How does a "normal" person view images and keywords?

[dperez]

By NORMAL I mean someone who ISN'T a photographer, DOESN'T have Lightroom or ANY photo manipulation product, barely understands how to use a computer, and wants to view family images. So, just a normal person who wants to view some pictures and see WHO is in them, where they were taken, when, and all the stuff we keep in the keywords.

It SEEMS like this would be something to do in the cloud.

For example, I have several hundred images of family, friends, events, etc. They are keyworded in Lightroom. How do I make all this available to the viewer can identify the people in the images, the events, when they happened, etc.

How do I do this without having to re-enter keywords or text on hundreds of images? And make it searchable for the viewers?

 

[Richard James]

person who wants to view some pictures and see WHO is in them, where they were taken, when, and all the stuff we keep in the keywords.

Make sure LR is writing the keyword to the EXIF data.

Upload the images to Google Drive (or other service)

Give them the link and tell them to download them.

Lots of utils can view exif data like:

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

Richard

 

[CAcreeks]

By NORMAL I mean someone who ISN'T a photographer, DOESN'T have Lightroom or ANY photo manipulation product, barely understands how to use a computer, and wants to view family images. So, just a normal person who wants to view some pictures and see WHO is in them, where they were taken, when, and all the stuff we keep in the keywords.

Nowadays a "normal" person views photos on a smartphone.

It SEEMS like this would be something to do in the cloud.

Yes, what cloud are you going to put them on?

Google photos has i in a circle ⓘ to display an information window. It's likely that Lightroom keywords could be taken or converted to appear in the ⓘ details.

For example, I have several hundred images of family, friends, events, etc. They are keyworded in Lightroom. How do I make all this available to the viewer can identify the people in the images, the events, when they happened, etc.

Back when I used IrfanView, I remember that the annotations it showed were not what I expected based on EXIF tag names. Normal people wouldn't use IrfanView though. Nor would normal people (based on your definition) be able to install FastStone.

How do I do this without having to re-enter keywords or text on hundreds of images? And make it searchable for the viewers?

You will probably have to use exiftool to convert Lightroom keywords into some specific keyword that appears in your choice of cloud. Pbase doesn't have an ⓘ mechanism per se. Facebook and Instagram strip metadata so are out of the picture.

 

[Sean Nelson]

For example, I have several hundred images of family, friends, events, etc. They are keyworded in Lightroom. How do I make all this available to the viewer can identify the people in the images, the events, when they happened, etc.

IMHO "normal" people don't grok keywords. They look at the file name, double-click it (or tap it on a touch screen) and whatever the default viewer is shows the photo. If you're lucky, the default viewer has a way to view the photo's EXIF caption which describes the shot.

I tag and caption my photos using Adobe Bridge. I do it when I upload the photos, so it's not particularly onerous.

 

[skyglider]

By NORMAL I mean someone who ISN'T a photographer, DOESN'T have Lightroom or ANY photo manipulation product, barely understands how to use a computer, and wants to view family images. So, just a normal person who wants to view some pictures and see WHO is in them, where they were taken, when, and all the stuff we keep in the keywords.

It SEEMS like this would be something to do in the cloud.

For example, I have several hundred images of family, friends, events, etc. They are keyworded in Lightroom. How do I make all this available to the viewer can identify the people in the images, the events, when they happened, etc.

How do I do this without having to re-enter keywords or text on hundreds of images? And make it searchable for the viewers?

I don't think "NORMAL" people will take the time to identify every photo with keywords. Actually I never understood how folks can take the time to rate or enter keywords for each and every picture that they take.

Instead, suggest making folders and naming each folder with a relevant name. Like the following:

..... 230604 Lisa's High School Graduation
..... 230726 Yellowstone vacation
The YYMMDD prefix automatically sorts the folders by date

For impromptu pics, the folder names could be:
..... Automobile
..... Boat
..... Family
..... Friends
..... etc.

Now when each folder is opened, the pictures can be displayed as thumbnails using Faststone Image Viewer or a similar image viewer. Easy to pick out pictures via the thumbnails to get full screen views.

Sky

 

[Richard James]

Actually I never understood how folks can take the time to rate or enter keywords for each and every picture that they take.

