Issue with long catalog label display

[Roman]

I don't know if this is an issue for other users, but I sometimes find it difficult identifying catalog labels that have been assigned long text strings. This happens to me when creating labels of animal species that use the common name and scientific name in the label. This results in the label button text spanning three lines, which makes the beginning and ending of the label text difficult to read (see screen shot).
Is it possible to make the buttons larger so that all three lines are visible?

Regards,
Roman

[Roman]

As there has been no response, I assume that it is not currently possible to change the way long label text is displayed. Is this a problem just for me or do any other users find it an issue? Is it worth submitting a feature request?
Roman

[G8DHE]

I must admit I don't have this problem but I don't use these sorts of descriptions. Rather I tend to have a hierarchal structure. I guess another route might be to Synonyms and Abbreviations fields or maybe Label Sets but I've not used them myself to date so not quite sure what can be achieved with them?

[RobiWan]

Rather I tend to have a hierarchal structure.

I think that is also the right approach.

[Mke]

As there has been no response, I assume that it is not currently possible to change the way long label text is displayed. Is this a problem just for me or do any other users find it an issue? Is it worth submitting a feature request?

No, it's not possible to change it but yes, I have encountered it occasionally (despite using hierarchical structures, some things do just have really long names). I'm less certain about how you would change it?

A couple of things that may help:

- If you've not already discovered it, then holding the mouse over the top does display the full text, plus the hierarchy.

- When setting up new catalog entries, you have the option of adding a synonym, which could the the scientific name. If you then choose the setting 'Store synonyms as keywords too' in the overall program settings, then the synonym will get written to the image too, without being displayed in PSU's Label Assignment Panel as part of the label. It will still be searchable though. As below:

Syn1.png (13.94 KiB) Viewed 9161 times

syn2.png (31.89 KiB) Viewed 9161 times

[Mke]

BTW, if you're seriously into scientific naming, then PSU supports Darwin Core.

See, for example, Darwin Core Biodiversity for cataloguing species

[gcorbin]

I also catalogue my nature photos with PhotoSupreme, so far without issue using Darwin Core. My labels are not too long, at least so far. My method is I added a hierarchal structure as below which reflects the major taxonomic levels of organisms. These labels populate the Darwin core fields in my photos so this cataloguing is sharable with others. My logic is that the taxonomic structure has stood the test of time as being the best structure overall, so why should not I benefit from the wisdom of other much smarter people than I.

Each taxonomic level label populates its Darwin core field with its parents populating higher level fields. It is hard to describe but is actually easy to setup and easy to use. Have a look at my label hierarchy with a couple of label details and it should all make sense.

Hierarchy.jpg (33.64 KiB) Viewed 9137 times

Odonata.jpg (22.69 KiB) Viewed 9137 times

Blue Riverdamsel.jpg (23.34 KiB) Viewed 9137 times

In the 'Detail Profile' for the Scientific Name label, I only set the Darwin Core fields 'Identified by', 'Original Name Usage', 'Scientific Name Authorship', 'Specific Epithet' and 'Vernacular Name'. The other Darwin Core fields are set by the label or parent labels. If the 'Vernacular Name' does not exist, make sure you set this field to 'Clear Content' so when you misidentify something and change the identification label to the correct identification, the vernacular Name is cleared if necessary.

If I can identify an organism, I just add the label to the photo and this populates all the Darwin core fields including the scientific name and vernacular name if it exists plus all the higher level taxonomic fields. To find the label, I can click through the label hierarchy but I usually search the scientific name or vernacular name in the labels. If I haven’t got a label for that organism, I just add the new label in the hierarchy, normally requiring just adding a single label just populating the scientific name, vernacular name, identifier, and original name usage fields, a quick and simple process. If the genus is new, I may have to add the genus label first. Similarly for higher level taxonomic labels.

If I cannot fully identify the organism, I label the photos with a higher level label such as Odonata (Dragonflies and Damselflies).

