EASY photo tags and ratings in Windows!
Friday, January 29th 2010 @ 2:18 PM (not yet rated)
Even if you don't have a software photo-editor, you can do this! "Tags" (or keywords) are notes about an image, from who is in it to where it was taken, and they are MUCH better stored in the picture's image-file than stored in your brain! And "star ratings" tell of the quality or importance of an image. Here's an easy way in Windows Vista or "7"!
Use the Windows Explorer (or "File Manager" as it used to be called) or just the little "My Computer" icon, and find your way through your computer to where your pics are stored. Double-click on an image, and it pops up in this image-viewer window:
Ignore the ugly photo of a desktop, and look to the text-boxes I placed on the right side. There are three boxes that point to options you are given to place the info into the image files' "metadata" sections. All of the information you place in one of these will be "readable" by ANY photo-managing or photo-editing software. They're a great place to get started if you don't have something better.
"Star Ratings" points to where you set the importance or quality of the image by clicking on a star, and it goes from left to right. "No stars" is an image of no importance, "1 star" (the left-most star) is an image of low yet some importance, all the way through a "5 star" image (the right-most star" which is as important as you can set it. A cool trick: you don't even have to "click" a star, just use your number-keypad! Tap the number "3" on your number-pad, and voila! the first three stars all turn gold!
"Tags" and "keywords" (and most often, "labels") are the same thing: descriptive words about the image or what's in it. An image with Dora and Jenny in it should probably have the tags "Dora" and "Jenny" at the least, if not their full names, and probably could/should include where it was taken and any special info, like "John's 5th birthday party" if that's the event. For this last, you might want that broken into smaller "bits", say, "birthday party", and "John". Even though he's not in the pic, it's his party, right? And this way you can group all his party-images together through software searches.
To enter any "tags" on a photo, just click on the "Add tags" text, and a line opens up for you to type in your terms. To write in several separate terms, just type a comma after each word. Very easy!
The "Add Caption" section adds captioning information, in a sentence or phrase form, into the "Caption" line of the image file's metadata section. Click on the "Add Caption" words, and start typing. You could put whatever seems most appropriate ... like "Dora and Jenny bringing presents to John's fifth birthday party" and have all that in one line. Cool! This is used by newspapers and magazines to give captions to the images they send with articles.
For an example, check out the metadata entered for this image. I took it at a body-mapping workshop held by Cynthia McGladrey (a great singer and teacher of singing!) a week ago ... but I don't need to tell you that, do I? I mean, it's there forever in the image!
And most importantly, I can use ANY file-managing OR photo-browsing/cataloging program to find this image on my computer now, simply by typing ANY of the tags I entered into the search bar for that program. If I think I shot something at a body-mapping event a few years back, but can't remember when or how or where I put the pic, I just "search" for "body mapping" and this (and any other image with that tag) will magically appear!
It's better and easier with the programs designed to work with groups of images so you can "tag" as many as you want with the same tags in one "go". Still, you don't have to have a browser/catalog/editor program to get started. Start doing it NOW and add capabilities and knowledge as you go along!
And look around here for more articles and soon ... a class even! ... on organizing your images and your workflow. We're here to help, so ask any questions you have and we'll get back to you!
rNeil