Instead, suggest making folders and naming each folder with a relevant name. Like the following:

..... 230726 Yellowstone vacation

Now when each folder is opened, the pictures can be displayed

IMO, using appropriately named folders is just a first step.

Using keywords enables you to find "whatever" in any folder for your entire catalog.

Adding keywords in LR is almost trivial... (OP stated LR...)

In Yellowstone (for example), you shot sequences of Bison, Hot Springs/Geysers, and birds...

Visually selecting each group is simple, dragging the selection into the appropriate keyword is trivial. No big deal.

Now you can find all images of "Bird X" anywhere, or that you shot in Yellowstone.

Saves a lot of time searching...

Richard

 

[gscotten]

If you select the option to "Include All Metadata" when you export the images, the keywords are visible in Windows File Explorer under Properties. If you view the files with Windows Photo Viewer (the Lagacy app) or most other image viewing apps such as Faststone or Irfanview you can also see them under File>Properties.

You can also rename the files so the new filename is composed of your keywords when you export them. Lightroom has quite extensive renaming options, and it is pretty easy to do. This choice is probably the best for technophobic viewers because they don't have to click anything.

--
George

 

[Mike B USA]

I not a facebook or IG participant, but I think those are, by far, the most common means for "normal" people to view photos with people identified.

 

[XiaoDeer]

This is a great question and one I've been grappling with.

For background, I have a very large photo collection (~50K). I am trying to create a much, much smaller subset to pass onto my heirs following my demise. I have a close friend who is trying to accomplish the very same thing and I don't think we're alone.

Many, not all, of my images already have a fair bit of EXIF/IPTC metadata. However, I'm only really interested a very limited subset:

* Date and time taken
* Location (city, country)
* Title/caption
* Keywords

It would be great to have an application that allowed non-technical (photo and computer) folks to easily browse that collection and view the images together with that limited metadata. Of course, the goal will be something that's going to work in 10, 20 or more years from now. Tricky.

I don't have a great solution. One thing I am going to do it export that metadata together with the filename to a CSV file/spreadsheet. At a minimum this could serve as an annotated index to the collection.

Right now, I'm still focused on selecting the images and adding missing tags. But I shall follow this thread with a good deal of interest.

 

[Sean Nelson]

..the goal will be something that's going to work in 10, 20 or more years from now. Tricky.

Stick with JPG and make sure that whatever tool you use to embed descriptions and/or keywords places them directly into the JPG file's EXIF data and not just in some sidecar file or proprietary database. Those are fine as long as the information also goes into the JPG file.

JPG is the universally recognized image file format. It'll be around for at least a few decades yet.

 

[XiaoDeer]

Stick with JPG and make sure that whatever tool you use to embed descriptions and/or keywords places them directly into the JPG file's EXIF data and not just in some sidecar file or proprietary database. Those are fine as long as the information also goes into the JPG file.

JPG is the universally recognized image file format. It'll be around for at least a few decades yet.

Oh, yes, absolutely 100% JPG.

However, EXIF doesn't really handle the metadata I'm interested in. IPTC does and so I will be using that. Unfortunately, not so many tools will handle IPTC and even those that do can be inconsistent and not very intuitive/easy for folks without photography experience.

And BTW, I abhor sidecars; horrible, nasty things

 

[Jestertheclown]

By NORMAL I mean someone who ISN'T a photographer, DOESN'T have Lightroom or ANY photo manipulation product, barely understands how to use a computer, and wants to view family images. So, just a normal person who wants to view some pictures and see WHO is in them, where they were taken, when, and all the stuff we keep in the keywords.

It SEEMS like this would be something to do in the cloud.

For example, I have several hundred images of family, friends, events, etc. They are keyworded in Lightroom. How do I make all this available to the viewer can identify the people in the images, the events, when they happened, etc.

How do I do this without having to re-enter keywords or text on hundreds of images? And make it searchable for the viewers?

I don't think "NORMAL" people will take the time to identify every photo with keywords. Actually I never understood how folks can take the time to rate or enter keywords for each and every picture that they take.

Instead, suggest making folders and naming each folder with a relevant name. Like the following:

..... 230604 Lisa's High School Graduation
..... 230726 Yellowstone vacation
The YYMMDD prefix automatically sorts the folders by date

For impromptu pics, the folder names could be:
..... Automobile
..... Boat
..... Family
..... Friends
..... etc.

