Last week I published the first part of the interview I conducted with Hans Fremuth from Metability Software about image metadata. In this section Hans talked about the current state of the image metadata standard development and in particular about the XMP standard developed by Adobe. In addition, Hans provides insight into how he organizes his own pictures on his computer. This article is the second part of the interview.
Learn how to organize your digital photos
and be free to enjoy them.
Picasa has recently released version 3.5 according to the Picasa blog. They have not updated everyone yet, meaning that when you open up Picasa, it would not prompt you to update. However, you can download the new version if you want. I did that yesterday and played with some of the new features. I believe the new version has some cool new things and some that…well, I’m not sure.
Last month I have created a 
Keywords or tags are the hottest topic when it comes to organizing your pictures. The standards used for capturing photo keywords and saving them to the actual image files are XMP and IPTC. It is important to understand what these terms mean and how to use them, but it is also important to understand how the actual keywords end up being added to your image files. So what does an image organizer software do in order to create and add keywords to image files ?
I have been looking for a long time for some software that would allow me to manage keywords in an efficient manner. What do I mean by efficient? It’s pretty simple: all I want is the ability to group my keywords into categories or domains. For example: I want 
software to do that. Now, I was suspecting that Adobe Lightroom might do what I wanted but the price was way too much for me! Eventually I decided to give Lightroom a try and found out why people like it.
Once you get started with Digital Asset Management (DAM) software you will quickly run into another management issue: your keywords. I believe any DAM software user will eventually ask himself the question: how am I supposed to create my keywords? Reading various internet sources on the subject I usually run into two kinds of advice: some say you should just start adding keywords to your images while others say you should be careful and think through your keywords before creating them. Even though it seems that most advice falls in the first category, I happen to fall into the second category. I do believe that you should be careful when you create keywords primarily because if you create too many, then you will have to manage your keywords as well pretty soon…as if managing your pictures is not enough headache. 
It is rare when a complex problem can have a simple solution. Most of the times however, a complex problem can have a simple solution that only works well for some of the times. When “some of the times” is “most of the times” for you, then the simple solution will work fine. However if “some of the times” does turn out not to be “most of the times” then the simple solution breaks down very easily. This is the case with the folder based method of organizing your pictures. So, how do you know when folders are not enough?About me
After being completely overwhelmed by my digital pictures, I have learned a simple and efficient way to organize all my digital photos.
Now I am enjoying over 79,000 pictures & videos. Read my story.
-
-
My travel blog- Travel Pictures from Sirmione, Italy
- Travel Pictures from Padova, Italy.
- Travel Pictures from Milan, Italy.
- Travel Pictures from Point Dume in Malibu, California
- Travel pictures from the Getty Center in Los Angeles
- The best credit card for using in Europe
- How to switch maps on Garmin Nuvi GPS system
- Travel pictures from Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, England
- Travel pictures from Auckland, New Zealand
- Travel pictures from Genoa (Genova), Italy
