Description/caption vs. keywords

[themandarin]

Hi,
  I have trouble distinguishing the use of a description and keywords IPTc fields. The fact that both these fields are searchable I feel that I can write enough in the description field to avoid making up keywords at all. Clearly, I dont take pictures for a living and maybe my searching needs do not need to be extensive as a pro.

Have I missed the point here ? or do some people feel the same ..At the moment I still add very basic keywords like, animals, name of my kids, family..etc..As Bridge makes it very easy to do...I also can alway go back to add stuff it if neeeded to

theres also the fact that all these keywords do clutter up the IVIEW display..

grateful for any input on this..

Cheers,

Andrew

[peterkrogh]

Andrew,
If you look at the chapter on Metadata, I outline what each field is "supposed" to be for.

From a practical standpoint, the reason too use keywords is that you can add them to a group of images without erasing what's already there.  You'll have a tougher time doing this for the Description.  So if you tag everything as "Beach" and you later want to come back and add the term "Sand Castle" to 25 images, you would want to do this in Keywords.

Peter

[wombat2010]

Peter, that is an excellent point.  Think of keywords as a simple list to help you find images later.  The description is where you can put your "prose" and remind yourself what an image was about years later.

Stephen

[themandarin]

Stephen,Peter,

Yep - just read the section metadata in Peter's  book..I was so focussed on reorganising my DAM as per yr method  with new directory structures/backups and applying rating that I "neglected" the IPTC/metadata stuff..All is clear now..Ill start applying metadata on my legacy stuff as and when needed..and apply it directly on my new pictures....In fact applying basic IPTC stuff with templates is easy enough..Keywording for me is a little more cryptic and I need more ground rules..hence my previous post in this forum...but the controlled vocabulary web site did help me to ask myself the right question when trying to come up with apprpriate keywords.

Cataloging my pictures was fantastic as I came across material i  had forgotten about and even work that I thought i had lost...ill be starting to scan old pictures and slides and never feel that the work will be forgotten.

thanks ,

Andrew

[peterkrogh]

Remember when thinking about what kind of keywords to use, that there is a huge difference between keywording for internal and external uses.  Internal (use by you, your family, clients, or close business associates) keywording can be pretty sparse.  In general, I don't need more than 3 to 6 keywords for most images, and most of those can be applied by template.

This is quite different from keywording for anonymous external searching.  You might want 30 to 60 keywords for this use.

Peter

[riecks]

Peter:

This is a very important point that should not be understated. Captioning and keywording is best done with an audience in mind. It might be an audience of one (you), in which case you know the specific "tags" that you use all the time. 

However, when you are captioning and keywording for an external audience...(for your online image database, or for a stock distributor like Alamy) then you have to make a number of considerations for not only what tags you would add, but how others might interpret those word in the caption or keywords as well.

For example, Is is a photograph of a young girl with a soda, or is a lass with a soft drink

The simplest solution for simpler image databases and DAM solutions is to include all of those synonyms that are relevant when writing the caption, and determining the keywords. See the Metalogging section of the ControlledVocabulary site for details.

http://www.ControlledVocabulary.com/metalogging/

Having a hierarchically arranged set of keywords with synonyms tied to them that you can search through ensures consistent spelling, as well as consistent selection of sets of related terms. This gives the people searching your image database a better than average shot at finding what they are after. After all, there is nothing more frustrating than entering keywords into a search function on a website or standalone application and having the first dozen keywords you enter result in errors or a lack of hits.

David Riecks

[peterkrogh]

Hey, David Riecks dropped by.

Since he is the man with regard to controlled vocabulary and photographers building collections, of course I agree with him. ;-)

Now all we need is a tool that will interface with DAM software so that we can do this all from the same seat.  Let's hope we see this soon.
Peter

[James Mulford]

FotoStation 5.2 does this just fine.

You can create a hierarchical Controlled Vocabulary within the program (as a simple a TXT file) for the keywords field or do the same with several “linked fields,” such as City, State, Country, Country Code (or ANY other field for that matter). By simply clicking on the CITY (or any keyword), the other fields are automatically filled in, or the keywords higher up in the root structure are also selected.

For example:

USA                                          Building                                       Communications
[Tab]United States                       [Tab]Church                               [Tab]Mass Media
[Tab] [Tab]Maryland                    [Tab] [Tab]Basilica                       [Tab] [Tab]Press
[Tab] [Tab] [Tab]Baltimore       [Tab] [Tab] [Tab] St. Peter’s         [Tab] [Tab] [Tab]Newspaper
You can even select between adding them as a LIST (in hierarchical or alphabetical order) or concatenated as a continuous string separated by commas.

For details, see my review of FotoStation’s metadata features at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/controlledvocabulary/message/2545 along with screenshots of what it looks like inside the program.