IPTC Keywords help – 3 days of reading is getting me no closer
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 7:42 am
XnviewMP portable 0.86 on win 10 machine
Last year I spent a couple of months adding keywords to many years of photos using Xnview (an older version). I did this by hitting Ctrl + I and typing them in then hitting “Write”. I did this individually and in bulk. I did it because I could then search the photos easily from the start button in windows or through windows explorer and everything I read indicated this would future proof searching. So far so good.
I have now purchased a better camera and am taking hundreds of photos but have been really slack in adding the keywords because of the number of photos. I need to make a start but have spent the last 3 days trying to find the quickest way to go about it. I stumbled upon hierarchical keywords but can’t get my head around how to achieve it. I’d really like to be able to add a keyword, say, kangaroos, and have wildlife and animals added automatically.
To date I have not found a tutorial but instead lots of snippets alluding to keywords but I can’t understand it all. Throughout the process I have a very messy set of category words which I’d really like to tidy (because I THINK that if I use these I can get them written as IPTC keywords). I think many of these have been imported from my previous keywording and I’ve discovered mistakes such as farm and Farm, Pat and Patricia which I’d like to tidy. I also seem to have Dogs (and more) under the top Category as well as in Other.
Often during my reading I can’t even understand the panels being mentioned because they bear no resemblance to what I have. I’m using the Free layout with Thumbnails only view
The following is what I can’t understand or can’t achieve.
1) How to write Categories as IPTC keywords embedded in the jpg, if it can be done
2) How to create a file that could be imported for use in writing IPTC data (I'm guessing "Load Template" is related to this)
3) How to restart my categories from scratch so my anal brain can clean them up WITHOUT deleting any keywords already embedded in my jpg files.
4) How to move an existing Category so it becomes a child of another category
5) What are leafs?
6) What a Sidecar file is and whether I should use them?
7) Are IPTC keywords future proofing my files? What are XMP files?
If you are able to take the time to assist please don’t word answers assuming I know anything
If you know where there are tutorials I am happy to use my time instead of wasting someone else’s to try and understand all this
Thankyou for reading this long winded call for help.
Last year I spent a couple of months adding keywords to many years of photos using Xnview (an older version). I did this by hitting Ctrl + I and typing them in then hitting “Write”. I did this individually and in bulk. I did it because I could then search the photos easily from the start button in windows or through windows explorer and everything I read indicated this would future proof searching. So far so good.
I have now purchased a better camera and am taking hundreds of photos but have been really slack in adding the keywords because of the number of photos. I need to make a start but have spent the last 3 days trying to find the quickest way to go about it. I stumbled upon hierarchical keywords but can’t get my head around how to achieve it. I’d really like to be able to add a keyword, say, kangaroos, and have wildlife and animals added automatically.
To date I have not found a tutorial but instead lots of snippets alluding to keywords but I can’t understand it all. Throughout the process I have a very messy set of category words which I’d really like to tidy (because I THINK that if I use these I can get them written as IPTC keywords). I think many of these have been imported from my previous keywording and I’ve discovered mistakes such as farm and Farm, Pat and Patricia which I’d like to tidy. I also seem to have Dogs (and more) under the top Category as well as in Other.
Often during my reading I can’t even understand the panels being mentioned because they bear no resemblance to what I have. I’m using the Free layout with Thumbnails only view
The following is what I can’t understand or can’t achieve.
1) How to write Categories as IPTC keywords embedded in the jpg, if it can be done
2) How to create a file that could be imported for use in writing IPTC data (I'm guessing "Load Template" is related to this)
3) How to restart my categories from scratch so my anal brain can clean them up WITHOUT deleting any keywords already embedded in my jpg files.
4) How to move an existing Category so it becomes a child of another category
5) What are leafs?
6) What a Sidecar file is and whether I should use them?
7) Are IPTC keywords future proofing my files? What are XMP files?
If you are able to take the time to assist please don’t word answers assuming I know anything
If you know where there are tutorials I am happy to use my time instead of wasting someone else’s to try and understand all this
Thankyou for reading this long winded call for help.