Auto-(Direct) Assign Parent Categories

[fincire]

Is there a way to tell IMatch to assign the parent category of an image when a child is assigned? I realize technically this happens already, but the parent is not a direct assignment, and there are some categories I'd like to manage that way. It would be especially helpful when parent categories are set to un-assign from siblings, or when a parent category is also sometimes used as a generic indicator.

This may not make much sense, but it's particularly important for proper organization of location scouting libraries, where the industry expects granular labels like EXT - FOREST - GROVE.

I've tried tricking it with alias and reference categories, but nothing seems to work quite like I want. In Lightroom and some other DAMs, there's just an option "Auto-Assign Parent Categories." Does this exist in IMatch? Am I missing something?

Thank you!

[Mario]

Categories implicitly contain all files assigned to their children, recursively.
It hence makes no sense to assign a file to both the parent and the child.

The assignment action gives you control of what happens when you assign a file to a categeory: The Category Properties Tab

[fincire]

I understand about the implicit ownership, and it makes sense. There are some professional workflows where it would be helpful to specify direct assignments for parents, rather than just implicit ones, and it would allow some really cool category automation too. Maybe it's a feature request--some more options in the Assignment Actions. For example, "Un-assign From..." and "Assign to..." with a list, so you can check items.

[Mario]

Since the parent already contains the file if a child category contains it, assigning to the parent would be a) superfluous and b) confusing. You un-assign from the parent category and the file is still shown in the parent category! I don't see a use case for this. I can see a support nightmare, though 

This automatic inheritance/roll-up of files from the children to the parent is one of the main features of categories. There is a (rarely used) option to prevent that, which may be handy for some really specific situations. But the default works really well for 99.5% of all typical amateur, professional and institutional workflows.

Feel free to add a feature requests. Other users can then comment or +1 and I will look into any FR that creates some involvement.

[jch2103]

Is there a way to tell IMatch to assign the parent category of an image when a child is assigned? I realize technically this happens already, but the parent is not a direct assignment, and there are some categories I'd like to manage that way. It would be especially helpful when parent categories are set to un-assign from siblings, or when a parent category is also sometimes used as a generic indicator.

This may not make much sense, but it's particularly important for proper organization of location scouting libraries, where the industry expects granular labels like EXT - FOREST - GROVE.

Would simply using hierarchical keywords, e.g., EXT|FOREST|GROVE, work for you?

[fincire]

It probably would, John, but I'm using Categories to facilitate some automation with the "Assignment Action" -- for example, any image with an INT tag automatically un-assigns from EXT, and vice versa (that part's easy, the challenge is getting child tags to un-assign siblings of their parents). Probably what I should do is try to better understand Attributes and how they work, since that would allow me even more freedom.

All of this is an effort to accommodate (and automate, if I can) a very clunky and tedious workflow required by production studios for location scout books. One of the things I like about IMatch is you can get it to do a lot of work for you if you know how, but I'm not an expert so I'm learning as I go.

[jch2103]

Sounds like an interesting application of what's possible with IMatch. I wonder if Metadata Templates would be applicable  for some of what you're doing? And then scripting/apps?