Now when each folder is opened, the pictures can be displayed as thumbnails using Faststone Image Viewer or a similar image viewer. Easy to pick out pictures via the thumbnails to get full screen views.

Sky

That's almost the way that I do it.

I simply upload the folders (as 'shared albums') to Google Photos and share them via the link that's automatically generated.

I give each 'album' a really basic title, as you've suggested above.

No-one that I share with is ever going to be remotely interested in the EXIF. They just want to know when, where and what each 'album's' about.


"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

 

[CAcreeks]

Stick with JPG and make sure that whatever tool you use to embed descriptions and/or keywords places them directly into the JPG file's EXIF data and not just in some sidecar file or proprietary database. Those are fine as long as the information also goes into the JPG file.

JPG is the universally recognized image file format. It'll be around for at least a few decades yet.

Oh, yes, absolutely 100% JPG.

However, EXIF doesn't really handle the metadata I'm interested in. IPTC does and so I will be using that. Unfortunately, not so many tools will handle IPTC and even those that do can be inconsistent and not very intuitive/easy for folks without photography experience.

What IPTC items do you need? (I thought IPTC had been superseded by XMP.)

Best solution, which AFAIK does not exist out of the box, would be an adaptive app (desktop browser or cellphone) that proceeds through a folder of images, displaying whatever EXIF tags you specify. You'd need your own website, or could be done at home using removable media. Here's one such Javascript solution:

https://photoswipe.com/

 

[XiaoDeer]

What IPTC items do you need? (I thought IPTC had been superseded by XMP.)

* Date and time taken
* Location (city, country)
* Title/caption
* Keywords

IPTC is really overkill for that very modest bit of data. And XMP an order of magnitude more so.

I really hate sidecars but it would be easy enough to create XMP's for each image with just those few data items populated.

Best solution, which AFAIK does not exist out of the box, would be an adaptive app (desktop browser or cellphone) that proceeds through a folder of images, displaying whatever EXIF tags you specify. You'd need your own website, or could be done at home using removable media. Here's one such Javascript solution:

https://photoswipe.com/

Yes. I have the programming skills to do that. Even IPTC is a bit of a moving target as is the underlying computer infrastructure. So most of the things I could create will likely break in not many years.

There's much to like about a web browser based front end. It's platform neutral and my target audience includes Windows and Mac users. It's pretty stable if you stay away from the more exotic JavaScript capabilities that break when someone plugs a newly found security hole.

But then what to do about the backend? Where to host it, who pays associated subscriptions, who carries out essential maintenance? I can't do it because by the time I want this available I'll be gone.

Perhaps the simplest and more durable option is to add a title block at the bottom of each image and burn the metadata as legible text into that. If someone wishes to print an image without that title block, they can crop it out rather easily using any half decent image program on any platform. This approach relies exclusively on the JPG standard and I think it's a safe bet that JPG's will still be viewable 100 years from now even if new images are being created in other formats.

I'd just have to choose a font that doesn't offend anyone

Note that I also intend to write that metadata to a CSV file and spreadsheet to create an index of all the images in the collection. And that would be searchable using Excel or any number of other tools.

 

[dperez]

Sorry to take so long. I keep forgetting I don't get email notifications from this forum...

I think y'all are right that this is best done from the cloud so it doesn't depend on Windows or Mac or phone or whatever. And that no one is going to want to open some window to see information about the image.

That will mean embedding caption info in the images. With that, something simple like Google Images would be fine.

 

[CAcreeks]

Sorry to take so long. I keep forgetting I don't get email notifications from this forum...

I think y'all are right that this is best done from the cloud so it doesn't depend on Windows or Mac or phone or whatever. And that no one is going to want to open some window to see information about the image.

That will mean embedding caption info in the images. With that, something simple like Google Images would be fine.

Google Photos? Currently it's more friendly than Google Drive for sharing photos, but that works too.

I could not determine with Google search (cough) how to insert and display image information without using their next-to-photo UI, Info > Add a description.

By experimentation, it seems that the added description does not get placed into metadata of the downloaded image. So I'd wager that what you want isn't there yet.

 

[CAcreeks]

What IPTC items do you need? (I thought IPTC had been superseded by XMP.)

