Getting in a mess

[Forseti]

Explanation here:

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/metalogging/keywording.html

Below: screenshot of Bridge with highlighted area showing keyword panel and by clicking + sign (indicated by arrow further keywords can be added. These will then be shown in the left hand panel under the heading keywords.

Take the following example: say for example in the folder 'My Images' you have an image that has been keyworded with the following - Robin, Garden.

If you later want to quickly locate this image without searching through hundreds/thousands of images the easiest way would be to go to File > Find > ensure the My Images folder is selected and in the criteria box drop down list click on Keywords. Fill in any keywords that you feel sure have been attached to the image that you wish to locate and Bridge will throw up the images containing those keywords that you have entered in the criteria box. It doesn't matter if you have forgotten that you typed in the keyword Garden because Bridge will throw up ALL images containing the keyword Robin.

[Gil Ritchie]

Get organised !?!?!? - Invest in a good software package - Adobe LIGHTROOM is by far the most common and probably the best - it should help you to - not only organise your images - but post edit them as well - the down side is - it wont turn you into a better photographer - but at least it will help gather your snaps into some semblance of order.........

[Oly Paul]

I'd say has you already have CS4 that Lightroom is overkill and expenesive just for the image managment part of it.

To be honest I have LR but never use it for image managment as I much prefere something like ACDsee which is lightning fast, a lot cheaper and has a better cataloging and search facility in my opinion.


But what ever you choose to use from piccasa to LR forsetti is correct about keywording being the means to good image managment.

For example I have over a thousand images of just of my three Grandchildren, Brandon Chelsea and Madison and some with their father Grant.

All my images are keyworded so if I wish to find images that contain only Chelsea and Madison but not any that contain Brandon or their Father, then all I do in ACDSee is type in " chelsea+madison -brandon -grant " and in exactly 0.5sec (I timed it) it displays just those out of thousands of images.



Of course it pays to start before it all gets to unmanagable without a lot of hard work.

[KeithT]

You assign a key word to an image - like, Boats, cars, or sunset etc; something you can relate your images to. You can narrow a search down by adding another key word like date, or month, year. So when you are searching for a particular image you can enter the key words into a search box and hit enter and you will get up all images tagged with the key word/s. I guess if you have a written list of your images to follow, you could also assign a number to the tag as well - like Boats 1, 2, 3...and so on and so forth.

[ianpinion]

Mark, tagging or keywording is basically like putting a label on your image with a short title to help you and the software you use to archive your shots with to identify it quickly.

[Cutter]

Thanks to everyone for their input I will devour all the info and try to sort my mess out

It's nice to know there are many ways, and you have all had the same problem yourselves at one time or another.