tagging (universal?)

Do all basic software packages implement tagging in the same way?

That is, if I tag something using Picasa (my only imaging software), will those tags be recognized if I move to another common type of photo managing software?

I don't want to take the time to go through all of my untagged photos only to discover that Picasa uses a proprietary tagging system (which is unrecognized by other systems)!

Thanks for any help
BK

I'm keeping a watch on this one.

I haven't taken the time to research tagging. Picasa 3.6 does it, earlier Picasa 2 does not. It seems to read the tag embedded in a jpeg file that someone else tagged in Photoshop / Bridge. There's also Windows Live Photo Gallery (free) which has a better interface.

If Picasa reads the tag from a jpeg file, it's reading JPEG file attributes. I haven't checked whether it writes JPEG file attributes.

Then there's RAW and TIFFs - some packages implement virtual albums / collections as well as tags - I think these are even more fragile and specific. And where do they store this meta data....

Waiting to see more responses.

Kelton Sweet said:

Do all basic software packages implement tagging in the same way?

That is, if I tag something using Picasa (my only imaging software), will those tags be recognized if I move to another common type of photo managing software?

I don't want to take the time to go through all of my untagged photos only to discover that Picasa uses a proprietary tagging system (which is unrecognized by other systems)!

Thanks for any help
BK

Click to expand...

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.mp

I just downloaded one of my picasa web photos... and it had tags that were imbedded through the use of Picasa's software.

Now, I'm on another computer. It does not have Picasa on it. I open the downloaded photo using microsofts Photo gallery.... and no tags. I check in "properties" and can find no tags, too.

I need to get back to the original computer and see if Photo galery or "properties" can see the tags.

If Picasa's tags are Picasa-specific... man, I just wasted a LOT of time!

BK

Kelton Sweet said:

if I tag something using Picasa (my only imaging software), will those tags be recognized if I move to another common type of photo managing software?

Click to expand...

Probably not. According to the Wikipedia entry for Picasa, the tags are stored into the picasa.ini file. For JPEG files, the tags will also be stored into IPTC IIM Keywords (Picasa 3.0 or later), which is your only real chance for getting the tags transfered to another program.

The problem is that IPTC IIM is obsolete and has been replaced with IPTC4XMP. Many of the good Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems will be able to work with both, but some might not look at IPTC IIM. Also, in Picasa this only works with JPEG files so any tagging of Raw files is done in a Picasa-specific way (the picasa.ini file).

Good motivation.

JPEG response here:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=5baec58c5b3168ce&hl=en#all

Doug Pardee said:

Kelton Sweet said:

if I tag something using Picasa (my only imaging software), will those tags be recognized if I move to another common type of photo managing software?

Click to expand...

Probably not. According to the Wikipedia entry for Picasa, the tags are stored into the picasa.ini file. For JPEG files, the tags will also be stored into IPTC IIM Keywords (Picasa 3.0 or later), which is your only real chance for getting the tags transfered to another program.

The problem is that IPTC IIM is obsolete and has been replaced with IPTC4XMP. Many of the good Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems will be able to work with both, but some might not look at IPTC IIM. Also, in Picasa this only works with JPEG files so any tagging of Raw files is done in a Picasa-specific way (the picasa.ini file).

Click to expand...

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.mp

Hmmmm... maybe some of the posters do not respect my level of digital photography novice-ness!

So, I don't quite get it.

In the end, am I better off using some other tagging venue rather than Picasa?

Is Windows Live Photo Gallery using the new standard in tagging?

In general, I'd like to use a very well concieved photo management software that:
a) is ubiquitous
b) is free or cheap

c) when it does things to my photos, those things are noticed and used by other kinds of software without need for conversion hassles.

Kelton Sweet said:

In general, I'd like to use a very well concieved photo management software that:
a) is ubiquitous
b) is free or cheap

c) when it does things to my photos, those things are noticed and used by other kinds of software without need for conversion hassles.

Click to expand...

As would we all.

The folks at IPTC and Adobe have provided a specification for storing metadata with image files: IPTC4XMP, commonly known as XMP, which is used by all of the serious photo management software.

Most of the free/cheap software ignores that specification. That's their choice.

If you want interchangeability, use software that stores image metadata in XMP. But it still won't be interchangeable with the junk software that doesn't use XMP.

Kelton Sweet said:

Hmmmm... maybe some of the posters do not respect my level of digital photography novice-ness!

