I spent some time discussing digital photo management with Adam Tow yesterday evening. Adam is re-organizing his vast digital photo collection and has looked at a number of different tools. What he wants is a nice fat client interface for captioning and browsing photos while on the Mac and a good web interface (probably using photos) for use elsewhere. I’d love to have this too.
I don’t build web applications because I prefer them to native applications, but because of the benefits you get from a web application (centrally located, accessible by any computer, etc.). I work hard to make the interface as rich as possible in my software to improve the user experience with things you don’t normally see in web applications (progress bars, resizing text areas, etc.) but it can’t match the power of a native application.
We also discussed the data format. Adam wants to use IPTC data to store the data about each image in each image. I agree with this approach. It lets you use a number of standard tools without tying you to any specific tool. Most good digital photo applications know about IPTC data.
I’ve been approached by several people who have asked me to make the photos database mirror the IPTC data format. I resisted at the time for several good reasons:
- Most people who use digital cameras don’t know about or care about IPTC data.
- More fields make the application more complicated and slower to use.
There are also technical issues around adding multiple keywords and such (make the user enter them one at a time or separate by commas, etc.). I think I’ve come to the conclusion that for all of this, the value of working with a standard
Using IPTC fields as the main database fields would also make it easier to write that data to the photo files and (gulp) even sync the data between the database and the data in the file. It will also make the application more suitable for newspapers, magazines and other industries that already use IPTC data for everything.
I’m not sure how this fits into the photos roadmap I outlined last week, but I know the upgrade script will be a royal pain in the arse. 🙄
This post is part of the project: Photos. View the project timeline for more context on this post.
My camera also takes video, audio, let’s you attach audio to pictures, etc. I want that one through one interface. Preferably WordPress. 🙂 I have no idea what IPTC but it would certainly be nice to have EXIF data extracted into the database. Being able to work with file metadata is great, but keep it database based, please.
EXIF data already imported into the database and is searchable. IPTC data is imported as well and fit into the existing fields and is searchable in that way.
However, just like with EXIF data, having your metadata about your photos in each file as well as in the database means you are not tied to any one system. Portability is good.
Just adding my vote of support. I’ve been looking everywhere for an application that will do what you describe above.
Please please please 🙂
Adam.
Alex-
I am just now starting to search for a solution (actually I have been searching for the last couple years) but I am more motivated now with the release of Cumulus 6.0 for OSX…It is a big disappointment! Slow!!! And a Kludgy, non-intuitive interface. Liscnesing for Web Publisher is crazy for a single man freelance operation! I am happy to pay for a quality product that is aimed at my needs, but it is designed more for larger publshers or firms than a 1 man operation who is Mac centric. I love iViewPro, but it’s not exactly what I am looking for in a searchable database.
With that said, I have just downloaded photos and I will start working with it to see if it is my answer.
Now to get to IPTC, I come from the photojournalism world and I am coming up fast on a T-byte of images (both RAW tiffs and .jpgs) with IPTC embedded in them already (I have been very anal about that over the years….I built a database back in the 80’s to catalog my 140,000 slides in Filemaker but it is not for storing images…just the information about the photos, etc, So now I need a solution for my digital images).
All this jaw boning comes around to the idea that I think there is a market out there for the small to medium size clients that aren’t addressed by the Canto’s of the world. The ability to select a folder full of images (or my complete collection of a T-byte of images) and have them in the form a searchable datase and spit out as web pages is my dream at the moment.
Since I haven’t had a chance to work with photos, I guess all I’m doing is adding my voice to Adam Tow and the IPTC format (even with it’s short comings) as a standard means of importing data in standardized fields.
Keep up the good work.
Todd Buchanan
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I’m looking forward to working on it, I just need to find the time.
First let me say that this is an amazing piece of software. I always believed that image editing should be done in a professional application such as Photoshop, PaintShopPro, or TheGimp 2.0 rather then in organizing software. It would be nice if they had good organizing software built in, but they don’t. Your solution is a great attempt at solving a problem which will only increase with time.
That said, there are two things I need which I find are lacking in Photos which prevent my adoption of it for my photos.
1. IPTC support. Something you are working on.
2. File formats: Raw (NEF), Tiff, Jpg2000 at a minimum.
3. Searching by IPTC keywords (goes with IPTC support)
4. PostGreSQL support.
If I could only program, I would be inspired by you to try my hand. Alas, I am reliant on the gifts of others.
On a note, check the PaintShopPro Album v5 beta. The Calendar View is especially useful, as is their search, although their Raw support is non-existent and their batch rename is worthless at best.
You have great software which is only improving. Good luck.
Ok, 4 things. 😉
Hi Bob–
I do import IPTC data and allow searching on it, but though my fields not the specific IPTC fields. The problem with supporting other file formats is that there isn’t the same built-in support in PHP for all of these formats.
Hi Alex
I am just an agronomist that use my many digital photos to explain people how to irrigate better. iarrived here because I wanted to know how to search IPTC data and Google sent me. I tries several solutions along the time and Ii am definate for the need of a universal metadata like the IPTC , I share pictures with clegues and the information “on the back of the picture” is indispensible part of the visual part of the picture.
Good Luck in your what you do and tell me if you have something I can use.
Photos imports and allows searching of IPTC data now, it just doesn’t match all of the IPTC fields 1 to 1.
Please consider using XMP instead of IPTC. Why?
1. IPTC has a number of significant limitations.
a. It assumes that int=char=printable, which make is less than useful in non-US ASCII-only environments.
b. It is limited in the number of fields it supports, and each field is length limited.
c. It is, well, crufty: to the point that the organization which standardized it has abandoned it.
Why XMP? and What is XMP?
Adobe launched the eXtensible Metadata Platform (ugly name, IMHO) in 2001. It is now embeded in all CS-vesrsion products (Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, etc.) It holds all the metadata that IPTC can hold, but it can also hold _any_ arbitrary metadata that an app wants to encode in a photo. Like IPTC, the metadata may be directly encoded in the photo file so that it won’t be lost. (It can also reside in a .XMP “sidecar” file if desired.) Unlike IPTC, the information is UTF-8 XML encoded RDF. (WTF? *grin*) This means that metadata may be encoded in non-English and even non-roman character sets. It also provides for the same metadata to be encoded in alternate languages so an appropriately aware app can display the metadata in the user’s preferred language.
Adobe has an open source C++ SDK for XMP, which won’t do much good for photos, but there are RDF tools for PHP which should provide a decent foundation for photos’ code.
As with many TLAs, XMP is overloaded. Google will help, but here is Adobe’s start page:
http://www.adobe.com[...]mp/main.html
The document you really want is the specification which shows how the XMP can be embeded in many extant image formats without making those images incompatible with pre-existing XMP-unaware applications.
FWIW, I’m (slowly) working on a set of XMP routines in python. I initially intended to go the IPTC route for much the same reasons as Alex has pointed out. Digging into it, however, XMP seems a much better choice.
I’ll take a look at this (thanks for the excellent write up), but I don’t want to be building my own toolset. I want to build functionality on top of an existing toolset.
The other benefit I see to IPTC is compatibility with existing software and photos.
Anyways, this is good food for thought.
well itpc and xmp fields overlap so its quite possible to sync both so you have even more compatablity.
I use a free program called PixVue that embeds both IPTC and XMP in photo files.