Request: Manage Categories in Preview Pane

[Mooninaut]

I have about 10,000 images, and to keep them organized I have about 250 categories defined. I use categories somewhat like keywords, so I may put a single image in up to ten different categories so I can find it easily. Some categories have more than a thousand images in them.

My request is:

1. To have an easy way to see what categories an image is in
2. To be able to remove an image from a category using the browser, without having to go to the category and find the image

Since the Preview pane already has a view with tabs for Properties, Histogram and various embedded metadata, I think a Categories tab would work well. It would have a simple alphabetical list of categories the image is in, with nested categories shown as Category1 | Category2 | Category3 (or whatever).

Clicking on a category and pressing Delete, or right-clicking on a category and selecting Remove from the context menu would remove the current image from the selected category.

A more advanced (optional) enhancement would be a Browse context menu item. Browse would switch the tree pane to the category viewer and select the category in question. A further enhancement would select the image within the category and position the scrollbar so the image is visible.

I made a simple mockup you can look at.

[xnview]

My request is:

1. To have an easy way to see what categories an image is in
2. To be able to remove an image from a category using the browser, without having to go to the category and find the image

You means IPTC categories?