Author Topic: rate workflow progress/status?  (Read 4790 times)

Offline JAS Photo

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rate workflow progress/status?
« on: February 08, 2010, 06:48:53 AM »
Kirk

I’m trying to figure out how to keep track my workflow progress and wondering if PM could help. 

Part of my problem is I don’t always get all the way through my personal project workflow before doing many more jobs. So, after ingest, I Rate, Caption, Upload, Clean. But I have a hard time remembering where in the process a particular folder of images is.
I also sometimes caption an image or 2 then days later need to caption more images in that folder but I can’t SEE which images are already captioned if any.

Someone previously recommended a program that color codes windows folders but I couldn’t get it to work for me.

I like the idea but I was also thinking of having a #0 jpg file that I could keep at the top in all directories that I could rate with PM colors.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Right now I’m using an excel spread sheet that I’m not as good as I would like to be at keeping up.

Joe Sorrentino
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Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2010, 06:54:22 AM »
Joe,

I’m trying to figure out how to keep track my workflow progress and wondering if PM could help. 

Part of my problem is I don’t always get all the way through my personal project workflow before doing many more jobs. So, after ingest, I Rate, Caption, Upload, Clean. But I have a hard time remembering where in the process a particular folder of images is.
I also sometimes caption an image or 2 then days later need to caption more images in that folder but I can’t SEE which images are already captioned if any.

Someone previously recommended a program that color codes windows folders but I couldn’t get it to work for me.

I like the idea but I was also thinking of having a #0 jpg file that I could keep at the top in all directories that I could rate with PM colors.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Right now I’m using an excel spread sheet that I’m not as good as I would like to be at keeping up.

Why not use one of the thumbnail labels to display the {caption} variable?  Then you could see at a glance which photos have been captioned and which photos have not been captioned.  Also why not create a text file with notes in it that you write what you've done and what needs to be done?  That way you could just open up that folder view the text file, and know what you need to do.

HTH,

-Kirk

Offline Hayo Baan

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2010, 08:33:14 AM »
Kirk beat me to it; adding the caption as a label would have been my suggestion too. :)

Also think of creating a custom sort on caption so you can easily get the ones without a caption at the start.

Cheers,
    Hayo 
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Offline JAS Photo

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #3 on: February 08, 2010, 08:36:27 AM »
"Why not use one of the thumbnail labels to display the {caption} variable"

Then I need to be on that image to know if it's captioned.

I'm hoping for something more obvious like a blue folder is partially done a red folder is finished.
Joe Sorrentino
JAS Photo LLC
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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #4 on: February 08, 2010, 08:46:57 AM »
Joe,

On the Mac version of Photo Mechanic I can highlight a folder in the Favorites or Navigator pane and give it a color. This put a rather obvious color label around the folder and folder name. Is that what you want?

Scott

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2010, 09:16:58 AM »
Joe,

"Why not use one of the thumbnail labels to display the {caption} variable"

Then I need to be on that image to know if it's captioned.

I'm hoping for something more obvious like a blue folder is partially done a red folder is finished.

You could create a custom sort using any of the IPTC variables like {caption} and then your images that are captioned will group together, and the uncaptioned images will be in another group.

-Kirk

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #6 on: February 08, 2010, 09:18:06 AM »
Scott,

On the Mac version of Photo Mechanic I can highlight a folder in the Favorites or Navigator pane and give it a color. This put a rather obvious color label around the folder and folder name. Is that what you want?

The Windows file system does not support color labels like Mac OS X does.  The same feature does not exist in the Windows version of PM.

-Kirk

Offline vAfotoriporter

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2010, 06:41:22 PM »
"Why not use one of the thumbnail labels to display the {caption} variable"

Then I need to be on that image to know if it's captioned.

I'm hoping for something more obvious like a blue folder is partially done a red folder is finished.

Not at all. You can set up PM to show one to three rows of variables that is displayed under each of your thumbnails in the Contact Sheet so you can easily see if a file is captioned or not. This combined with a sort by Caption gives easy way to find it out even if you use a basic caption to all your files upon ingest as I do it. (I find it quite easy to discover an image captioned manually as my standard captions start with different parts (general information of the shoot) and those I manually caption get pepople names and descriptions of what is in the picture.

You can also use a sort by modification time as probably images you captioned were modified later than the rest of images you did not caption yet. This combined with the labels displayed under the file name mentioned above give you quickly what you want.

But you can also use tags, color codes or star ratings or even adding a keyword: captioned or done to see if a photo has been captioned or not. For those captioning on ingest any variable showing to have a caption would be a waste of resources as there is no image without this state. I don't have any uncaptioned images ingested. I caption images with a basic caption during ingest and later I manually edit it if needed.

On my part I tend to use no color for no edit or at least "needs some care" images. Those I finished cropping, captioning, keywording, etc get stars or color codes and I can filter them out not to appear among the others that still need some edit (or to display only those that are complete). Even my untouched images do have some kind of caption. At least event name, location, date, copyright. But I only add color classes to them if they are at a level of edit and the color tells me where they are in the process.

Actually it is totally up to your workflow to decide how to use any of the already existing marking techniques. There are tags for example that can be used to mark if you did caption an image or not. But it can be used a number of other ways as well it is up to you how you want to use it.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2010, 07:15:00 PM by Kirk Baker »
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Offline terencep

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2010, 07:31:29 PM »
I just tag the photos I've worked on using the little checkbox next to the label field in the thumbnail view.

Offline Kevin M. Cox

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Re: rate workflow progress/status?
« Reply #9 on: March 11, 2010, 10:25:28 AM »
I simply apply a certain color class to images that have already been captioned.  My very last step is renaming files into my archive naming format so if I file is renamed I know I'm totally done with it and the color is removed.
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