ControlledVocabulary.com

[JD RAMSEY]

Peter mentions the above site in his book.  The site sells a contolled vocabulary library for about $60.00.  Just curious whether anyone has given it a try and if so what rating would they give it?  Many thanks.  JD

[peterkrogh]

Is this the one that is for Image Info Toolkit?  If so, I think it only is useful for JPEGs.

What is the purpose of your keywording, internal or external uses?
Peter

[danaltick]

JD,

I'm using it.  So far so good.  However, keep in mind that the keyword heirarchy does have to be manually copied and pasted into Bridge and/or iView.  Some might consider this overkill for personal work, but I use it just to maintain a controlled and consistent heirarchy.  I might delete some of the keywords though, if I feel they're unnecessary for personal work.  Also, you can always supplement this with your own keywords such as family names, etc.

Dan

[Dave Wyatt]

I use it with Image Info Toolkit to keyword all my images via the method described on the website with cutting and pasting into Bridge.  Makes keywording my agency submissions a lot less painful.  It is a good option if you don't have the facilities/motivational to build your own list.

Dave Wyatt

[JD RAMSEY]

Thanks for the responses, they are helpful.  Peter, in response to your question, I'm using it only for internal purposes.  I am an amateur with a growing collection of files, and a desire to keep them well organized.  I was one of those who you described in the book as trying to over-organize my file structure, and finding that as my number of files and number of iterations of a particular file grows, the file structure is just not an effective methodology.  So before buying your book, I tried Portfolio 7 and it seemed to work OK, but I wasn't always being consistent with my assignment of keywords.  When I read your book your mention of controlled vocabularies peaked my interest.  Is it overkill for someone like me who is only concerned with keeping my files in good order, adequately backing them up and finding a file when I need it?  Thanks for your input.

Regards,
JD

[peterkrogh]

JD,
I would suggest (as I have before) that the needs of internal and external keywording are very different. 

I think this is probably overkill for someone like you.  For my personal work, for instance, many more than half of the keywords, keyphrases, and catalog set definitions are ones that are not going to be found in any purchasable keyword list.  These include terms like:

Josie Krogh
Caldwell Grey
Exotic Erotic Ball
Anti-War Protest
Cravin Dogs
Lock Overlook Farm
Oberon St.

These are the most valuable kinds of keywords to me for my internal uses of my personal work.

[JD RAMSEY]

Thanks, Peter, makes sense.

[riecks]

Peter:

Just to clarify. Image Info Toolkit, if used as a "standalone" application will allow you to add legacy IPTC metadata to both Jpeg or TIFF (even high bit tiffs) either singly or as part of a batch operation.

I use the Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Catalog as a "Keyword Generator" where I drag the keywords from the IIT keyword catalog to the "caption/description" field in the IIT data entry field. This triggers the application to insert a comma and space following each keyword. From there it's just a cut and paste into any application that accepts a string of comma separated terms into the keyword field.

At present that list would include, Photoshop CS/CS2, iView Media Pro (2.6.4 with script, or v3 direct), Breezebrowser, PhotoMechanic that I'm aware of and have tested.

For a visual on how this can be done, see the link to the Sample Quicktime file on http://www.ControlledVocabulary.com/metalogging/keywording.html and look under the section titled, "The IPTC Keyword is a multi-value field."

Hope that clarifies the issue.

David Riecks

[sdwike]

That looks powerful, but painful.

[danaltick]

I use that technique all the time.  It's actually very easy once you get used to it and have your windows setup adjacent to one another.  I can't think of a better more thorough way of keywording your stock photos.

Dan

[paulbrown83]

If you just drag your particular keywords over into the keyword listing area, and then save it by just pressing Apple-S, doesn't it place  the keywords into that field automatically?  I did this, and reopened the file in Photoshop CS2 and the keywords were right there in the keywords area of the Image Info, all separated by a semicolon.  This makes it less painful and tedious by eliminating the Copy/Paste operation.  Am I overlooking the point here?  I just thought I'd add my two cents...

[riecks]

Paul Brown wrote:

If you just drag your particular keywords over into the keyword listing area, and then save it by just pressing Apple-S, doesn't it place  the keywords into that field automatically

Paul:

I assume you are doing the operation described above within FileBrowser or Bridge, is that correct? What Dan was describing was a method to "generate" and arrange the keywords within a separate application Image Info Toolkit http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/imageinfotoolkit.html, and then "cut and paste" that string of comma separated terms into the Keyword Field of File Info within Photoshop. The link I provided in the post made on March 6 visually shows you what's being done.

FWIW I just tried selecting and dragging terms from both the keywords field, and the caption field in Image Info Toolkit data entry window, and the words simply do not transfer. I even tried dragging them directly from the Keyword Catalog within IIT, with the same result. Unfortunately this appears to be a situation in which dragging and dropping does not work.

As Peter mentions, there is a vast difference between keywording for "internal" (personal) use vs. "external" (public) use. Keywording so that others can find your images is not something that you need to do on every single one of your images, just the ones that will be placed into publicly searchable areas.

Hope that helps.

David
--
David Riecks (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent)
http://www.riecks.com , Chicago Midwest ASMP member
Chair, SAA Imaging Technology Standards committee
Version 2 of the Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Catalog is out
http://controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/cvkc_order.html