The advantage of the label hierarchy is I can easily find all my dragonfly and damselfly photos by just clicking one label count bubble to display all the child label photos. Similarly, all my insect, bird or parrot photos are just one click away. To be clear, the photo gets just one organism label but PhotoSupremes label hierarchy support and process parent label support allows me to utilise the label hierarchy to get these amazing results.

Using scientific names as the basis of my labelling was a daunting decision but one which has worked well. I add the common name in description and synonym so I can search on and see the common name as a popup. Many insects I photograph do not have common names so my hierarchy still works for them without change, something which is not true for a labelling system based on common names. While I do not know scientific names for all organisms, this hierarchy is still easily usable. For birds, I only know common names but I can easily search for chough to find the label for white-winged chough.

From experience, I highly recommend using a taxonomic hierarchy and Darwin Core. It works very well and might overcome your label length issue.

[Roman]

Thank you Mke and gcorbin for your suggestions.

I have been using IDImager/Photo Supreme for over 15 years and over that time it looks like I have painted myself into a bit of a corner. Over the years my interest in wildlife photography has grown from being a passing interest to being something that I want to take more seriously. I started cataloging using common names as I was mainly focused on birds, but as I started to take more interest in invertebrates it became apparent that common names were not going to work. Being unaware of the existence of the Darwin Core catalog I have been hand crafting my own hierarchical catalog of the taxonomic groups that I have photographed. I now realize that this was probably a mistake. I will have to come to grips with the Darwin Core/synonym method of cataloging scientific/common names as described. I can't say that I am looking forward to re-cataloging the hundreds of species that I have already photographed, but I am sure it will be worth it in the end.

Thank you again for the advice, Roman

[gcorbin]

Roman, I started cataloging exactly as you initially. I also found its limitations and Darwin Core support came to PhotoSupreme at the right moment for me. Switching my cataloging was a major decision but worth it.

I have only recatalogued my 'important' photo categories and left the remainder in the old cataloging way. I can still find these photos when necessary so I have left them to recatalogue one rainy day when I have free time, probably never...

By the way, I have done a couple of edits to my previous post so it is clearer how I populate the Darwin Core fields. Hopefully this is helpful.

[Roman]

gcorbin,

Thank you for taking the time to clarify your notes on Darwin Core usage within PS. I have a few questions, but I will do some research and testing to see if I can figure out the answers myself. I want to make sure that I understand the methodology before I start to use it in earnest. Don't be surprised if you hear from me again

Regards,
Roman

[Roman]

Dear gcorbin,
Sorry to bother you so soon. Creating the taxonomic hierarcy in the catalog is going to be quite time consuming. Did you create your catalogue labels using a controlled vocabulary? If so where can I obtain it?
Thanks,
Roman

[gcorbin]

When I started my taxonomic hierarchy, I also thought about the effort to create the hierarchy and looked for methods to automate the creation. I am really into wild orchids and insects and there are about 1700 species of Australian orchids plus over 5000 species of insects found in my local area. I will not ever photograph the majority of these species, particularly insects, and creating so many labels might bring PhotoSupreme to its knees. I don’t think Hert would have high on his design criteria crazy people like me creating hundreds and hundreds of labels so I believe creating a huge number of categories creates a risk to PhotoSupreme performance. Now that I do have hundreds and hundreds of category labels in my database, this fear has fortunately proved unfounded and everything works well with a huge number of category labels.

Anyway, I do not use a controlled vocabulary as such but I do use the taxonomy of iNaturalist. (You can look up the iNaturalist documentation to see the list of authorities they follow for their taxonomy.) As iNaturalist updates its taxonomy for organisms in my hierarchy (they will send you an email if you have a sighting of that organism in iNaturalist), I update my labels to match iNaturalist, normally a simple drag of the species label from one genus to another, but might also require a simple edit to the species label where the specific epithet changes. PhotoSupreme will automatically make all the required changes to the Photo metadata making these updates really easy.

