"Best Practice" use of the Title/Product/ObjectName field

[billseymour]

Dave-
Re 'intermediate files': If I do a straightforward, 'one-pass' treatment of an image (contrast, sharpen, basically just bringing out the photo), I might well go directly from Original to Derivative, without a Photoshop project 'intermediate stage'. So I would have only:
wcs_080524_003.jpg
wcs_080524_003_Master.tif

(ie, no real need to open a Ps 'project file', since I am simply 'cleaning and polishing' and nothing more)

I do the 'Ps project' thing when I know I am going to do 'substantial work' on an image- really push or alter the values/color_scheme with Curves, perhaps knocking out a weak sky and replacing it with another from a different photo of the same place, etc. This is the situation (as you saw above) where it is helpful for me to have the original filename somewhere. (I might have a project open for quite awhile, going back to it and giving it a look. Sort of like when I am painting- sometimes the painting 'sits' far more than it is worked on!)
--Bill

[riecks]

David:

I enjoyed the article, and was glad to see that a) you read and reference the IPTC Core User's guide, and b) found it useful in understanding the distinctions between the terms.

One point of clarification. You mention in your article, "Personally I think this would be less confusing for new users if the "Image Info" fields were called something other than "Title" and "Caption", and hopefully Adobe will change this in a future update." However, it is not Adobe, or Microsoft or Apple that should be changing the names of these fields. These fields are all part of the IPTC Core schema, and maintained by the International Press Telecommunications Council -- http://www.iptc.org/.

The IPTC Specifications for implementers request that certain field names be used to maintain consistency between different application user interfaces, so it is best if developers do not change these names. If you think these field names should be changed, you should correspond directly with the IPTC, or through one of the two public forums: the IPTC4XMP group (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc4xmp/) or the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc-photometadata/).

I use the token replacement options within Photo Mechanic to write the name of the original file (less filename extension) to the Title field. I typically do not bother changing these to a specific derivate filename... as I'm mostly concerned with preserving the filename for those instances in which clients download a preview or other version and feel the urge to replace my filename with something more meaningful to them.

There are a number of other options for automatically recording this information with various applications. I have gathered a number of them together on the Filename2Title page on my website -- http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/filename2title.html

Hope you find these useful.

David
--
David Riecks  (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent)
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