* Date and time taken
* Location (city, country)
* Title/caption
* Keywords

These have EXIF equivalents, although XPKeywords was for Windows XP.

• 0x9003 DateTimeOriginal
• 0xa214 SubjectLocation or 0x8825 GPSInfo
• 0xa436 Title
• 0x9c9e XPKeywords

https://photoswipe.com/

Yes. I have the programming skills to do that... But then what to do about the backend?

You can run JavaScript from a web browser pointed at removable media. Whether JavaScript will still be around when your descendants want to browse, is another issue.

Perhaps the simplest and more durable option is to add a title block at the bottom of each image and burn the metadata as legible text into that.

My wife has a Windows application that does this: Breeze Browser Pro, $95.

You could do something similar with an ImageMagick script, free.

 

[dperez]

Sorry, yeah, Google Photos...

I stupidly thought this whole process would be really simple and well integrated with EXIF information from Lightroom, with dozens of great options for making a simple photo/family information viewing platform. I was wrong, it appears.

The whole thing is going to be a kludge, but hopefully to the people in the family viewing it, it'll be"OK"... Looks something like:

Get a bunch of images into Lightroom. Some not terrible, some scanned from terrible prints, some taken with digital cameras of twenty years ago - so about 8 generations old.

Cull down to whatever she wants to use.

I then get to do all the post-processing, Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz, etc.

Once that's done, things diverge with some going off to the book she wants to produce, and a lot of images going off to a basic editor in Canva (I haven't found any better online editor yet, but still looking), to rewrite/reformat the keywords into a caption ON the image.

After that, she can decide how she wants to group things, shove 'em up to Google Photos, it SHOULD be well under the 15GB limit, and let the family view.

HOPEFULLY, between now and when we get to the massively inefficient grunt work of putting captions on hundreds of images one at a time, I'll find a tool that works better.

 

[CAcreeks]

After that, she can decide how she wants to group things, shove 'em up to Google Photos, it SHOULD be well under the 15GB limit, and let the family view.

HOPEFULLY, between now and when we get to the massively inefficient grunt work of putting captions on hundreds of images one at a time, I'll find a tool that works better.

Well, I hoped there might be a way to do this, but apparently not (yet).

I found this interesting bug report, which would provide a workaround (put description in Title tag and then it appears in Other) but it did not work today.

Loading…

support.google.com

Google Photos needs a setting to choose extra EXIF tags to appear in Info.

 

[PHXAZCRAIG]

Years ago I just ran out of room for more photo albums with prints in them. I decided that the only reasonable way to view many images (and share them) was on the web.

For ME, that meant a web page. This was prior to Facebook, by the way. Since I am an 'IT Professional', it was easy for me to produce and host my own web page - I already had my own web server to learn on so I just started uploading my images to it.

I've had various software, but the workflows have been basically the same:

1. shoot & download images to PC

2. use a program (currently Lightroom) to star rate and cull images to reduce number of images to work on.

3. post-process images. I shoot in RAW and expect to do something with every image I shoot, but if it needed nothing changed I'd just export to JPG and be done.

4. export selected images. Here is where rating and culling is important. I typically rate my images 1-5 stars, then delete the 1's, keep the 3's but not show them and post-process the 4's and 5's. The 2's are in a gray zone where I go back and rerate them as 1's (delete) or 3's (keep, don't show).

When I export images, they retain the EXIF data that was embedded by the camera. I make use of this in the next step.

5. Now I create a web page from the exported images. I'm currently using Photo Mechanic for this, because it is easy to create and update web pages with it. Nothing special, but handy for me.

And here is where I make use of EXIF data, and any keywords I may have added. In the export-to-web function, there are variables you can use to add captions to your images. I think this is what you want. I always include the date, but there are a few other things that can be useful in a caption.

Mostly though, within Photo Mechanic for a single image, I can type in a description that becomes part of the caption. I save this for last because every time I reprocess and re-export an image, it wipes out the caption from any image it replaces.

***

There is a simpler way than creating a web page and uploading it to a server though. That's Facebook. It does not really use EXIF data for captions that I've seen, but it is much easier to get pictures in front of a viewer, and you can simply type in the caption you want. It is also FAR simpler to add videos.