Now, back to the effort to create the hierarchy. As I said, I use iNaturalist and iNaturalist conveniently provides a taxonomy tab with the taxonomy like:-

Kingdom Animalia Animals
Phylum Arthropoda Arthropods
Subphylum Hexapoda Hexapods
Class Insecta Insects
Subclass Pterygota Winged and Once-winged Insects
Order Odonata Dragonflies and Damselflies
Suborder Zygoptera Damselflies
Superfamily Coenagrionoidea Coenagrionoid Damselflies
Family Coenagrionidae Narrow-winged Damselflies
Genus Pseudagrion Riverdamsels
Pseudagrion microcephalum Blue Riverdamsel

This gives me everything I need to create the taxonomic hierarchy. For the first organism in my catalogue, I need to create a label for every major taxonomy level, that is, Animalia, Arthropoda, Insecta, Odonata, Coenagrionidae, Pseudagrion and finally Pseudagrion microcephalum or seven labels. Each label is quick to add, but it might take 5 minutes to create these seven labels.
To add my second organism of Pseudagrion aureofrons, an organism in the same genus, I only need to create a single label as a child under the existing genus label as all the other labels already exist, a much quicker task.

For my third organism of Suhpalacsa dietrichiae, its taxonomic hierarchy is:-

Kingdom Animalia Animals
Phylum Arthropoda Arthropods
Subphylum Hexapoda Hexapods
Class Insecta Insects
Subclass Pterygota Winged and Once-winged Insects
Order Neuroptera Antlions, Lacewings, and Allies
Suborder Myrmeleontiformia Antlions, Owlflies, and Allies
Superfamily Myrmeleontoidea Antlions, Owlflies, and Allies
Family Myrmeleontidae Antlions and Owlflies
Subfamily Ascalaphinae Owlflies
Tribe Ascalaphini Ascalaphine Owlflies
Genus Suhpalacsa
Suhpalacsa dietrichiae Cloudy-wings Owlfly

so the order label already exists, but I will need to add a new Family, Genus and Species labels below the existing order label.

As you can see, as your hierarchy of the organisms you photograph builds out, the effort to add new organisms reduce. I still add my labels manually, but this effort is not onerous once you get a decent hierarchy. It is even easier when you rephotograph an organism as you just need to add the existing species label to the photos in this case, really quick and easy.

I hope this explains how I do things. It looks daunting at the beginning, and it certainly was for me, but it does work well and isn’t an unmanageable effort. If I lost my PhotoSupreme catalogue today, I would still use this method to catalogue my photos in the rebuild.

[Roman]

Thank you for your comprehensive reply. The iNaturalist tip is particularly helpful as I already use iNaturalist. I am sure you are right, progress will be slow initially, but as the hierarchy grows adding labels to images will become progressively quicker. Until now I had just one PS database, but I have decided to create a new organisms database just for my natural history photography. I am in the process of extracting all the relevant photographs into a separate directory structure, which I will import into the new organisms database. I will then start generating the label taxonomy. It is better than watching TV.

[Roman]

Can you confirm that using your methodology you do not include the Sub and Super divisions as described in the iNaturalist taxonomy, as there do not appear to be equivalent divisions in the Darwin Core taxonomy.

[gcorbin]

Yes, I only currently include the major taxonomic divisions (those in Darwincore) for my labels. I do not use the super or sub divisions.

I considered whether to use the super and sub division labels. You definitely can put the super and sub division labels in the hierarchy and not have them store any metadata and these labels will allow you to see all photos for that super or sub division. While this may be useful, i personally did not see enough benefit for me to generally implement these extra level labels considering the extra effort involved.

However, I am currently planning to add section labels (between genus and species levels) just for some genus of Orchids as these intermediate labels are useful to me. In particular, for the genus Dendrobium which is a very large genus of orchid which I photograph regularly, I am planning on adding sections of Dendrocoryne, Rhizobium, etc below the Dendrobium genus label and link the species labels to the appropriate section label rather than directly to the Dendrobium label as is done now. These section labels will allow me to list all photos of species from a section, much more useful than all Dendrobium as the genus is so large with so many species. The section label will just be a label in the database and not store any metadata but will be useful for me to break up Dendrobium into a more manageable size.

The addition of the intermediate section label will be a one off and not something I generally implement. For you, you usage may be different, so implement the intermediate levels if they are useful to you.