Click to expand...

Respect is not what you mean I think. We don't know your level of noviceness and it's not about photography so much as IT

Kelton Sweet said:

In the end, am I better off using some other tagging venue rather than Picasa?

Click to expand...

IT and software keeps evolving. Picasa may have pre-empted the industry by employing earlier tagging and storage mechanisms. Then the rest of the gang have moved on with a newer def-facto and Picasa may not be moving fast enough.

Kelton Sweet said:

Is Windows Live Photo Gallery using the new standard in tagging?

Click to expand...

WLPG is NOT a standard. It is just another piece of software, and Windows specific as well (can't leave out the Macs, Linux bods). However, from the discussions, it appears to follow the newest standard more than Picasa.

Kelton Sweet said:

In general, I'd like to use a very well concieved photo management software that:
a) is ubiquitous

Click to expand...

May be you live in a world that is Windows only. I am like that too but Windows is not the only world. When you say ubiquitous, do you mean only Windows?

Secondly, ubiquity cannot be established in IT easily - because the technology evolves very fast.

Kelton Sweet said:

b) is free or cheap

Click to expand...

WLPG and Picasa are free for the moment. But we are not talking of a cheap calculator or notepad. As we get onto focussed tools (most snapshooters have no idea of tagging) for specialists, things become less free or cheap. Somebody has to pay for dem programmers.

Kelton Sweet said:

c) when it does things to my photos, those things are noticed and used by other kinds of software without need for conversion hassles.

Click to expand...

We're not there yet. I would use WLPG but I sit in Picasa much more often.

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.mp

Doug Pardee said:

Kelton Sweet said:

In general, I'd like to use a very well concieved photo management software that:
a) is ubiquitous
b) is free or cheap

c) when it does things to my photos, those things are noticed and used by other kinds of software without need for conversion hassles.

Click to expand...

As would we all.

The folks at IPTC and Adobe have provided a specification for storing metadata with image files: IPTC4XMP, commonly known as XMP, which is used by all of the serious photo management software.

Most of the free/cheap software ignores that specification. That's their choice.

If you want interchangeability, use software that stores image metadata in XMP. But it still won't be interchangeable with the junk software that doesn't use XMP.

Click to expand...

In other words, there is no interchangeability, in the sense that the OP wants. Unless he wants to belly up and buy into something that is made by Adobe. And convince all of his friends and family to do likewise.

But looking at the OP's a), b), and c) criteria, above, it doesn't look like this is the direction that he wants to go.

With that said, here is some info on the IPTC-NAA standards
http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/iptc_naa.html#standards

I got this link from the BreezeBrowser product page.
http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/index.htm

BreezeBrowser is reasonably cheap and pays attention to IPTC and EXIF data. I am a long time BreezeBrowser user, but I haven't done any inter-program data compatibility tests (I also use PhotoShop CS3 and Picasa.)

BB is small and light (much smaller and lighter than, say, Picasa. PhotoShop isn't in the same galaxy as BB, size wise.) BB isn't free, but it does have a demo mode, so you can test it and see if it does what you want.

I like BB, but it doesn't do everything that Picasa does. Picasa is neat and all, but Picasa isn't designed to play well with other programs. In addition to the IPTC issues that Doug alluded to, it isn't particularly graceful to do some processing with Picasa, some processing with another program (like BB), and then switch back to Picasa. Picasa is more of a "what happens in Picasa, stays in Picasa" kind of program. Well, and in Google's cloud.

If you read the page I linked to with IPTC info, you'll realize that the various IPTC data formats were created for needs of news organization. So the programs that best support IPTC data are programs that are designed to be sold to people that work somewhere in the news chain. The rest of the world just comes along for the ride. Or doesn't, in the case of Picasa.

Wayne

Wayne Larmon said:

Unless he wants to belly up and buy into something that is made by Adobe.

Click to expand...

There's no need to restrict oneself to Adobe. Almost all of the serious photo handling software out there uses IPTC4XMP. I use Light Craft's LightZone for editing and idImager for DAM, and both work with XMP (although LightZone's support is quite limited).

BreezeBrowser, which you mentioned, supports XMP. You don't even need the Pro version.

A number of the pros use Photo Mechanic, which supports XMP.

Microsoft's entry in the DAM world, Expression Media, supports XMP.

iMatch is another DAM product that support XMP.

Apple Aperture supports XMP.

Thumbs Plus supports XMP.

