Colour Ratings

[JohnFredC]

Queue? A queue is a line waiting for something. Is that what "Tags" mean? If so, then we will also need a queue manager dialog...

"Queue" is probably not the best term.

Again, I vote for "soft" labels for everything... those that a user can edit. Also, the objection mentioned above about the menu items being "out of synch" with the user-selected terminology isn't a "stop". In my programming experience, there is no implementation barrier to "soft" program menu items that lookup the user's terminology and apply that to the menu texts...

[Olivier_G]

I have another idea, but you may not like it:
- remove that 'color label' feature entirely.
- add the possibility to specify user-settable Icons, colours of Text&Borders... directly to categories (and you create 'Important', 'Work'... whatever you need and the way you like it).
I told you you would not like it...

I am not asking to remove that feature for 1.90 (it's there), but rather to consider it as a temporary feature -> finding an acceptable solution for 1.90 is required, but there is no need to build too many things upon that feature, IMHO.

[nightflyer]

- add the possibility to specify user-settable Icons, colours of Text&Borders... directly to categories (and you create 'Important', 'Work'... whatever you need and the way you like it).

So let's remove ratings and tags as well, as they all are just categories with specific visual representation and handling.

finding an acceptable solution for 1.90 is required

To what problem?

[helmut]

- add the possibility to specify user-settable Icons, colours of Text&Borders... directly to categories (and you create 'Important', 'Work'... whatever you need and the way you like it).

So let's remove ratings and tags as well, as they all are just categories with specific visual representation and handling.

Removing all the menus might be a good idea, but then you will no longer be able to assign categories without switching the explorer pane to "Categories".

finding an acceptable solution for 1.90 is required

To what problem?

The problems and questions we currently have (see above in this thread).

[JohnFredC]

By "soft" labels I didn't mean (at least in the short term) an infinite capability for the user to create new "categories"... though that is what (as a database developer) I implement in my own "for pay" systems and would personally prefer for private use, too.

What I meant was: the ability for the user to rename the existing "Ratings", and "Color" labels to whatever they want. I might rename "Rating 3" to "Neutral" for instance, and rename the group (currently "Rating") to "Affinity" or something like that.

In B6, files may have essentially three kinds of additional identifiers (besides filename and folder, and exclusive of tags): text value identifiers ("Categories"), graphic identifiers ("Color label" and "Rating"), and numeric ("Rating") identifiers.

One of the issues I see is that the "Rating" group is represented (and "hard coded") by both color AND number. So when I look at a thumbnail I might see two blue icons (one with a number in it): representative of "Rating 4" and "To do". Also, I notice that the colors assigned to the "Ratings" imply a sequence, as do the colors assigned to the "Color labels", but the sequences seem inverted between the two groups. "Important" gets red, as does "Rating 1"... That's not "wrong", but it does seem a bit arbitrary.

What is my point here? Not sure, exactly , but I guess I don't think the current system would work for me in the long term because it has too many "inconsistencies", both logical AND visual.

One short-term solution that might help me personally would be to remove either the numbers OR the colors from the ratings icons. Another might be to allow us to assign our own icons to the Ratings indicators...

[Birdman]

Hi there,

please excuse if you consider this a bit off topic:
would it be possible to also make the color ratings available for search and filtering? It would be nice to search for best rated pictures for example.

Birdman

[helmut]

please excuse if you consider this a bit off topic:
would it be possible to also make the color ratings available for search and filtering? It would be nice to search for best rated pictures for example.

Your suggestion makes very much sense. Could you please repost it as an individual topic (it's should be discussed separately)?

[Joran]

Labels (Colour labels) and Rating (Star rating) are parts of the XMP / IPTC standard (as far as I can see). I think XnView should follow to the specifications / standard developed by Adobe / IPTC.

I use iView Media Pro to catalogue my photos. iView Media Pro is now owned by Microsoft and will be a part of Microsoft Expression Studio. See:

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expre ... fault.mspx

Ratings or Star Ratings in MediaPro are mapped to Adobe’s XMP standard for ratings. Labels or Colour Labels are written to the IPTC standard’s Urgency annotation field.

To clarify the use of (Star) Ratings and (Colour) Labels, I quote from iView Media Pro’s User Manual page 63-65:

Reviewing and marking media
Once you have imported a collection of media into a catalog, you will likely want to review and classify the media. For example, after importing images from a shoot, photographers typically edit images, marking their favorites and unusable ones. To assist in this process, MediaPro provides two methods of classifying and ranking media: star ratings and color labels. Using keyboard commands, labels and ratings can be easily assigned in any view, the light table and during slide shows.

