How do you tag your photos?

Gurdie · Expire: 2013-02-20

Is there a good software to tag the photos and search the photo directories by tags?

I´m using Capture NX for developing my RAW (NEF) pictures, and I can add metadata to the files, but I haven´t found a way to search the photos by key words.

SkedAddled · Expire: 2021-08-12

I haven't found a need to do so, but you can undoubtedly find something
useful at the link I posted HERE.

LucisPictor · Expire: 2013-12-03

To be honest, I don't.
I move them into folders with telling names.
But I guess, I should tag them. Embarassed

poilu · Expire: 2019-08-29

picasa look funny and it is free
it even do face recognition
but don't use it for your favorites pics of bing laaden otherwise C I A will be immediately alerted by google

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Lightroom.
Of course useful if you talk of RAW images.
For normal JPGs there are more cheap solutions.

Gurdie · Expire: 2013-02-20

Craig, thanks for the links.

Yes, I would like to tag also the RAW files, which I keep in separate folders - for JPEGs I have folders by year and month. But when I want to for example to check all the pics taken with a CZ Sonnar 135/3.5, how can I do that otherwise than tagging?

Carlsson · Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 793 Location: Portugal

Yes, Lightroom for RAW tagging. Within a second you can list all the pics taken with a specific lens and it's also good to see which lens is in heavy use Smile

erm, sorry about the first three lenses, the list is in alphabetical order only Embarassed

F16SUNSHINE · Expire: 2011-11-18

Aperture 3 will blow your mind how well it helps with organizing.
Easy tags. Full featured RAW converter. Direct opening to PS is available for best quality printing.
I'm impressed. The interface is the easiest to use and most natural of all the latest programs available. Try the free 30 day you'll see what I mean.

n6mod · Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 7:24 pm Post subject: lenstag.py

Carlsson: Does LR let you edit the Lens Tag? And does that end up written back to the RAW, or just in an XMP or in LR's database?

Or am I just looking at an LR tag, not the EXIF data?

In any case, I'm with F16Sunshine on Aperture 3. But you can't directly edit the lens metadata, so I wrote a python script to drive exiftool for me.

http://fieldcircus.milewski.org/lenstag.tgz

copypasta from the aperture forum where I posted on this:

Weston, et al-
Sorry it took so long, this turned into a project to teach myself python[1], and then the feature creep set in.

So, early days here, but there's a script and some sample lens files here: http://fieldcircus.milewski.org/lenstag.tgz

Caveats:

Requires exiftool, which you can get here http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool. Download and install the Mac OS X Package.
It's my first effort in python[1], so no laughing at the code. Patches welcome.
Error checking is limited, and it's too trusting of user input.
Not well tested, so I'm not even thinking of turning off exiftool's paranoid backup scheme
At the moment, it only works on .ORF, .CR2, and .PEF files. I'm trying really hard not to have to call exiftool twice, once to identify the file and once to update it. I might get there eventually, but it will make the tool a lot slower. The downside is that I have to add RAW types one at a time, and there's no good way to support JPEGs.
I always try to write 'LensModel', as it's the only tag I've found that lets me write a string into a file that Aperture will see. This is a MakerNote for Canons, but it ends up in XMP (and not picked up by Aperture) for Olympus and Pentax. I need to do more testing with EXIF:Lens, but exiftool documents this as an "avoided" tag, probably for good reason.
Pentax still needs some work. In particular, Pentax (at least the K10D) will write the focal length set for Shake Reduction to the FocalLength and (multiplied by 1.5) FocalLengthIn35mmFormat tags. I overwrite the former, but not the latter, so if you didn't set it when you were shooting, it could still be wrong. (A digression... if Olympus did this, I'd be happy to do the two-pass conversion, because I could just provide an inventory of what was in my bag that day and let lenstag sort it out.)

Having said all that, my code does no direct file manipulation, so about the worst thing that could happen is that you'll goof up the EXIF data in your files, but have a backup (in filename.ext_original) sitting next to it. Mostly Harmless. Smile