There are many more, but that's a pretty good list of respected programs from companies other than Adobe that work with IPTC4XMP.

Thanks for the input! Very educational..

OK...

Tagging is so useful and yet so time consuming to do all the backlog of photos that I do not want to waste that time.

Perhaps I should look into software that can convert from one tagging format to another if needed. Anything would be easier than re-doing it!

Part of the reason I prefer cheap software is that I like the ability to go from one computer to another. If, for instance, I want to fool with the photos on another person's computer (or a new computer), I can instantly download picasa and be in business.

That's cool, but of little help if they have their own tagging deal.

If I do use the wrong software to do the tagging, though.. it would be nice to learn that it can all be converted to another format if needed.

Any ideas on that?

Doug Pardee said:

Wayne Larmon said:

Unless he wants to belly up and buy into something that is made by Adobe.

Click to expand...

There's no need to restrict oneself to Adobe. Almost all of the serious photo handling software out there uses IPTC4XMP. I use Light Craft's LightZone for editing and idImager for DAM....

Click to expand...

I was responding to Kelton's request

Doug Pardee said:

Doug Pardee said:

Kelton Sweet said:

In general, I'd like to use a very well concieved photo management software that:
a) is ubiquitous
b) is free or cheap

c) when it does things to my photos, those things are noticed and used by other kinds of software without need for conversion hassles.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Particularly, a) is ubiquitous . None of the programs that you listed is ubiquitous, in that it is likely that non-technical friends and family would be likely to be using them. Yes, that is a bit of stretch, because Kelton didn't make this request explicitly, but this is part of my definition of "ubiquitous". My definition of "ubiquitous" meant software that appears on the shelves of Best Buy or Wal-Mart (et al.) Or a mass market cloud integration app, like Picasa. Or software that is bundled with a P&S. Something made by Adobe, like PS Elements, was about the only IPTC aware app that fit my definition of "ubiquitous".

Hence my sense of futility. (Actually, Adobe software barely qualifies. I use CS3 and am appalled at the number of EXIF fields that it strips.)

But if you use a more relaxed definition of "ubiquitous" than I do, then your list is a good place to start.

Wayne

Kelton Sweet said:

Tagging is so useful and yet so time consuming to do all the backlog of photos that I do not want to waste that time.

Perhaps I should look into software that can convert from one tagging format to another if needed. Anything would be easier than re-doing it!

Click to expand...

Agreed. But Google doesn't make this task easy, if you are a Picasa user. Google has a large empire of programs. In an attempt ease the fears that people have that their data would be "locked in", they have a site that shows how to extract data from the various Google apps. See

http://www.dataliberation.org/

The intro reads:

"We intend for this site to be a central location for information on how to move your data in and out of Google products."

This sounds good until you look at the (long) list of Google programs that are "liberated": Picasa is not on the list. Picasa Web Albums is, but Picasa itself isn't. There is a considerable learning curve to learn how to use the Picasa Web Albums APIs:

Picasa Web Albums Data API
http://code.google.com/apis/picasaweb/overview.html

The Picasa help forums aren't much help either.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/label?lid=523d5991dbedd0cd&hl=en

I don't see any recent threads about "tagging" in general, but here is a thread about Picasa Name Tags:

How to Back up Name Tags and copy to an another compter
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=0727103717c22cd7&hl=en

Kelton Sweet said:

Part of the reason I prefer cheap software is that I like the ability to go from one computer to another. If, for instance, I want to fool with the photos on another person's computer (or a new computer), I can instantly download picasa and be in business.

That's cool, but of little help if they have their own tagging deal.

Click to expand...

Yep. That is the Picasa trap. You can check out any time you want, but your data can never leave.

Kelton Sweet said:

If I do use the wrong software to do the tagging, though.. it would be nice to learn that it can all be converted to another format if needed.

Click to expand...

As Doug said, your best bet is to use a program that supports IPTC standards. As I said earlier, that even though it isn't free, I like BreezeBrowser as a general purpose utility program, because it is tiny and can quickly be installed on any Windows computer (Win 98 SE and up.) You can carry the install program on a thumb drive (the installer for most recent version of BB Pro that I have is about 11 megabytes.)

Wayne

Wayne Larmon said:

Particularly, a) is ubiquitous . None of the programs that you listed is ubiquitous

Click to expand...

Ah, now I see what you were saying.

