Collections and photos from multiple catalogs

[KeithRJ]

Windows 10 64bit, PMP Build 4617

I have two catalogs, C1 is set to Search only and C2 is set to Search and Add/Modify.

I create a new Collection and add photos from both catalogs.  What happens is the photos that are in C1 are added to C2.  If all catalogs are set as Search only then you cannot create a collection at all (understandably).

My concern is that by including photos from multiple catalogs ends up by adding photos to the Modifiable catalog without any notification.

Additionally, if both C1 and C2 are set to Add/Modify then selected photos from C1 are still added to C2 and then photos from BOTH catalogs are added to the collection and you end up with duplicates.

I understand that collections are stored in a catalog so some decision has to be made as to what to do with images from multiple catalogs.

My suggestion would be to pop up a dialog which explains exactly what will happen and give the user the choice to continue or to abort.  The dialog box needs to specify which catalog will contain the collecion and that photos from the other catalogs will be added to the catalog being updated.

Another thought: What other functions are affected by having multiple catalogs in Add/Modify mode?  Maybe the Add/Modify option should be split into separate Add and Modify options and then only allow ONE catalog to have the Add option.  This way the user will now know which catalog will be updated with any function that needs to Add data to the catalog and all other Modifiable catalogs will only have existing data updated where appropriate.  This would be a major change but at least it would eliminate any confusion due to unexpected behaviour as described above.

[Earl M]

I agree with you.  Collections are more trouble than they are worth.  I ended up creating a separate Catalog just for Collections.  Any photo I added to a collection was "copied" to that catalog, but this let me turn off that catalog to avoid duplicate images showing up. Also I didn't have to worry about which catalog the collection was in when I added an image.  But this still requires me to keep turning on and off that catalog.  I eventually just gave up and now I use an unused (by me) IPTC field to enter a catalog name and it allows me to use a pick list to avoid misspelling collection names.  The disadvantage is only one collection per image.

[Kirk Baker]

I agree with you.  Collections are more trouble than they are worth.  I ended up creating a separate Catalog just for Collections.  Any photo I added to a collection was "copied" to that catalog, but this let me turn off that catalog to avoid duplicate images showing up. Also I didn't have to worry about which catalog the collection was in when I added an image.  But this still requires me to keep turning on and off that catalog.  I eventually just gave up and now I use an unused (by me) IPTC field to enter a catalog name and it allows me to use a pick list to avoid misspelling collection names.  The disadvantage is only one collection per image.

What would you suggest we do to improve it?

-Kirk

[Earl M]

I don't know how to best fix it.  From a usability standpoint the catalog should be all happening behind the scenes. I want to be able to put stuff into and take it out of a collection without knowing where or how you keep up with that and without me having to worry about duplicate images in multiple catalogs.

If the final version of PM6+ can handle all my photos in one big catalog then the current method would work OK for me. But I have found that my catalogs work best with less than 100,000 images.

I use keywords mostly and do not use collections too often. So for me it would be fine if you had another metadata field like Keywords to hold the catalog names and allow me to search and browse it like with keywords.  The only reason for not putting them in the current keywords field is to prevent the collection names from being exported.

[KeithRJ]

Giving it some more thought I think the best solution which is simplest to implement is to ask the user which catalog to store the collection in (if more than one catalog is in Add/Modify mode) and also to mention that files NOT in the target catalog will have those files added to it.

If more than one collection is in Add/Modify mode then maybe even allow the user to select one or more catalogs to add the collection to.  The user may want the same collection in multiple catalogs or simply in just one.

If the user selects multiple catalogs then you need some way of indicating which catalog the collection is in (in the Collections tab).  In fact it may be best to always indicate which catalog a Collection is in when working with multiple catalogs which would also eliminate confusion if a user is expecting certain results but is not getting them because the collection being viewed is not in the expected catalog.