Image Management

Finding Images with Keywords

by George Schaub

As those who have accumulated thousands of digital images know, finding that one image you want in short notice without some strong image organization can be difficult, if not impossible. Going through stacks of CDs or DVDs, and using a host of image organization programs that you have accumulated throughout the years can be frustrating. In essence, making a stand and working with some frame of reference, regardless of the program or your own personal sense of organization, is the only way to get through the image jungle that eventually will grow in your files.

Perhaps one of the best ways to begin the process is to attach some sort of identification code to your images. The code should be drawn from a common glossary that you create before you start organizing your images, and one that you stick to throughout. Lacking this “grammar”, if you will, the task will be so much more difficult, and needlessly complicated.

Images are information, and placing just another bit of code on them will not harm them. And if that code can be universally read by a number of image editors, such as the IPTC standard, you stand a much better chance of being able to migrate that added information should you change computers, programs or even operating systems.

To get a sense of how this can work, I’ve taken the keywording setup in Apple’s Aperture as an example of how this can work. Keep in mind that just about every raw converter and image editing and organizing software allows for some method of doing what will be described in the context of this discussion.

Keywords

Keywords are the words you use to help organize and categorize your images. They are associations that help you, and often others to find specific images in a large library of images. In general, you use keywords to “drill down” into an image, starting from the general to the specific. For example, you might use a set of keywords to describe an image of people sitting in a café in Paris such as Travel; France; Paris; cafes; Boulevard San Germaine. Or for a photo of Times Square in New York at night as Travel; New York; New York City; Times Square; Night Scenes; Neon. Or for a wedding job: Weddings; Smith family: Receptions; Table Shots. You go from the generic to the particular, refining the definition as you go. Think of keywords as guides to finding a particular image or set of images that even a stranger could trace. Make the descriptions as generic as possible and let common sense be your guide.

Adding keywords should be a regular part of your workflow. If you have the time, it’s best to do them right after you import your images. When you type in keywords you are embedding that information in the IPTC file of the image. This helps others who might be looking at your images, such as stock agencies, in that it creates a label that sticks to the image wherever it might travel. So, if you send a group of images to your stock agency from Paris they can quickly find the shot they need for the story on café life, and even have the name of the specific café in the image label.

Of course, to exploit all these features you must input the keywords yourself. In the past this might have been a tedious task, but there are many shortcuts and aids in programs like Apple’s Aperture to make it quite painless. Once you have added keywords the benefits are numerous, from helping you sort through lots of images to find the best from a job or locale to actually finding an image when you have a need or call for it.

Keyword Entry

In Apple’s Aperture there are numerous other ways to enter keywords. The path you choose will depend on how many images you are sorting, at what point you sort them and if you have many different types of images to sort. Three of the main entries in Aperture are via the Keywords HUD (heads-up-display); Keyword controls and Presets; and using the lift and Stamp HUD. The Keywords HUD is a good point to begin. The Presets are best used once you have begun the process and realize that you have commonly used keywords, or if you are sorting lots of images from one take and wish to do a very quick keyword on similar shots. The Lift & Stamp process is perhaps the easiest of all, once you have keyworded some of the images in your collection and want to add similar ones to it.

The Keywords HUD (heads-up display) is available from all views in Aperture. You access it via Shift-H or Window>Show Keywords.

This Project, entitled “Kids” awaits keywording. The task here is to use a combination of keywords using the Keyword HUD.

To add a keyword in the Keyword HUD (which comes up with the keyboard shortcut Shift-H) click on the plus/minus button on the far left and type in the keyword required. This creates a main keyword. Here the keywording process gets started by typing in “kids.”

When you click on the second button from the left you are adding in a subordinate keyword, which usually means it is linked to the main keyword (though it may not fit every image under that main keyword.) Here, clicking on the button yields an “untitled” that awaits filling in.

All the possible combinations of the three sisters in one shot have been added. When you start the keywording process it’s a good idea to look at all the pictures in a Project and make some notes as to how keyword can be most effectively used.

Once you have all the keywords in the Keywords HUD it is easy to attach the keywords to images. This screen is in the Grid View of the Browser, with the Keyword HUD in the workspace (Shift-H). It’s an easy matter to simply click on a keyword, or set of keywords (Command-click) and drag them onto select images.

Another way to add keywords from the Keyword HUD is to select a group of images (here by dragging over a group) and then simply click on a keyword and drag it onto any of the selected images. The keyword will then be applied to all the images in the selection.

If you want to pick select images out of a Project after keywording all you need do is bring up the Query HUD (Command-F) and click on Keyword and then select the identifying word or words, and the images will be instantly sorted and brought into view.

Keyword Workflow

In order to see how to work with these boxes in the control area we’ll start a download and keyword process from scratch.

This large group of images has been imported from a CD onto which a New Orleans shoot had been burned. The task is to create keywords for the disparate images. All were shot in the same city but require different categories to be most useful.

There are a number of ways to add keywords for sourcing later. Here the keywords were added using the Keyword HUD, already described. Keywords start with New Orleans but continue with French Quarter, etc. These keywords were jotted down on paper while browsing through the imported images.

The dialog box for creating Presets is opened via the drop-down menu from the button entitled “photo descriptors.” This is where the keywords can be found in the Keyword Library and where you begin the process of changing the button assignments in the Keyword control panel.

Here the New Orleans descriptors have been moved into the Contents panel of the Edit Button Sets dialog box. Note that the other descriptors have been eliminated. This is not necessary, as you can simply move the keywords you need for the Project at hand up in rank and the first 8 will show up assigned to the numbers in the Keyword control panel.

To assign a keyword to an image after the control panel number buttons have been assigned simply select an image or images and press the number on the keyboard. You can do this with images in a Viewer or the Browser Grid view, and it’s a very fast way to add keywords to images.

Lift & Stamp

One of the easiest ways to add keywords to a large group of images is with the Lift & Stamp HUD. This can be accessed from all the viewing modes. The process is two-fold. You first lift the keyword or keywords from one image and then stamp it onto another or a group of selected images.

This group of images contains lots of similars, a good candidate for the Lift & Stamp process. The Browser in this screen sits to the left.

The Lift & Stamp tool allows you to select among all the information associated with the image. Uncheck the information you don’t want to travel onto the image or images you select.

Here’s the information unchecked. Now simply select an image that contains a Keyword (look for the tiny scroll in the lower right hand corner) and open the Lift & Stamp tool. Your cursor then becomes a downward pointing arrow—this is the “stamp” that you just click on top of an image or selected images to transfer the information.

The keywords show up in the lower left hand quarter. The larger, central information is the picture number, which can be changed to show other information as well.

To finish our task here are the selected pictures with keywords from the New Orleans shoot, all found quickly from using a single subordinate keyword.)

Keywords are an excellent way to sort and edit images. They are associations that help you group your images much as you’d place individual images in folders in a filing cabinet. Because keywords travel with the image in the form of IPTC data, they can also be used by clients, such as stock agencies, for labeling and sorting in their image library. They help save duplication of effort by you and your client, and can be a great aid in sales, plus make you a better supplier of images to any agency or buyer.

When choosing keywords work as generically as possible, and begin with the general down to the specific. The tools for applying keywords in Aperture and similar advanced programs make the process as painless as this sometimes tedious process can be.