Doug Pardee said:

Wayne Larmon said:

Particularly, a) is ubiquitous . None of the programs that you listed is ubiquitous

Click to expand...

Ah, now I see what you were saying.

Click to expand...

But if we back off from my definition of "ubiquitous" a bit, you mentioned that you use IDImager for DAM (Digital Asset Management). Am I correct in assuming that this is the program that you are using?

http://www.idimager.com/products/idimager

If so, it does look pretty slick. As I said, I use BreezeBrowser, but it is a bit long in the tooth. I have a few questions about IDImager, though.

1. How much does it want to take control? One reason why I cling to BreezeBrowser is that it doesn't require "importing" the images into some database. BB works at the directory and file name level. I can rename directories and/or filenames at any time without confusing BB. For me, a program that needs to manage the images itself isn't useful. I guess I'm saying that I mostly do my Digital Asset Management myself, and only need an image browser and metadata editor.

However....the IDImager blurb page says "IDimager was designed with an open cataloging architecture in mind. Because IDimager uses existing industry standards to store its data, you can extract your information at any time, even without IDimager running." Can you elaborate a bit on what this means?

I'm also interested in a program that can be used on friend and family computers. The cost ($69/seat) is reasonable. But the less impact on machines, the better. (Others use different programs for their own uses.) "Plays well with others" is a virtue. "Light" is also a virtue, because most of my family's machines are on the old side. Early XP machines, for the most part.

Can it do IPTC data entry/editing by only editing/creating XMP files? I really like to keep the my RAW files untouched. I get very queasy when any program modifies my RAW files. I think that sidecar XMP files are splendid places to keep metadata that is created after the image was exposed. Shutter speed, ISO, and the like should be stored as metadata that is internal to the image files (and never needs changing). But captions, etc. should be external. Does IDImager work this way?

I see that IDImager does facial recognition. So does Picasa. But that feature is diminished in Picasa, because Picasa keeps the name info in an undocumented binary file. Is IDImager better behaved?

I'm trying to stretch my definition of "ubiquitous".

Wayne

Wayne Larmon said:

1. How much does it want to take control? One reason why I cling to BreezeBrowser is that it doesn't require "importing" the images into some database. BB works at the directory and file name level. I can rename directories and/or filenames at any time without confusing BB.

Click to expand...

There are two basic kinds of DAM software: browsers and cataloguers. Browsers scan your disk drives to keep track of where your photos are, and can't locate any photos that aren't online. Cataloguers maintain a separate catalogue database of your photos, both online and offline.

idImager is a cataloguer. It maintains a SQL database with the photo information in it. Although you can use it on arbitrary directories, life is a lot simpler if you create a directory specifically for the online photos managed by idImager.

IF you have idImager up and running, you can rename and move files with Windows Explorer and idImager will pick up the notifications and make the appropriate updates to its database. All-in-all, though, it's easier to just do it in idImager since the program's up and running.

Wayne Larmon said:

I mostly do my Digital Asset Management myself, and only need an image browser and metadata editor.

Click to expand...

In that case, idImager is probably more than you need. You could use it to do what you want, but you'd only be using a small fraction of what it's designed to do.

Wayne Larmon said:

However....the IDImager blurb page says "IDimager was designed with an open cataloging architecture in mind. Because IDimager uses existing industry standards to store its data, you can extract your information at any time, even without IDimager running." Can you elaborate a bit on what this means?

Click to expand...

idImager stores the standard metadata in XMP. It can also store your idImager tag structure into the XMP Keywords. And it can store the entire database entry for that file into XMP in an idImager-specific namespace from which idImager can reconstruct the entry if you lose the catalogue database.

Also, the idImager catalogue database is a standard SQL database. You can use the usual SQL tools to extract the data for whatever purposes you want.

Wayne Larmon said:

Can it do IPTC data entry/editing by only editing/creating XMP files? I really like to keep the my RAW files untouched.

Click to expand...

Yes. By default idImager does not modify Raw files, and instead stores the metadata into XMP sidecars. For those who don't mind taking the risk, there is an option to turn on storing metadata into the Raw files. Using that option is discouraged in the idImager documentation. (Offhand I don't know if DNG files are considered an exception.)

idImager will also create XMP sidecar files for JPEG files that are read-only.

If you decide to give idImager a try: when you create or edit metadata, it's initially stored only in the database. This is for performance reasons; updating a JPEG every time you change a field gets pretty slow (not so bad on straight XMP sidecars). After you're satisfied with the metadata entries, you need to "synchronize" the database and the files (Ctrl-F12). This will update the files to contain the metadata.

