

Occasions and Day Tripping should be pretty much self explanatory...

For photo shoots of note or interest, I will change the album once imported, otherwise the date in the album field is fine. When moving, I then check for the forward slash in the album field, and if it's not there, then this must be a file from a picture album I specifically tagged, so file it in the "Picture Albums" folder, in an "Album" subfolder.

All of my family give me their digital photos to add to our library. I have almost a hundred different cameras in the "Camera" field, no-one really cares about the camera, except me, and the ones I snapped... I like to know which camera, and which lens, so, finally, I check if the photographer is me, and if so, add a camera sub folder, otherwise, don't.

It took me a while to settle upon this workflow. I periodically check that it's still fit for purpose, as in the beginning, I just couldn't seem to find a system I was happy with. According to my notes, I haven't changed this in eight years now.

-------------------------------------

I think that images, unlike audio, with their linear Artist > Album thing that fits for just about everyone, are completely free. There are no standards. There are as many different ways to file them as there are people taking photos, with none of them being "right" or "wrong". It's just what works for you personally. Of course, it helps if you know exactly what your options are, and you have MC.... While it does have it's boundaries, the playing field is massive. If you want any help forming a rename expression for your photos, just shout, you'll get plenty. :)

-marko.

drmimosa

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2018, 11:55:02 am »

Marko, thank you. These are great ideas. We have a little newborn in our house this year, so the volume of pictures taken has gone way up suddenly!

I agree that you need some kind of intelligent folder structure with pictures. I like especially the initial sorting you do into folders by dates and later separated into sub categories and albums.

Thanks again for replying in such detail. I'll use this as a reference for some time!
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drmimosa

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2018, 11:31:05 am »

Marco,

One more question, if you have time.

Can assign more than one album to a picture? I'm finding I need general [year] - [month] albums but would also like to have them listed in other albums in addition, for example "Occasions" like you mentioned. It looks like I'm not able to assign multiple values to the Album tag, so maybe I need to think about using multiple tags here for different types of values.
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marko

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2018, 02:25:28 pm »

Bear in mind that I do what I do because it works (worked? I'll get to this at the end...) well for me.

You can't apply multiple album tags to the same image, no.

MC provides People, Places and Events tags by default. You could use these.

For some years now, I have abandoned these and instead, keep everything in the keywords field, making good use of MC's nesting feature for list type fields to build a heirarchical keywords tree.

This makes the keywords portable via the IPTC tag which is more or less, universally read by all apps.
Recently, I saw some pictures I had shared with my Mum, that she had imported into Elements... Now, I don't know Elements very well these days, so it may be possible to set a keyword separator, but, my Mum's had just imported the raw keywords, forward slashes and all, and it was a mess. This has me beginning to question the value of this approach, with no real answer as yet.

I then use expressions to extract information from the keywords field, which gives me auto populated fields for "Population", "Location" and "Occasion" which I then use to build views for use in Theater view. It all 'just works' and I have been very happy... until recently...

I've been putting off the trouble-shooting for some time, but for about a year now, switching views in Theater View can take up to five seconds, when it used to be instantaneous. I have to assume that this is not a problem for default MCs otherwise there would be a lot more complaints in the forum, leading me to think that there might be an issue with my burgeoning keywords field. I will get to the bottom of it at some time soon, just thought that it was worth a mention here before anyone set off down the same workflow path and bumped into this irritation after investing a lot of time setting it all up.

-marko.

JimH

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2018, 04:08:11 pm »

Could you sent Matt a library backup and a link to your post?  Thanks.
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marko

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Re: Help Auto-Tagging Images into Folders
« Reply #8 on: August 04, 2018, 03:16:26 am »

Done. Thank you.
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