I scanned all the pictures in as *.JPG, just because all my other software does so. (In hindsight, *.TIFF may be a better choice, but I digress...)
The first thing I wanted to do is to attach "tags", "keywords", "captions", and/or "titles" that would always stay with the picture.
That's where the fun started! I found out that every operating system and every software package tries to do it a little differently, and they don't play nice together! My original premise was to use the "right click>properties" menu in Windows XP. It has the fields "title", "subject", "tags", "comment" and "author" - perfect! or so I thought! I opened a picture in Windows, plugged in the values, and SAVEd it. Then I opened up the picture in Photoshop, viewed the "File>File Info", and it wasn't (all) there! To make matters worse, if I add (to use the proper term) "metadata" to a picture in Photoshop, and SAVE it - it doesn't show up ANYWHERE when viewed in Windows! And if that's not enough, the Windows "Summary Properties" are handled differently between XP and Vista!
What to do?!!
I'd love to hear better ideas, but this is what I did. First, I scanned in the pictures using the scanner software - no other applications involved. Once they were scanned-in, I had *.JPG pictures in a directory called "Scanned". I then edited and/or rotated any pictures that needed it, and filed them in meaningful directories. Since it was family photos, the pictures went into directories named the same as the person who's pictures it contained. So when this process was done, the pictures were in a directory structure that made them easy to find.
Now, for the tagging. Windows itself was very cumbersome for editing the "Summary Properties" for INDIVIDUAL pictures. It DID however, lend itself nicely for updating a batch at a time. Since each directory contains one person's (or family's) pictures, it was easy to SELECT ALL, and type-in "title" (the person's name) and "author" (© me
). Click on APPLY and they ALL get updated! For the data SPECIFIC to just one picture, I needed another way. I did a little searching on the internet and found iTag. "iTag is a free tool that adds title, description and keyword tags to your photos and movies." It's not the greatest piece of software, and certain functions are very slow, but for ease of access to the metadata, it's perfect! One thing, however, iTag does not write to the fields that Windows XP uses...but it writes to the fields that Photoshop uses! So, once you add metatdata with iTag, then OPEN the picture in Photoshop - "File>File Info" has the data!
So, thats how I added metadata for Windows AND metadata for Photoshop.
O.K.? I might be rambling, but stay with me here... Now for the interesting part. Using iTag, I added TAGs (A.K.A. KEYWORDS) to all the pictures. The TAGS I added were the names (First and last) of everone who was in the picture. Most pictures had one or two TAGs, but some family reunion shots had tons! Alright, so what's the big deal? It's this: all the pictures are in sub-directories under a single main directory - all pictures have 'name' TAGs
...start-up the PE Organizer, create a NEW catalog, and GET PHOTOS from the main directory. At the end of the import process, all the pictures are catalogued with a PSE TAG pointing to every person in every picture! Just click on the TAG for a specific person and you see every picture they appear in!I suppose you could have done this in PSE Organizer, but I find it's interface clunky. Anyway, this was just a side benefit of what I had set out to do.
I now have individual pictures that I can send out, email, upload to a website, burn to CD or DVD, etc... that all have titles and captions attached.
