Labels and Ratings and the XMP standard

[Richard]

Separating Labels and Ratings from the XMP metadata standard will not happen. There are so many other options a user can use in IMatch 5, it's not even worth to think about it. This is why I had moved this to Archive and now I will lock this topic too.

Hi Mario,

Over the years you have used terms like "metadata mess" and "metadata hell". You have also complained that Adobe would make changes to XMP for a new release of one of their products with the result that not even all Adobe products had compatible XMP. Now there seems to be a "XMP metadata standard" that everyone is following. Is that due to the Metadata Working Group?

I fully understand that many IMatch users need to have  Labels and Ratings in XMP so that their files are compatible with other applications that also can read and write  Labels and Ratings. However not all users want Labels and Ratings written to their files. You state that " There are so many other options a user can use in IMatch 5, it's not even worth to think about it." Well I have though about it and I can not think of an option that will allow me to use all the functionality built into IMatch for  Labels and Ratings.

The way I understood this is that ratings and labels need to be written out to the master file in order to allow them to propagate to versions.
Also, if you need other applications to read rating and/or label they have to be committed to disk.

I suggest again to use categories (or attributes) to rate and label files if neither of the above conditions apply to you.

I am not aware of how one would use categories (or attributes) to rate and label files and still have the ease of assignment plus the visual indicators available for Labels and Ratings.

What I got out of the now locked thread was Ferdinand"s suggestion to set "Write-back changes to metadata immediately" to off. That will work for part of my request. letting the write-back occur when I want. However the Labels and Ratings will still get written to my files and I don't want them in my files.

If Help already has the option I seek given, please point me to it.

[Ferdinand]

Here is what I would do, Richard.

.  I would create a category called "Rating" .
.  I would create child categories "1", "2", "3", "4", "5"
.  I would also create another child category "0" and make that a formula category , so that files that are not in the 1-5 categories are in the 0 category, i.e. by default.
.  I would create favourites for each of the 1-5 categories in the favourites panel.  This would enable you to assign ratings quickly.

You still need to exercise a bit of care here, as it would be possible to assign a file to more than one of these rating categories.  I'm not sure how to prevent that.  (You might be able to somehow count how many of these categories a file is assigned to, and raise a warning flag if the count is more than 1.  I could write a simple maintenance script to do this, which you could run periodically, but there might be an easier way.)

To change a rating on a file you would need to drag it from one rating category to another rather than use the favourites, and to remove a rating entirely you would simply un-assign it from its rating category.

Does this sound like it might work?

[Ferdinand]

p.s.  if you wanted to see these rating categories in the file (thumbs) window, you could colour code them.  This would also be a warning sign in the event that you accidentally gave a file two "ratings".

[herman]

Tonight, when I am back at my main PC, I will show you how I have arranged ratings and labels using categories.
It is along the lines Ferdinand describes, although this:

as it would be possible to assign a file to more than one of these rating categories

is much easier to solve than you may think .

[Ferdinand]

as it would be possible to assign a file to more than one of these rating categories

is much easier to solve than you may think .

Hah!  Found it. 

Category properties | Assignment action | Unassign from siblings

Neat.  So this means that you could then just use the favourites to re-rate a file.

[Richard]

Ferdinand and Herman, Thank you for trying but I already have an untested workaround using Ferdinand"s suggestion to set "Write-back changes to metadata immediately" to off. My plan is to make use of the very handy Ratings and Labels in my work-flow. Prior to writing back changes I will convert Ratings and Labels to Pins or some of the other items that are not part of the "XMP Standard". That way I can utilize Ratings and Labels without dumping them into my files where they are not wanted.

[sinus]

as it would be possible to assign a file to more than one of these rating categories

is much easier to solve than you may think .

Hah!  Found it. 

Category properties | Assignment action | Unassign from siblings

Neat.  So this means that you could then just use the favourites to re-rate a file.

Yep, I work a lot with this Action-setting, it is very good.

[sinus]

Ferdinand and Herman, Thank you for trying but I already have an untested workaround using Ferdinand"s suggestion to set "Write-back changes to metadata immediately" to off. My plan is to make use of the very handy Ratings and Labels in my work-flow. Prior to writing back changes I will convert Ratings and Labels to Pins or some of the other items that are not part of the "XMP Standard". That way I can utilize Ratings and Labels without dumping them into my files where they are not wanted.

In the old days with IM3  I held all data, as much as possible, in the image itself (iptc).
That way I could not lost a lot, say, if the db of IMatch would have been corrupted (beware, and beware even more without backup).

And I could use these images in other programs and so on.

Nowadays, with xmp and since xmp is also very good supported within IMatch 5, I try also to hold also as much information as I can inside the file, and if this is not possible, I use sidecars.
So it is for me like before: I can always use these images with all the informations with other programs or I can see simply a lot of infos even on a low level (windows explorer) or I can open the xmp-sidecar.

