IPTC features request and more

[EK_Konrad]

Hello,

I was working on Fotostation in the last 3 years during my work for a large Polish photo agency. But now I see that Photo Mechanic is a damn good piece of software, with many features resolved 10 times better than in Fotostation. Great renaming with the variables! Fine preview window! And many other good stuff.

The only changes I suggest concern the IPTC text editor. Well, maybe I want too much, but we could have a configuration for this window layout, specifying which IPTC fields we want to edit, size of the thumbnail - it's a new feature in Fotostation 5.1 and it really helps, especially if we want to edit some unusual fields (i.e. AFP agency puts a very important info in the #243 or 234, I don't remember, unused field). The small thumbnail doesn't help during keywording when one wants to see the details - is this little person a man or a woman? Now we need to close the text editor and watch the preview - three-four additional clicks of mouse.

I saw a post that suggests another tab (or window) only for keywords. That's good if the caption is also present in the same tab. And if we are put again in the keywords window after saving.

The last thing. Maybe I miss something, but I don't see an option for including subfolders in the Navigator. It really helps if we want to work on a big archive with subfolders and don't want to click on each one separately.

I hope my thoughts will help you to make your software a great one.

Konrad
Poland
working now in another photo agency, looking for a good software
testing Mac version of PM

[joemahoney]

I'd like to second the request for a larger thumbnail/preview and also a larger area for writing captions. Would a tabbed format work, where different fields are sorted, but which also show all fields and preview (as it does in the current version. many thanks.

Hello,

I was working on Fotostation in the last 3 years during my work for a large Polish photo agency. But now I see that Photo Mechanic is a damn good piece of software, with many features resolved 10 times better than in Fotostation. Great renaming with the variables! Fine preview window! And many other good stuff.

The only changes I suggest concern the IPTC text editor. Well, maybe I want too much, but we could have a configuration for this window layout, specifying which IPTC fields we want to edit, size of the thumbnail - it's a new feature in Fotostation 5.1 and it really helps, especially if we want to edit some unusual fields (i.e. AFP agency puts a very important info in the #243 or 234, I don't remember, unused field). The small thumbnail doesn't help during keywording when one wants to see the details - is this little person a man or a woman? Now we need to close the text editor and watch the preview - three-four additional clicks of mouse.

I saw a post that suggests another tab (or window) only for keywords. That's good if the caption is also present in the same tab. And if we are put again in the keywords window after saving.

The last thing. Maybe I miss something, but I don't see an option for including subfolders in the Navigator. It really helps if we want to work on a big archive with subfolders and don't want to click on each one separately.

I hope my thoughts will help you to make your software a great one.

Konrad
Poland
working now in another photo agency, looking for a good software
testing Mac version of PM

[Kirk Baker]

Konrad,

I was working on Fotostation in the last 3 years during my work for a large Polish photo agency. But now I see that Photo Mechanic is a damn good piece of software, with many features resolved 10 times better than in Fotostation. Great renaming with the variables! Fine preview window! And many other good stuff.

The only changes I suggest concern the IPTC text editor. Well, maybe I want too much, but we could have a configuration for this window layout, specifying which IPTC fields we want to edit, size of the thumbnail - it's a new feature in Fotostation 5.1 and it really helps, especially if we want to edit some unusual fields (i.e. AFP agency puts a very important info in the #243 or 234, I don't remember, unused field). The small thumbnail doesn't help during keywording when one wants to see the details - is this little person a man or a woman? Now we need to close the text editor and watch the preview - three-four additional clicks of mouse.

I saw a post that suggests another tab (or window) only for keywords. That's good if the caption is also present in the same tab. And if we are put again in the keywords window after saving.

The IPTC dialog will go through changes to make much of what you're requesting possible.  As for the preview thumbnail, I don't think we'll make it extremely large, but I want to make it so that you can click and hold on the thumbnail and a much larger preview will appear.  Maybe a keyboard shortcut here too.

The last thing. Maybe I miss something, but I don't see an option for including subfolders in the Navigator. It really helps if we want to work on a big archive with subfolders and don't want to click on each one separately.

I hope my thoughts will help you to make your software a great one.

