IPTC ideas

thire · Post by **thire** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 7:31 am

I play around with IPTC data and have some ideas, suggestions and requests

a) german localisation: when I change IPTC data and click on next (BTW a teriffic feature!), I am asked wheather I want to save or not. It's very easy to understand, but it's in English

b) I add to three pictures two categories and write them to all these files. Then I want to remove one category of some of the files. Selecting the category, removing it and writing this to all selected files does not work properly: it's just removed from one file.

c) I'd love to get help from other people who already work very long with IPTC data. A example IPTC file (default) could help here. Perhaps you put one into the standard installation.
(Eg. I want to save the iamge's quality: is there a special tag or should I save sometghing like "Q1" under keywords?)

d) Why does it take so much time (thumbnail view), when I select files (one by one) with the mouse? Ctrl+A is much faster even if much more files are selected.
[okay, this has noting to do with IPTC]

e) When writing ITPC data, there is no progressbar. Sometimes it takes some time (seconds) and I am not sure if it has already finished. Making the "write" button grey could help.

f) Loging all my keywords and all my categories I ever wrote to pictures would be good to know: so I know wheater I wrote "Rom" or "Rome" or "Roma" or ... last time I visited this town.

g) When I write a keyword and I press <enter> I want XnView to "add" this keyword. Actually it does nothing (?).

h) When I view a picture, I want to see immediately (set somewhere in the settings) the EXIF and IPTC data. (But I guess such a tab/window comes

)

i) When I view a picture, I want to have a "delete" button. (again nothing to do with IPTC - please don't beap me up!)

Thanks for help & support
Thomas

florent · Post by **florent** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 1:58 pm

very nice ideas...

having advanced IPTC features in xnview will be very appreciable to manage photos, but also pictures collections, comics, books, mp3s, CDs or DVDs databases ...

the problem is that everybody has his own IPTC data... some want to see the keywords in the thumbnails view, another one would like to see the categories... personaly, i use the keywords like database records ("NAME=value" pair) and would like to filter or sort my pictures using this keyword format... and adding such features in xnview is not perhaps so simple...

i really think that a solution to this problem could be the possibility for users to write their own visualisation plugins, that could be used instead of "thumbnails" or "details" modes...

if pierre is listening, could you let me know if developing external display plugins in xnview will be possible in a future version ? if you're interested in developing this idea, i'm your man...

thank you thomas
f.

thire · Post by **thire** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 2:03 pm

I am really hunting a tutorial or something about IPTC data management.
I found some websites about keywording (http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/met ... rding.html) and iptc codes (http://www.ap.org/apserver/userguide/codes.htm) but nothing really very good. This discussion could lead to a deeper insight (understanding how professionals deal with this kind of data)...
th

PS: and in the german wikipedia is a short example: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTC-NAA_Standard

florent · Post by **florent** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 2:59 pm

these 2 links are not so bad... if i find some more, i'll bring them...
see you

thire · Post by **thire** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 7:36 am

I can't stop... I played around yesterday evening again. And again some (very minor) things:

j) german l12n: the string "alle ausgewählten schreiben" is too long for the button.

k) I select all files and I am with the mouse over a picture (so I see this info tooltip). When I press Ctrl+i the IPTC window appears, but it's under the tooltip.

l) what are these "additional categories"? Are you sure they exist in the official standard? XnView works perfectly with them, but a big advantage of the standard is it's portability! Many programs use IPTC data, so XnView's should be understandable.

m) another idea to point f (consistency): There could be an option "run batch now" which starts a search for all keywords and categories I every set in this folder (and subfolders). The result is saved in a (text)file. I renew this file once a month. When I add new pictures, I may choose cats and keys from a form by drag and drop. Very helpful for my workflow... (I have beatiful wishes, don't I?)

n) give me the option to fill into IPTC "date-created" the value of the corresponding EXIF field. This makes info redundant, but it's good...

o) I just wrote my name to the author field of 116 files. It took my computer 7 min and it almost crashed. Why? Is my computer so slow or...

p) Please give us more sophisticated search capabilities. I guess / hope you know what I mean. Several times mentionde here in the fora.

q) I took some thousand images and now I try to calalogize them. A search for eg. all images "without a category and not more then one keyword" would be helpful.

