keywording inconsistent?

ashishpandey · January 10, 2009

It seems that smugmug is little inconsistent in applying some of my keywords. As an example, look at the following 2 photos:

1. http://photography.ashish-pragya.com/gallery/6801320_ARdyv#452114921_kNJDM

2. http://photography.ashish-pragya.com/gallery/6801320_ARdyv#452113474_VqHMo

If you download the original, you will see that both have a keyword "Rating: 1 Star" embedded

If you look at the keywords indexed by smugmug (below the photo in gallery), photo 1 has keyword "rating 1 star", but photo 2 is missing it

Why does smugmug understand the keyword for some photos but not other? Now the rating system from my DAM workflow is all messed up on my galleries :cry

jfriend · January 10, 2009

In my experience, Smugmug will not accept keywords direct from your IPTC upon upload with mixed alphanumerics. So the keyword on your second image:

Rating: 1Star

will not be accepted upon upload. Sometimes, it will show as a keyword, but not be indexed. If you want it to take in Smugmug, you have to go into the bulk keyword editing and apply the keyword as "Rating: 1Star" with quotes around it.

In my opinion, there are serious inconsistencies in Smugmug's keyword handling and I've come to the conclusion that the only way I could work with it would be to completely redo how I'm using my DAM outside of Smugmug. That seems backwards to me, so I'll wait until Smugmug fixes things before I make much use of keywords. Hopefully in that time period, we'll also get real virtual galleries that can be keyword driven. I know that Smugmug is aware of these keyword inconsistences (I've had many dialogs with them on the topic) and I think they are going to fix it, but I don't know how soon.

FYI, I would LOVE for Smugmug to just directly support XMP ratings, particularly so I could sort by them, but ultimately filter by them too. I use ratings extensively when managing my images and there are many cases where I want to make "highlights" galleries based on ratings. Now I have to do that 100% offline, then upload whole new galleries (which are dups of other images already on Smugmug). There are also many occasions where I'd like to be able to sort a gallery by rating (present the best images first). My only workaroud to date has been to rename the files with the rating in the front of the filename and then sort by filename. That sort of works, but since filenames are not editable, the only way to change this after it's been uploaded is to delete and re-upload.

ashishpandey · January 10, 2009

jfriend wrote:

In my experience, Smugmug will not accept keywords direct from your IPTC upon upload with mixed alphanumerics

I would be less worried if it did so consistently. When I uploaded my initial galleries, it seemed to apply the keyword, and then somewhere it stopped. My slideshow is feeding using keywords and of course now I have mixed data with or without that keyword

jfriend wrote:

In my opinion, there are serious inconsistencies in Smugmug's keyword handling and I've come to the conclusion that the only way I could work with it would be to completely redo how I'm using my DAM outside of Smugmug. That seems backwards to me

Yes, that is backwards. One of the main reasons to come to a paid website instead of my own hosting was to get image management features, but this looks like an overhead rather than help

jfriend wrote:

I think they are going to fix it, but I don't know how soon

I actually posted to hear something from smugmug. It surely wasnt working right, so the question really is whether something is in the pipeline to resolve this (and what are my current options to fix data)

jfriend wrote:

FYI, I would LOVE for Smugmug to just directly support XMP ratings, particularly so I could sort by them .....(snip)

Those are all nice things to have, and I am ok for such things to arrive over a longer period of time. However, data collection and integrity are much more important. If I lose my keywords today, there is no hope to organize things from scratch when my collection has grown. I have experienced this when I first adopted a DAM workflow, and have fully understood that good DAM practices start collecting data for tomorrow. Data collection part has to be right today

jfriend wrote:

only way to change this after it's been uploaded is to delete and re-upload.

I am very careful for delete/upload sequence because that breaks all my external shared links. Over a period, I won't even have track of all such links

ashishpandey · January 12, 2009

bump. Any feedback from smugmug on this?

keywording inconsistent?

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