This gives me a kind of additional backup, as I thought in the old days, even if I must change from IMatch to another DAM (beware also), this gives me a kind of security.

I begin to work and trust more and more the xmp-stuff, and if I have a good workflow (with LR) and if I do it always in the same manner, then I think, also ratings and labels can be handled fine.

If I want avoid xmp-rating and labels, then I would go also the suggestion of Ferdinand and use the categories.

We do often, I think, even underestimate the power of categories, they are really very powerful. Somethimes even magic.

[Richard]

If I want avoid xmp-rating and labels, then I would go also the suggestion of Ferdinand and use the categories.

Hi Markus,

I do not want to avoid using Ratings and Labels just to avoid having them in XMP. They can be a very useful part of my current work but would be worthless in XMP. I am currently verifying that images of persons are properly assigned to their categories. Once verified I assign a One Star rating to that image file and a filter then removes that file from my selection. I could accomplish similar results using categories but not with the same ease.

[Ferdinand]

Could you not have a category that you assigned files to once the the images of persons are assigned, which you could colour code (which would stand out more than a rating) and which you could also filter on to exclude from the selection?  You only have to press "1" for the rating, but a favourite for the category is not far behind in terms of being quick and easy.  By all means continue as you suggest, but I think that this is pretty close to what you suggest and removes any risk of unnecessary, accidental write-backs.

[Carlo Didier]

Once verified I assign a One Star rating to that image file and a filter then removes that file from my selection. I could accomplish similar results using categories but not with the same ease.

Why not use pins? I'm doing something similar right now and I simply use one of the pins.

[Richard]

Why not use pins?

I do but they are only 3 Dots, 3 Pins, 2 Flags, and 1 Bookmark. Whereas there are 10 Labels plus 5 Ratings.

[herman]

Ferdinand and Herman, Thank you for trying but I already have an untested workaround using Ferdinand"s suggestion to set "Write-back changes to metadata immediately" to off.

I post my set-up anyway, perhaps lovstrom (who posted the feature request) can use one of these ideas.

Attached is a screenshot of my "Workflow" workspace.
I use this layout when processing files: ingesting, culling, cataloguing, rating, printing, .....

My "00 Workflow" category is where most people would use labels.
I don't use external programs which could read XMP labels, so I prefer to keep everything internal to IMatch.
Just to make images in the workflow (i.e. images not finished) clearly stand out I gave this category a color.
The color is assigned to the toplevel category and inherited by the children.
It would have been equally easy to use the traditional label colors red, yellow, green, blue and purple.
In the Category Properties the assignment action for the children is set to Un-assign from siblings, meaning that only one of these categories can be assigned.

My Rating category is similar to the Workflow category.
When an image has a rating it is shown in the file window by a yellow-ish category bar.

As you can see in the screenshot on the right-hand side of the screen I have clustered all panels I need to process images through my workflow.
In the Category Panel I assigned a Workflow tab, showing just the workflow categories, as well as a Rating tab.
So everything I need to do in my workflow in IMatch is just two mouseclicks away.

I use Mario's Category Dashboard app to keep track of categories assigned to an image.
As I use categories to rate an image it also shows immediately the rating of an image and (in my set-up) if an image has been completely categorized (formula driven category 90 Database maintenance | Incomplete categorization checks for all the W's).

The disadvantage of not using the XMP ratings is that you can accidentally click a star on an image thumbnail and thus assign an XMP rating.
To prevent this I removed the Rating and Label indicators from the thumbnail by setting the "Rating and Label bar" to compact.
This suppresses display of rating and label but still shows the version and stack indicators.

The only annoying thing left is that the keyboard shortcuts for XMP rating and label still work.
When I accidentally hit one of these keys the yellow pencil appears and I have to undo the XMP change.
Perhaps, one day, when Mario says he needs some fresh ideas, I will submit a feature request for user-definable shortcuts 

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[Ferdinand]

When I see screen grabs like that I realise that I'm not using the power of IMatch 5 sufficiently.  (My only excuse is that I've been away for much of the time since the official release and I did the migration of my production database, but that's wearing out as an excuse!)

[jch2103]

When I see screen grabs like that I realize that ...

...I also really need to think about getting a bigger monitor...(and/or more of them...). 

[sinus]

When I see screen grabs like that I realize that ...

...I also really need to think about getting a bigger monitor...(and/or more of them...). 

2 monitors is really great! And easy to use!

[Ferdinand]

2 monitors is really great! And easy to use!

I thought you had an Eizo CG222 like me.  Do you really have two of them?  Business *must* be good!

[sinus]

2 monitors is really great! And easy to use!

I thought you had an Eizo CG222 like me.  Do you really have two of them?  Business *must* be good!

Hi Ferdinand,
Thanks for this ... you have a very good brain! 

Yep, I have an Eizo CG222W, but the second monitor is a cheap one, a samsung SyncMaster 2253 bw. But on this second monitor I put the panels and so on, when color is important, then I use the Eizo!