Workflow Tutorial: #3 - Cataloging - SBB Digital Scrapbooking Forums | Scrapbook-Bytes

Pesto126 · #1 (**permalink**) 12-23-2006

Without further ado.. I present to you.. a holiday gift that will hopefully provide some organizational ideas for 2007! Here you are.. Episode 3: Cataloging.

In this episode, I introduce to you catalog programs or DAM's. I also take you through my process of assigning keywords and ratings, etc.

Please note that although I mention a number of programs in these tutorials, I am not endorsing any of them.. use them at your own risk and I stand to make no profit from my recommendations.. I just provide info to hopefully help you along.

Please enjoy... !

Paula Molina · #2 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

Thanks pesto! Great info! I know I can use this!!

Pesto126 · #3 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

You are welcome... glad you liked it!

Rae · #4 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

I am loving these. I'm actually getting excited about becoming organized. One question. What about Adobe Photoshop Photo Album? I already have this program on my computer as at some point in the past I had good intentions. Played around with it a bit back then and did like it.

Pesto126 · #5 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

Hi Rae - glad you are getting excited.. that's a great attitude to take when attempting to attack this task head on!

Yes - photo album will do the trick to some degree. It has some nice features like viewing your photos by date and does allow for keywording and minor image correction. However, I'm not sure how well it handles the metadata portion (writing said keywords and other data into the files) which is critically important. You'll always want the catalog info to be also contained in your files so if you move to a different catalog software in the future, all that hard work will move along with the files. I recently did this when I upgraded my computer and switched from Thumbsplus to Idimager.. Once all 30,000 images were in place in the new system, all I had to do was read in the metadata and bingo! My new catalog was created... imagine having to have to rekey 30,000 photos worth of keywords, ratings and other metadata!!!

So, sure - give it a try but check out to see if you can add the keywords to the metadata... commonly called either IPTC data or perhaps XMP sidecar files.

Tracey R (Haley64) · #6 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

There was a thread about this in the corel photography group quite awhile ago. They were discussing the different types of programs and the different things like you mention, EXIF, IPTC, META INFO and such. They were talking about how long these standard types of files would be able to be accessed in future generations with all this data intack. YWIM?
Meaning in the future would another type of cataloging infomation holding and gathering ability be implimented in the future in the new programs and would they support the older data ability.
Didn't seem like it mattered to me then as I read that thread. But I can see where if you have special comments added to a particular set of photo's you would want them to remain active no matter where you take this photo.
It is sort of like how we can write on the back of photo's what the occasion, event, date ect. happened on a physical photo!
I know with my real photos in photo albums, I have them dated, names, places, events recorded in ink...it will stay there for 100's of years to be read by future generations.
I also would like to be able to do this with my digital photo's and think it is extremely important.
So for this part of the exercise, Pesto which do you think is the best program that will retain this info "FOREVER" and be able to be read for many years to come.
Or should a person keep a copy of the program we are using now to do this and then hope to high heavens it works on the computers of the future.....year 2200???
This is the part of digital photo's that scared me, that in 100 years my decendants will not be able to view them, like I can with my great-great grandparents photo's!!

Pesto126 · #7 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

Yeah.. this is a huge topic and one that gets revisited all the time. There are a ton of different methods and no one is better than the rest. EXIF and IPTC are at least older standards that are automatically built into the photo.. you save the digital file and this information follows along built right in. XMP is a newer standard and is also usually embedded into the file unless the format doesn't like it like RAW or png files...

Personally, I will just use XMP and IPTC. As I am always keeping my eye on new products and technologies, I will always be aware of changing feelings in the digital management realm. Once something else comes along that is better/different, I'll just convert all the metadata over to that newer/better method and go from there. In my opinion, there will always be ways to read the data and convert so I'm not really that concerned.

It's the same for media.. people worry about CD's and DVD's not lasting more than 10 years.. or worry about the future not being able to retrieve them.. Well.. in 10 years, I'll just convert my CD's/DVD's to RMD's (or whatever) that hold 900 MB's apiece and just throw out the CD's/DVD's. Just like I do now with my film.. I convert it to digital so it is more readily available to me now.

Anyway.. I just think we'll always be able to move to newer/better technologies so long as you aren't using a truely propriatery format, you will be good!

Tracey R (Haley64) · #8 (**permalink**) 12-24-2006

Thank for that vote of confidence on the future of our data. I am sure just like there is now, in the future there will be forums and discussions on how to transfer our old data to new programs also!!