Doug Pardee said:

Wayne Larmon said:

However....the IDImager blurb page says "IDimager was designed with an open cataloging architecture in mind. Because IDimager uses existing industry standards to store its data, you can extract your information at any time, even without IDimager running." Can you elaborate a bit on what this means?

Click to expand...

idImager stores the standard metadata in XMP. It can also store your idImager tag structure into the XMP Keywords. And it can store the entire database entry for that file into XMP in an idImager-specific namespace from which idImager can reconstruct the entry if you lose the catalogue database.

Click to expand...

Sounds good. For the benefit of Kelton, I'll list the rest of that paragraph:

"...even without IDimager running. Should you ever decide to switch applications (although once you’ve tried IDimager, you’ll never go back!), you won’t have to repeat the time consuming operation of re-cataloging your data ."

(Emphasis added.) This is where we started: Kelton finding that the answer to

"I don't want to take the time to go through all of my untagged photos only to discover that Picasa uses a proprietary tagging system (which is unrecognized by other systems)!"

is that Picasa does indeed use a proprietary tagging system (which is unrecognized by other systems).

Thanks for your informative replies. It does look like we need to make a decision, as you indicated in your first post in this thread. Cheap "ubiquitous" software doesn't do what we need, so we need to go elsewhere.

Wayne

Great info...

So, I might try thatIDimager software... $69... and I'm guessing I'd have to buy a full copy for each computer, too.

I'm wondering if this software (or some other software) can help me re-capture all the tagging I did with Picasa.

Kelton

Kelton Sweet said:

So, I might try thatIDimager software... $69... and I'm guessing I'd have to buy a full copy for each computer, too.

I'm wondering if this software (or some other software) can help me re-capture all the tagging I did with Picasa.

Click to expand...

What exactly do you mean by tagging? Comments? "Star" ratings? Facial recognition name data? Image edits, like cropping and red eye removal?

I have my own definitions of tagging, and some of the references between me and Doug might have been a bit oblique. For instance, Doug mentioned that IDImager stored its data as SQL. I looked back at the IDIMager blurb pages and saw that they use SQLite. A few quick Google searchs showed me that SQLite is open source (yea!), and that it has bindings for all of the languages that I use.

SQLite project page
http://www.sqlite.org/

List of programming language bindings to SQLite
http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=SqliteWrappers

I asked Doug about IDImage's XMP support. He replied that IDImage did store metadata as XMP, in addition to the data that was stored in SQL tables. I knew from past experience that XMP is a flavor of XML, and that XML is readable programmatically by several means (because XML is standard ASCII text.)

With this information, I knew that I could write "glue" programs to extract any data that is managed by IDImager, either for use in my own programs. Or to reformat and import into some other program. IDImager might very well have ways to export data non-programmatically, but I'm more interested in being able to do it at all--i.e., that the data formats are well documented.

On the other hand, Picasa doesn't work like this. Most of the metadata that I mentioned in my first paragraph is stored in an undocumented binary file (or files), near as I can tell.

One area that I am still concerned is that IDImager (like Picasa) supports a certain amount of image editing, but it does it "non-destructively" On the face of it, this seems like a good idea. But this causes problems with data interoperability: any image edits that you have done don't really exist until you "export" the images (at which time the edits are applied.) This is a minor matter when you are working on a small collection of images, but can become a major problem if you want to process your image collection with a different program. Perhaps, to populate a web site. Or to load into a different image managment program.

If IDImager stored the metadata that describes the image edits as, say, ImageMagick
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

commands, then the editing metadata would be portable--any language can process images with ImageMagick (because it operates from the command line). But if IDImager has its own propitiatory method of editing images, then it has the same problem that Picasa has. (This problem can be partially sidestepped by using a different program to do image edits, so that all edited images live on disk. But then it is less palatable for non-technical friends and family.)

Also, when I looked closer at the IDImager page, I see that there are two versions. A $69 version, and a $139 "Pro" version. A lot of the features that are important to me only appear in the Pro version.
http://www.idimager.com/products/idimager/comparison-sheet

But it might be worth it. I think that I should stop waiting for Google to document Picasa's data formats on http://www.dataliberation.org/ and find some other option for metadata interoperability. IDImager might be a usable solution. For me.

Wayne