Folders and tags are two complimentary methods for organizing your digital pictures on your computer. I have written in the past about the differences and similarities of folders and tags and people have written and asked questions (Read Tags vs Folders the big debate). This article explores one key difference between the two methods and how to use it for your own advantage.
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Many people associate using folders for organizing digital pictures with being antiquated and “old school”. The same people indicate that using tags is the only way to organize your digital pictures. When asked why, some of the same people don’t really understand the real power of tags and they don’t understand how to harness that power
Read Learn how to harness the power of tags.
However, the reality is that folders represent a straight forward way for us to organize our digital pictures. On the other hand, when tags are used for what they’re intended for they can bring great benefit.
Read Why folders will remain the most popular method for organizing pictures.
A little history of how tags came about is in order now. I hope is not boring even though it is long.
The strength of folders is hierarchical representation
The real strength of folders is the ability to create “folders of folders” or in other words categories of folders. It is very easy to create parent-child relationships between folders and this make sense to us. I can create a folder called Europe and in it I can create a folder for France and one for Italy to categorize my pictures taken in each country. Anyone understands this structure because it is easy to understand that Europe is a category of “country folders”, it is a container. This is the real strength of folders. In addition, a folder structure can be simply copied and shared with someone else and the relationship can be preserved.
If you only use a single criterion for organizing your pictures (i.e
eventsorcountries, then folders are your easiest and most efficient method for organizing your digital pictures.
The weakness of folders is capturing only one relationship
Folders are also weak because you can assign a single picture to a single folder that is part of a single folder structure. The only way to get around this limitation is to copy the same image in another folder structure.
For example, a picture taken in Italy showing a red old truck will be saved normally in Europe/Italy. This is the only relationship that this folder structure captures. If I want this picture to also belong to my folder showing Auto/Trucks then I have to copy this picture in folder structure as well. So, I create two copies of the same image if I want to capture two relationships.
The strength of tags is the ability to associate multiple tags to a single picture
Tags were created exactly to fill the weakness of folders. Pictures can be categorized in a myriad of ways depending on the criterion chosen for categorization. Folders can only capture one criterion be it events, countries, automobiles, persons or any other of the many criteria possible.
Read Divide and conquer for efficient picture organization.
So, instead of thinking about assigning a picture to a category (represented by one folder structure) how about assigning many categories to the picture. This was indeed a new way of thinking that paid off. So now, you can assign multiple tags (categories) to a single picture without having to make a copy for assignment to each category. Now, this is powerful !
If you need more criteria for organizing your pictures (i.e.
peopleandcountriesandevents) then your only efficient choice is to use tags for organizing your digital pictures.
The weakness of tags is that tag hierarchy is not being preserved
To continue my story, standards have been created for capturing these tags (IPTC and XMP). Now, we can save these tags in the image file itself and thus your tags become mobile.
Read The road traveled by metadata.
However, with tags there is no hierarchy. In other words, if I create tags like Europe, Italy, France, Paris, Rome I cannot create any parent-child relationship between these tags. Many software package allow you to add tags to your pictures (XnView and Picasa for example) but they don’t allow you to create categories of tags. So you create an endless string of tags without any rhyme or reason…unless you add your own rules to it.
Some smarter and more expensive software like Adobe Lightroom and Photo Mechanic allow you to categorize your tags. In other words you create tags that are just place holders for your own organization so that you don’t create duplicate tags. This is indeed cool!
Read Adobe Lightroom an exercise in keywording.
The problem comes when tags are being saved to the image file itself. Whatever hierarchy you have created in Lightroom for example cannot be saved to XMP or IPTC. The only thing you can save is the tags themselves, no hierarchy. In other words, if for example in Lightroom you have created Europe and Italy under Europe, when you save them to an image file you will only see Europe, Italy with no hierarchy preserved.
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Thought this might be the tip I was looking for but found a glaring problem with it. Itunes won’t allow you to select a subfolder specifically, only the parent. I pointed the sync entry to My Pictures on my pc and then scrolled thru the list to select folders I wanted. Discovered it only shows the primary folders under the root path and wont’ let you click into a folder to select just the subfolder under it. Weak. Very Weak Itunes.
Max…not really sure what you were trying to accomplish, but iTunes will probably not work for your well organized photo library. Try something like Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive.
Nice to hear from you vlad.
the only thing which i don’t know in picasa is that whether i can change the other IPTC settings such as source, provider, city , location … . and if i can how i can ?
is it just user friendly as editing tags?
Unfortunately Picasa only supports IPTC keywords. This is a new feature in Picasa…since 3.4 I believe. I think they’ll be adding more support but for now you can only add keywords. XnView will allow you to edit pretty much all the IPTC fields…and it’s free as well.
i tried the Picasa and it did great to add a tag to multi selection files.
but then Bridge is not showing the newly added keywords, though i see them in windows explorer’s file properties dialog box.
P.S: picasa 3.5 is just a piece of great software !
Mahdi…let me know how things are going. As I was explaining earlier, Bridge is using XMP while Picasa is using IPTC as far as I know. Bridge is supposed to be able to use the IPTC keywords though…so, I’m not sure why you don’t see them. Glad you like Picasa…it’s been getting much better lately.
Thanks vlad,
i must try Picasa for this purpose.
i myself just use the IPTC core field of bridge.
P.S: the subscription to comments via email is working !
hi,
i have a folder of pictures which every file has its own tags.
i am using Bridge CS4, how can i add a “2009” tag for example to all files so that their own tags will not be deleted ?
if you don’t know how to do in Bridge but know another program for doing so, just tell me.
Thanks for your help.
will appreciate it if you answer me via my email. (i am subscribed to this post’s comments also)
Mahdi…good question. I hope I understood the question rightly. Normally your software should not overwrite existing tags, but only add to them.
I don’t use Bridge CS4 but here is what I would try first:
I would try the simple approach first. Make a copy of the images you want to do this for so you don’t mess up the originals…you can copy only a few in another folder. Then, in Bridge CS4 select the images you copied in this new folder and apply the “2009” keyword to them. This should not erase the existing keywords, but rather add “2009” to the existing ones, unless there is some setting in Bridge that will force it to erase the existing keywords. I know you can do this in Adobe Lightroom. If the simple approach doesn’t work try this one.
Most other image viewers/managers will be using IPTC/IIM to save keywords to your files…this means they’re not using XMP like Bridge. So, you might not even see the existing tags that you have. So, you can try XnView or Picasa, they are free. I use Picasa to apply keywords to my images. With Picasa it’s pretty simple to add keywords, you select the pictures and hit the Tags button on the lower right corner and then add your tags. Again, you’ll be adding IPTC tags and not XMP. Then you can open the pictures in Bridge and see if you see the new tags, Bridge should be able to read both XMP and IPTC.
Also, try this link: http://www.photometadata.org/META-Tutorials-Adobe-Bridge
I hope this helps.
Great post, I personally think that the mix of a hierarchical storage plus tagging is the winner. I store my images in folders named by date (year, month) and sometimes event (if there are many pictures for a single event). Anything else goes into metadata fields (people, event, location, date etc.).
I agree Hans…many times people dismiss folders for exclusive use of tags and the other way around…some people use only folders. But both methods have strengths and weaknesses and if used together they can create a very useful and efficient organization structure for pictures.
I use the exact same, but what software do you use for that. I have been using Picasa and Lightroom, but it seems there should be some software that could create such a folder-structure automatically based on EXIF data.
Imunck…I do the folder naming manually. There is no software for that. You actually do not want to do this automatically because you would end up with very long folder names. I only use place and a short description based on two or three tags the most.