Becoming more efficient

[mercphoto]

I find it difficult to read product reviews for software to know if the product will actually meet my needs. Bridge, iView Media Pro and Photo Mechanic fall into that realm for me.

I'm finding the big bottleneck in my system is the keywording part. I used to keyword bikes and karts with the number, but that is taking a long time. Its also not always possile -- mud on an MX bike, or bikes and karts that don't have visible numbers from every angle I might photograph. I'm resorting to tagging by run group only. But even that takes time. Imagine a 1600 photo bike race.

In particular, with CS2's Bridge, it takes a lot of mouse movement. Click on an image, move to the keywords pane and click on a keyword, back to another image, etc. Is there a way in Bridge to assign a hot-key to a keyword? Would make life easier. Or, is keywording substantially easier in iVMP or PM? Its hard to tell from the literature. Any route I choose must give me the ability to batch a group of images through Photoshop CS2, choosing an action, performing the action, and doing a save.

Thanks.

[cmason]

In particular, with CS2's Bridge, it takes a lot of mouse movement. Click on an image, move to the keywords pane and click on a keyword, back to another image, etc. Is there a way in Bridge to assign a hot-key to a keyword? Would make life easier. Or, is keywording substantially easier in iVMP or PM? Its hard to tell from the literature. Any route I choose must give me the ability to batch a group of images through Photoshop CS2, choosing an action, performing the action, and doing a save.

Thanks.

Here is what I do:

in the thumbnail view, I select all the pics that will share a keyword. Right click, choose "File Info.." Any keywords you put here will be assigned to all selected photos. You can also choose the "down arrow" to the right of the text field and it provides previous keywords to choose from.

[mercphoto]

Here is what I do:

in the thumbnail view, I select all the pics that will share a keyword. Right click, choose "File Info.." Any keywords you put here will be assigned to all selected photos. You can also choose the "down arrow" to the right of the text field and it provides previous keywords to choose from.
I can (and do) select multiple images when they are in close proximity to each other. But usually they are randomly strewn about a many hundreds of total images.

I wonder if Apple's Automater can help me here?

[Vivid Visions]

I find the keywording thing a chore myself, and to make it worse, I prefer to do my first review in ACDSee because I can open it more quickly and zoom on in the photos, which you can't do in Bridge. The other problem is that your keywords assigned in Bridge will only be good for an Adobe application. If you want to search by keyword using another program, such as ACDSee or iView, then you are out of luck.

What I have started doing, and you may want to consider, is to keyword in the metadata directly. You can place captions, keywords, copyright info and other pertinent info in a batch of photos as long as you have selected them. Then you can search on them in any program. There definitely less clicks this way.

To access the metadata info, go to the file menu in Bridge and select file info. There are several options to choose.

[mercphoto]

The other problem is that your keywords assigned in Bridge will only be good for an Adobe application. If you want to search by keyword using another program, such as ACDSee or iView, then you are out of luck.
That's odd. I know that Smugmug and Exposure Manager both have no issues with reading Adobe's keywording. I have never tried importing into iView Media Pro or any other application, however. Wonder why Adobe did that?

[dandill]

... have never tried importing into iView Media Pro or any other application, however. ... iView Media Pro synchronizes keywords with Bridge CS2 and Photoshop CS2.

[DavidTO]

The other problem is that your keywords assigned in Bridge will only be good for an Adobe application. If you want to search by keyword using another program, such as ACDSee or iView, then you are out of luck.



This is incorrect. PS places the keywords in the IPTC field, which is an industry standard.

[mercphoto]

This is incorrect. PS places the keywords in the IPTC field, which is an industry standard.
That's what I thought. Now I know that iPhoto does their keywords differently, but I thought Adobe was standard.

[dandill]

This is incorrect. PS places the keywords in the IPTC field, which is an industry standard.I have been sorting this out myself, and at least the CS2 apps use the IPTC Core with XMP (http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/), as well as the earlier IPTC format.

I think it is the information in the Bridge CS2/PS CS2 XMP panels (File info..., IPTC Contact, IPTC Content, IPTC Image, and IPTC Status) that is exchanged between iVew Media Pro and PS CS2.

The three places I have been learning about this are

The DAM forum (http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php)

The iVew forum (http://www.iview-multimedia.com/forum/index.php)

and

The Controlled Vocabulary forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/controlledvocabulary/messages)