Using keywords for short comments?

[6b6561]

Hi,

I have a need to very rarely add some short comment to a picture, the proper way would probably be to add it to the XMP Description field. I'm not using the XMP Description so a comment there would be in a blind spot so therefore I'm thinking about starting to use a Comment keyword. Basically just add a "Comment|Very short comment" at the same time as I do the keyword tagging. I wouldn't add these comments to the thesaurus as these would all be one offs.

Benefits would be that the comment can be added at the same time as the keyword tagging is done, and therefore faster than switching over to Metadata panel to add the comment. And the comments would be among the keywords which I normal use to find pictures etc.

Would this cause any issues going forward? What should I consider if I go ahead with this approach? Any length restrictions that I need to worry about?

Kim

[Mario]

A description is not a headline, is not a title is not a keyword.
The IPTC committee has very good definitions for which metadata goes were. They have 40 years of experience.

That being said, if the data is only for you (no client or institutional or stock agency requirements to meet), you can do whatever you want and what works for you.

I see no principal difference between keywords like "WHO|Person|John Miller" or "COMMENT|Some comment here".
IMatch will manage your comment keywords like any other keyword. No length restrictions for keywords, until you have to support legacy IPTC metadata, which has strict length limitations for everything and its mother.

Not sure if you add the same comment to more than one image?

If not, you would end up with many different "child keywords" for your COMMENT root keyword, which may cause performance issues (when you create several hundreds or even thousands of comment keywords). It would also make scrolling @Keywords a tough and calculating the file count for COMMENTS slow.

In general, "one image only data" like title, headline and description is better stored in the tags the XMP/IPTC standard designates for it. But whatever works for you is good.

[6b6561]

Thanks! This confirmed my thoughts around the topic.

I don't expect to get that many "COMMENTS|Short comments" so that it would turn into a problem. If it becomes unbearable then it should be quite quick to copy the comments into EXIF Description and add a "COMMENTS|See EXIF Description" keyword.

[Mario]

copy the comments into EXIF Description

Don't use native EXIF fields. Always use XMP data. The description should go into XMP::dc\description\Description, which also ensures that the description is properly synchronized with other metadata tags supposed to hold the description.

[6b6561]

Tried a couple of different workflows over the last couple of weeks and finally settled on doing the right thing, comments goes into XMP::dc\description\Description + a "Photo|Has XMP Description" keyword.

Works for me, and this is my private data but it's still better to somewhat adhere to standards.

[Mario]

Works for me, and this is my private data but it's still better to somewhat adhere to standards.

Yup. Using the Headline tag for headlines, the Title tag for titles, Keywords for keywords and the Description tag for storing descriptions is the right way to do it. Not only will you know where things are, but when you switch to another DAM or process/upload your photos, it is likely that the other software / service will be able to read your data.

+ a "Photo|Has XMP Description" keyword.

What do you need this for?

If you easily want to see files without a description, you can just open the "IMatch Workflow Categories|No Description" category.

If you instead want a category that contains all files with a description, create a category with a name like "Files with Description" under the Workflow category and use this formula:

"@MetadataTag[description,hasvalue]"

See: @MetadataTag[] for more info.

[6b6561]

You are a mind reader... I was about to add a small remark that I will probably be back in a year and ask how I can find all images with comments after I have forgotten to add my "Photo|Has XMP Description" keyword to a bunch of files. Thank you for answering a unasked question.

Adding a "IMatch Workflow Categories|No Description" category worked like a charm!

But darn Olympus... I discovered that one of my cameras sets the description to "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" for all images, so time for another bulk update.