JeffK wrote: 29 Jan 22 21:50
ultimately it has to work for tens of thousands of images, most of which already have GPS metadata included and many also with populated location metadata fields.
OK, understood.
I'm only experimenting with a small subset of these though.
Totally agree, that's the best way.
So in the long term it is not practicable to manually enter the Places hierarchy catalog labels. The inbuilt method appears to work well with only a few glitches. But the question I was asking myself was if I want to do this myself how is it done?
Once you get the hang of PSU you may find it easier than you think. Why do I say this? Because of all the ways PSU lets you search and manipulate the metadata. Eg you could easily group pictures (eg all images taken in a particular time frame) that you knew were taken in a particular spot, and allocate them to a category label under Places. PSU is very powerful in searching and filtering. You can then select images and drag them to a category label, or use the label pane: I neglected to mention that labels can be easily added using the labels pane (click on labels at bottom right of screen, labels pane appears on right hand side) - type the label you want, if existing label not found there is the option to enter a new one (NB when entering make sure it has the correct parent). Places hierarchy needs tidying up? It's easy to drag the labels around in the left pane until the hierarchy is as you want.
That is, as I expressed above, "My question is having found one or two metadata fields how do I turn them into a catalog item in Photo Supreme. What do I actually do in the program itself. What button do I press, what dialog do I fill? Do I copy the data item I want to use into an ITPC keywords field. I've read the catalog section of the manual twice and I still haven't been able to do it." I have had significant success putting the necessary data into the metadata keyword fields with the program doing the translation to catalog labels effectively. But I still have no certainty that this is how the program is intended to work.
It's as well to have clarity on how metadata is structured and how PSU works, forgive me if you already get this. So: the image file has metadata stored in it. Exif, IPTC, XMP/ labels: various different blocks of metadata. When PSU "ingests" a file it creates an entry for the image in the PSU database - aka the catalog - and it imports a copy of this metadata into the catalog. But it also creates and maintains in the catalog its own data about the image - eg where it is on disk, and - importantly - the category label information. Some of this data it initially populates from the Exif, IPTC, XMP it read in. But mostly, from this point in, you are working with PSU's own data in the catalog. The role of "syncing" is key - it is when you sync an image that PSU writes back to the Exif, IPTC, XMP blocks - both PSU's copy and the image file or sidecar itself - the data you have been working on. One key part of that is that PSU takes your category labels and creates keywords from them. The fine details are controlled by your preference read/write settings and, in the case of keywords, the settings for each particular label (right-click > details).
Yes i am aware that I have been trying to do what the program natively does by more efficient means. I wanted to understand what to do if I wanted to do something outside that in the future. No point in loading up thousands of photos and then finding I didn't have the knowledge on how to process them for an as yet unknown desired outcome.
Although I don't have, in my head, complete clarity on what you are trying to do I can't help feeling that this is not productive. I get that you want to futureproof yourself, but this seems akin to saying "I'd like to know whether I can manually flap the wings on my aircraft in case the engines fail". That's a really rubbish analogy but what I mean is that you are trying to make PSU work ina way it wasn't intended, and it wasn't intended to work that way because it has built that functionality in other ways. So what I would recommend is that you fully investigate (a) the filter and search functionality (b) the various views provided by the ribbon options. In other words, explore the functionality the aircraft has provided for flight. Also the label panel is important for most PSU users, and of course in your scenarios the geotag panel will also be important, but I guess you've played with these already.
I'm pretty sure I understand how Places behaves, and I could just use it for my major purpose without further mucking around. But I wanted to know how to do it myself. My photos all have geodata installed and I have used several apps to enter it and manage it in the past; including free ones like geosetter an XNViewMP and paid ones like ACDSee, iMatch and Topofusion (which places photos on gpx tracks/routes on top of maps). I didn't really like using ACDSee for this it turned out (it wasn't as functional as I thought) and I came back to Photo Supreme to give it another go.
Before PSU had geo functionality I used geosetter but have eliminated that from my workflow now and use PSU to allocate geodata to my images from my GPX files.
Thank you for your help. I appreciate the time and energy you and Geoff have put into my queries. I'm still lost but I'm guessing you guys are the pilot and cockatoo i n the helicopter circling above.
No problem. I think I'm the cockatoo!