Rating media
Star ratings provide a ranking system for items in your catalogs. You can now rank your media from one to five stars, or no stars. […]

Ratings as annotations
Ratings in MediaPro are mapped to Adobe’s XMP standard for ratings. When annotations for images in a catalog are synchronized (written) to the original files, all ratings will be written into the files. If you open the image in Adobe Bridge, the star ratings will be displayed. Likewise, if you have assigned a rating to a file in Bridge, the rating will be displayed when you import that file into a MediaPro catalog.

Color labels
Labels provide a visual identification and classification system for items in your catalogs. A color label can be used to: mark favourite items; mark items to delete, archive or convert; or to track items that are in different stages of a workflow (See example A). After you label your items, you can quickly sort the catalog using the Label section of the Catalog Field index in the Organize Panel. A label can also be used as a temporary method of marking items that will be later assigned a particular annotation. After assigning the annotation, the labels can be cleared from the images. To accommodate your desired method of marking items, the colors and names of labels can be customized in MediaPro as a global application preference. Because this customization is global, shared catalogs will inherit the label names and colors of the user that is opening the catalog and not the preferences of the person who created the catalog. […]

Labels as annotations
Labels in MediaPro are mapped to the IPTC standard’s Urgency annotation field. When annotations for images in a catalog are synchronized (written) to the original files, all images tagged with a label will have the corresponding label number (1-9) written into the Urgency field. For Photoshop CS users, these are the same values used in the Urgency field of the File › File Info › Origin panel. Even if you have customized the colors and names of labels, the values 1-9 are written into the Urgency field in order to comply with the IPTC annotation standards. If the Urgency field is important to your workflow, you might customize the label names to match the standard (see example C, pg 64).

Quote end.

Regards,
Jøran Toresen

[nightflyer]

Labels (Colour labels) and Rating (Star rating) are parts of the XMP / IPTC standard

Good points.
However the users here are not accustomed to using both ratings and labels and I am afraid labels can disappear in next releases.

[nightflyer]

One short-term solution that might help me personally would be to remove either the numbers OR the colors from the ratings icons. Another might be to allow us to assign our own icons to the Ratings indicators...

Using colors on both may be surely confusing. What about making ratings appear on shades of gray instead of colors? Or using little points in dice-like patterns?

[Joran]

Nightflyer

The point is: you use 1-5 (or 9) colours to label your photos and 1-5 stars (or a number) to rate your photos (and 0 or no star for unrated images). You should not use colours to rate photos, just numbers or stars.

Regards,
Jøran Toresen

[foxyshadis]

Labels and rating complying with a standard is good, except xnview doesn't currently read them out or write them back to the file, afaik. You're right about stars/numeric being more recognizable, and even though it's getting a bit crowded, there should be room for a few small stars in a corner. (White+black border or vice versa?) Maybe turn "view ratings" on if it impacts visibility too much. Numbers are just too small on the icons, based on the examples I've seen, but maybe not for everyone.

Now if the label idea were expanded to allow you to custom define a color for any category, well... that would be shit-hot. Then there's really no need for a separate "labels". Though it might take some thought as to how to deal with colors of multiple catgories, and whether to make some categories mutually exclusive and others inclusive.

(I can't fathom applying "urgency" to pictures the way one would to email or documents, but I suppose it's meaningful for some people or it wouldn't exist.)

[GeorgD]

However the users here are not accustomed to using both ratings and labels and I am afraid labels can disappear in next releases.

At least for me, I only don't use (but would like to use) ratings, color lables and categories as long as they are not stored into the files themselfs - once renamed, moved, burned to disk, changed drive letters,... - so simple everyday events - and all entered information is lost. Like this, using them is wasted energy

[oops66]

However the users here are not accustomed to using both ratings and labels and I am afraid labels can disappear in next releases.

At least for me, I only don't use (but would like to use) ratings, color lables and categories as long as they are not stored into the files themselfs - once renamed, moved, burned to disk, changed drive letters,... - so simple everyday events - and all entered information is lost. Like this, using them is wasted energy

Hello,
FI: It's already possible, but only with the XnViewMP version (v0.21)
http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.p ... 540#p77540