Best Category Scheme for Named Groups with Varying Individuals

[BanjoTom]

I use both Keywords and Categories to help me organize and find files in Imatch, and it all is working very well.  BUT I'm seeking advice on the best way to assign and use categories to help me fully identify pictures of small groups (usually BANDS, i.e., groups of musicians) in which the band name or group name is constant, but the identities of constituent members varies. 

Suppose, for instance, that a four-piece musical group is named "Pawpaw Band."  Fine, no problem: I have in the "WHO" part of my overall category scheme a section for named bands, and I can easily assign "Pawpaw Band" to any photo or document for which that's appropriate. 

Yet the identities of the four individuals who make up the "Pawpaw Band" vary.  I do also have category identifiers for each individual person, so for any one picture of the group, I can assign both the band-name "Pawpaw Band" and also assign each individual's full name as a category, e.g., "Bruce L---," "Tom M---," "Noah A---," "David W---" and so forth.  But that's a minimum of five category assignments for each picture, and the complication arises when the membership of "Pawpaw Band" varies; sometimes the four individuals are "David W---," "Fred J---," "Terri P---," and "Joan M---."   There may be four or five or more common variations of the membership in "Pawpaw Band" -- so the repeated category assignment task can become lengthy.  And in my photo collection there are many categorized BANDS in which individual membership varies, not just the instance I've described for "Pawpaw Band." 

If I'm processing a group of "Pawpaw Band" photos for which the identities of the four individuals are all the same, I can do the five assignments ONCE and then copy those with the "Recently Used Categories" tab in the Categories panel.  But what if the particular constellation of BAND and INDIVIDUAL name-categories was used last year or before, and so is not "recent?"

How best to handle this?  Metadata templates?  Make "category splashers" in favorites?  Or in some other way? 

I'm sure that similar situations arise often for other more experiences IMatch users, and would be grateful for advice. . .

[Mario]

That's a not too common problem. You have a fixed element (the band name), which has a varying number of child elements which change over time (the band members).

This is not easy to handle with categories or keywords. I would go for the category splasher route. If you are processing photos from the band for a certain gig, grab the band name and the band members for that gig, drop them to the Favorites Panel to create a category splasher. Name it in a way that allows you to easily identify the band and members. Assign a keyboard shortcut for even faster processing.

You can then keep this Favorite if you may need it in the future, or delete it if you have categories all your files. If you keep them, create them in a separate Favorite set so you have all your band setups together.

And you can of course use copy/paste Attributes to copy all categories between files. And once you have set the categories for one file, they will again appear in the 'Recent' tab in the category panel.

[BanjoTom]

Thanks for your very helpful reply, Mario.  As I reflected on this subject after I posted my question, I began to think that the category splasher solution is likely to be the best one -- and now you've essentially confirmed that for me.