How to: Categories Management - Shortcuts
Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 7:48 am
XnViewMP's category engine is quite bare-bone. However with few tweaks the power of this subsystem can be greatly enhanced. And let's start it one by one, breaking the things in individual messages in order to be easier to discuss and track.
First, we'll talk about the shortcuts.
Knowing that 80% of keywording time is spent by assigning 20% from Categories the need to assign custom shortcuts to the most common Categories appears like a natural conclusion. In fact, is one of the definitory features of professional DAM out there.
An interesting thing to note is collision handling: when a shortcut colision is detected, the best thing is to show a window with a numbered list, allowing the user to chose from the available categories which are under the same shortcut. For example, if we assign Ctrl+P for "Portrait" and "Paintings", when we'll press Ctrl+P then a window will show us a list with two items ("[1]Potrait" and "[2]Paintings") and a message saying something like "Press the corresponding number to chose the desired item".
Ok, the very best would be that in the same list to be present also the command(s) which have assigned the same shortcut (eg. "Print") but this isn't mandatory. Working serveral years with the above system in a heavyweight DAM handling approx half a millon photos I dare to say that such "collisions" aren't so scary as it would appear at the first sight. OTOH, the huge gain in time and workflow smoothnes makes this feature a no-brainer to implement.
I'm at your dispossition for any further clarifications and discussions.
First, we'll talk about the shortcuts.
Knowing that 80% of keywording time is spent by assigning 20% from Categories the need to assign custom shortcuts to the most common Categories appears like a natural conclusion. In fact, is one of the definitory features of professional DAM out there.
An interesting thing to note is collision handling: when a shortcut colision is detected, the best thing is to show a window with a numbered list, allowing the user to chose from the available categories which are under the same shortcut. For example, if we assign Ctrl+P for "Portrait" and "Paintings", when we'll press Ctrl+P then a window will show us a list with two items ("[1]Potrait" and "[2]Paintings") and a message saying something like "Press the corresponding number to chose the desired item".
Ok, the very best would be that in the same list to be present also the command(s) which have assigned the same shortcut (eg. "Print") but this isn't mandatory. Working serveral years with the above system in a heavyweight DAM handling approx half a millon photos I dare to say that such "collisions" aren't so scary as it would appear at the first sight. OTOH, the huge gain in time and workflow smoothnes makes this feature a no-brainer to implement.
I'm at your dispossition for any further clarifications and discussions.