Replace album categories by keyword categories

[Arthur]

Hi,

1) I currently thinking about turning all non keyword categories into keyword categories, so that they are persisted with the file and can be transferred into other catalogs without the need to recreate local categories and to reassign the files. This looks more future prove to me. Does it make sense to have such "public" categories only?

2) Does it make sense to replace all whitespaces in keywords by something like '_' to support filtering in "stupid" programs, which assume that "A B" means A or B?

[Mario]

1. This depends on your needs.
IMatch's unique categories give you the choice. Manage public keywords inside XMP keywords and @Keywords. And use IMatch categories on top of that for formulas, data-driven categories, Alias categories etc.

2. This depends on your use case and application tool chain. I don't which stupid program you mean hence I cannot make recommendations.

[ubacher]

If you don't absolutely need keywords then I would advise against it: reason: they are
difficult to change. Renaming or moving/removing all require rewriting all files.

Having the keywords in the files seem a good backup for them but unless you have another program which can handle them they gain you little.

[Arthur]

The advantage of all categories except the "smart" ones in keywords is that they are there in the following scenario:

IMatch -> Image Base -> Lightroom, Luminar DAM, Afinity Photo DAM.

So basically there is no migration overhead. If you have thousands of private non smart categories, you can export the category structure, but you cannot export the image assignments to these private categories. So you have to rebuild these private categories by hand in other environments.

The stupid tool I meant is Lightroom. There I wanted to create "smart collections" on keywords, where there were the following keywords schemes "A", "B A", "B C". It was not possible, to define the smart collections, so that there where no result intersections, because "B A" is interpreted as "B or A" which covers "A" and so on. This has shown me, that these problems could happen in other tools also, which makes a whitespace a dangerous character.

[Mario]

I always recommend to keep keywords simple. For best interoperability.
If the need arises you can run a Metadata Template which produces XMP keywords from (selected) categories. This has been discussed several times here.

IMatch categories are much more efficient and versatile than keywords.
This makes re-arranging your category hierarchy / taxonomy very fast and flexible.

Moving 1000 files from one category to another takes virtually no time.
Doing the same requires 1000 XMP updates and 1000 write-backs.

Keywords are great for data exchange and publishing.
Categories are more powerful and faster.
It always depends on your environment.

If you really need to feed all these DAM systems while you still work with IMatch, go for keywords.
IMatch can export categories in many formats, including file assignments of course. But it is a known fact that many other systems out there are really limited in what they can import.

[jch2103]

Hmm. Just curious - would it be feasible/worthwhile to have a file export option that dynamically saved image categories to keywords in the exported file? I wouldn't have any use for this, myself, but some users apparently would.

[Mario]

With "Export" you mean what? Batch Processor?
This is not the same as copying categories into the XMP metadata of the original image.

A Metadata Template does this just nicely.

[jch2103]

With "Export" you mean what? Batch Processor?
This is not the same as copying categories into the XMP metadata of the original image.

A Metadata Template does this just nicely.

Yes, I was thinking of the Batch Processor. The idea is that the user would have a workflow that used only Categories, but sometimes needed to provide files with Keywords to other users/programs. I recognize this could get complicated (e.g., user only wants to export some but not all Categories to Keywords in exported images).

I hadn't considered using Metadata Templates for this, but it certainly looks like they could be used to convert selected Categories to Keywords. But 'exporting' files for other users/applications would still be another step, and would negate the idea of just relying on Categories instead of Keywords for certain workflows.

I presume this could be done with an App if someone thought it was sufficiently useful?

[Mario]

The Batch Processor can copy custom metadata. This could be used to export selected categories as keywords.
I don't see a use case for a separate "export" feature on top of that.