Thanks for the suggestions.  Recursively opening sub-folders could be very problematic.  I could see an option where you could multi-select folders and open them all as a single Contact Sheet.

-Kirk

[denisbalibouse]

The only changes I suggest concern the IPTC text editor. Well, maybe I want too much, but we could have a configuration for this window layout, specifying which IPTC fields we want to edit, size of the thumbnail - it's a new feature in Fotostation 5.1 and it really helps, especially if we want to edit some unusual fields (i.e. AFP agency puts a very important info in the #243 or 234, I don't remember, unused field). The small thumbnail doesn't help during keywording when one wants to see the details - is this little person a man or a woman? Now we need to close the text editor and watch the preview - three-four additional clicks of mouse.

I guess it sounds like the request i had for some IPTC fields used by Reuters in a previous post.
I would be great to have this in 4.5 !
thanks

Denis

[EK_Konrad]

Opening a larger preview with a keyboard shortcut in the keywording window - sounds good to me. Multiselecting subfolders - it's interesting if 'include subfolders' is too hard to implement. Thanks

Could you consider adding a little 'thesaurus-like' option in the master keyword window? The master keyword would have attached some slave keywords (i.e. a master word 'french' with 'europe,european,france' as slaves). Choosing the master would also add slaves.

thanks
Konrad

[Kirk Baker]

Opening a larger preview with a keyboard shortcut in the keywording window - sounds good to me. Multiselecting subfolders - it's interesting if 'include subfolders' is too hard to implement. Thanks

It isn't that "include subfolders" is difficult it is really a case of what happens when you choose that command on your 2.0 TB RAID array and thousands of sub-folders need to be scanned?  That could take ages to complete and would likely cause all of your memory to be used up.

Could you consider adding a little 'thesaurus-like' option in the master keyword window? The master keyword would have attached some slave keywords (i.e. a master word 'french' with 'europe,european,france' as slaves). Choosing the master would also add slaves.

You're describing something called a Controlled Vocabulary.  I would like to add such a thing in 4.5 but I haven't solidified the details yet.

-Kirk

[EK_Konrad]

I just discovered that something very similar to the "Controlled Vocabulary" already exists in the current version of PM I put some words with commas as one "master keyword" string, i.e. "italy,italian,europe,european". And it works Adding such a string puts several separated keywords in the table (in the beginning there is one large keyword with commas, but PM treats it as separated keywords as soon as the window is closed).

I like PM more and more with every day of using it thanks!

[EK_Konrad]

Hi Kirk,

I'm doing a lot of 'cleanup' work in captions, because I'm working on other agencies photos before putting them on our server. That's why I use "Find and replace" very often. Could you add an option for finding and replacing the Line Break character? It could be i.e. a special character like {nl}. It will speed my work 1000%.


best
Konrad

[Kirk Baker]

Konrad,

I'm doing a lot of 'cleanup' work in captions, because I'm working on other agencies photos before putting them on our server. That's why I use "Find and replace" very often. Could you add an option for finding and replacing the Line Break character? It could be i.e. a special character like {nl}. It will speed my work 1000%.

I'm wondering if you were to copy a newline from a text editor and paste it into the text field if it would just work?

Can you give me an example of what you would be searching for and what you would be replacing it with?

Thanks,

-Kirk

[EK_Konrad]

I've just tried it and it won't work that way.

In my work I have to erase the following text from captions:

Contact eyevine for more information about using this image:
T: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709
E: info@eyevine.com
http://www.eyevine.com

I can of course find each line and replace it with a single space, but finding the whole 'object' and deleting it would be more ellegant.

[Kirk Baker]

I've just tried it and it won't work that way.

In my work I have to erase the following text from captions:

Contact eyevine for more information about using this image:
T: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709
E: info@eyevine.com
http://www.eyevine.com

I can of course find each line and replace it with a single space, but finding the whole 'object' and deleting it would be more ellegant.

OK, I'll see if I can find a solution, or I will change the find/replace to make this sort of thing possible.

-Kirk

[EK_Konrad]

Hi Kirk

it worked I was pasting the Line Break character from other text editor before and it had different HEX code than the Line Break from Caption field in the Photo Mechanic. Now I copied it from PM and pasted it in the "Find and Replace". It worked.

thanks!


K