Just fulfill two of my wishes or just comment on one of them - anyway I am very happy with XnView and I hope I could contribute something to it...
Thomas

helmut · Post by **helmut** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:05 am

<Moderator's note: Thomas, thank you very much for all these useful suggestions. If possible, start one topic per suggestion. This means more effort for you, but will make answering much easier (see Rules and Guidelines>)

thire · Post by **thire** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:10 am

hmpf. you caught me the 2nd time now. Sorry.
I didn't ant to "spam" the forum (I already do it right now), so I put it under the heading "IPTC"...
I promise not to do it a trid time. But if this is okay, I will leave everything here as it is now (ie I don't start 15 new topics now).
Okayß
Thomas

helmut · Post by **helmut** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:14 am

thire wrote:hmpf. you caught me the 2nd time now. Sorry.
I didn't ant to "spam" the forum (I already do it right now), so I put it under the heading "IPTC"...
I promise not to do it a trid time. But if this is okay, I will leave everything here as it is now (ie I don't start 15 new topics now).
Okayß
Thomas

No problem. I just want to make sure that your valuable suggestions get a lot of feedback from other people. Often, long posts are not read and/or not answered. When rereading your original post I see that most are IPTC related, so that's not too bad.

(Later, I'll delete this and my above moderator note).

thire · Post by **thire** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 7:26 am

still some more ideas/suggestions/requests:

r) Give us the possibility to write just ONE fiels in ALL (selected) files. Once I forgot to add the place where I took the pictures and I wanted to add this tag: I had to do it one by one. Right now just a "top down" approach (write first all keywords, that belong to ALL images, then those who just belong to some)is possible, give us an "bottom up" as well.

s) an idea: let us log IPTC data in a text file. I archive all my images to a CD: when I want to find one on 20 CDs, this get's boring. A textfile for searching IPTC data would be helpful ehre.

t) There appears allways a diaglog to wrte the IPTC data to the image: Give us an options in the settings to check, that we arn't asked allways again.

u) you seperate keywords perfectly, but perhaps spaces could be added after the commas.

That's it.

so far

Thomas

thire · Post by **thire** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:36 pm

Just a reminder: Perhaps you want to put some of these ideas on the "Global Request & Suggestion list *Read this first*"?

thire · Post by **thire** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:41 pm

..and some more ideas:

Still the most annoing thing is speed: It takes 3 minutes or more to add two keywords (travel, Florence) to 200 selected files. (And, okay off-topic, selecting files in the browser is very slow.)

Perhaps there are plans for a ITPC/EXIF tab (customizable?). Anyway there should/could be some view of a list of files (in a folder, in the browser) where itpc categories and keywords are shown.

When writing itpc data to a file is done, the dialog is just closed, when this was done for one file and not multiple files have been selected.

I just edit three or four ITPC-fields. If they could be in one tab and I would not have "add" allway the keyword, this could save some time too.

And browsable categories (and keywords) would be perfect: I just use 15 categories. If there was a clickable list, this would be very handy: no more typos and very fast working...

thire · Post by **thire** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:22 am

Pierre,
I hope you did not oversee all my suggestions/ideas/questions, because I collected them all in one suitable thread?
Thomas

thire · Post by **thire** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 1:09 pm

and a (last?) suggestion:
* IPTC in batch mode: eg change all fields "loaction" with value "Parsi" to "Paris" or convert all raw-files with the keyword "Q1" (best quality) to jpg and resize them to 800x600.

Post by **xnview** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 2:48 pm

thire wrote:Pierre,
I hope you did not oversee all my suggestions/ideas/questions, because I collected them all in one suitable thread?
Thomas

Thank you very much for all suggestions about IPTC

Ed · Post by Ed » Tue Nov 15, 2005 2:44 pm

I would also like to see the implementation in the IPTC editor of a browseable list of previously used keywords and captions. As mentioned earlier, this would help consistency in categorizing images and would help to avoid tedious typing and possible typing errors. This would speed up workflow immensely.