Default settings for labels - and auto update parents

[BrianS]

At the moment there seems no way to choose the default settings for new labels in particular regards to:
- Also assign its parents - default Yes would be a good option to have
- Unassign parents with same label - tricky - Yes should be used with caution!

I would have thought that it would be more logical to typically assign parents - otherwise what is the point of having them?
If a parent has changed for a label how could it not apply to all the images with that child?
Also a label or should I say a 'word' can logically appear in multiple Categories/Parents - e.g Color-Orange, Fruit-Orange, Place:Australia:NSW:Orange * (it's a city). Without assigning parents by default how can I tell in the Labels panel which parent it has?

When a label has its parent changed/added either manually or by drag and drop then thankfully assign parents Yes remains.
However if this is done for a number of labels or even one, then I can find no way to update the labels en masse to reflect their new parentage.

I need to select a new parented label one at a time, select all images with this label, turn off that individual label, then turn it back on.

Regards Brian

[Mke]

- Also assign its parents - default Yes would be a good option to have

For most purposes, hierarchical labels make that unnecessary, except in special circumstances.

Make sure you understand what it's doing; to quote the associated tip:
This option will enable you to speed up your cataloging process [Mke: but only if you want to label this way]. When this option is selected and this label is assigned to an image, then all the parent labels will be assigned as well. For instance, in the sample of Places.United States.Texas. use this option to automatically assign the parent labels "United States", and "Texas" in one go, only by assigning Austin.

Hierarchical labels without assigning parents would instead apply the single metadata item "Places|United States|Texas"

I would have thought that it would be more logical to typically assign parents - otherwise what is the point of having them?
If a parent has changed for a label how could it not apply to all the images with that child?

If you're writing hierarchical keywords, then a change to a parent will still be applied;
in the above example, change United States to USA and the metadata would change to "Places|USA|Texas"

Also a label or should I say a 'word' can logically appear in multiple Categories/Parents - e.g Color-Orange, Fruit-Orange, Place:Australia:NSW:Orange * (it's a city). Without assigning parents by default how can I tell in the Labels panel which parent it has?

I have many like this. If you hover the mouse over a button in the labels panel, it will show you the full hierarchy, if you're using hierarchical labels.

[BrianS]

Hi Mike,
I understand the idea re hierarchical keywords - however ASFAIK this is only refers to when 'label(s)' are synced/written to the file.
What if I don't want keywords written to the file? This is indeed a choice in "Store metadata to the database only".
FYI I do not sync files regularly due to my CDP (continuous backup) software - every change to a file creates a version. When I am ready for a sync I turn CDP off temporarily.

May I ask if you agree with this statement...." labels and keywords are not the same thing. Labels are a PSU only element, keywords are metadata that might or might not be written to / read from the file. Labels can be used to create/populate keyword metadata, keyword metadata can be used to create new labels."
BTW, as a default I do not allow 'read' keywords to create labels - I would lose control of my vocabulary (and would only turn this on if I was very confident of who by/how the keywords were created).

So in response to my ? re why isn't / can't Also assign parents Yes be the default you wrote:

For most purposes, hierarchical labels make that unnecessary, except in special circumstances.

and

If you're writing hierarchical keywords, then a change to a parent will still be applied;
in the above example, change United States to USA and the metadata would change to "Places|USA|Texas"

Agree, but only as it applies to the metadata, but it is not useful when searching for Label assignments.

PSU is excellent in that we can search for a term across, labels, metadata, folders etc. However Labels are the one item I can/should have control over.

If I need to find things that I have classified as Places.Egypt then only that label will do it, whereas descriptions, and other Metadata might not be relevant to "Places'" because the search won't show that. One only has to look at images from Alamy, Getty and especially random sources etc to see how much is stored in the metadata, e.g. copious keywords - often junk, all this created outside my control - handy to keep, but often useless for my search.
I repeat - "Egypt" might appear in the search list, but under Image Details it could be from hundreds of fields - Keywords are not identified as such.

So again, what harm would it do to have a default of assign parents Yes, and a refresh Parent assignments script?
If the PSU preference "write hierarchical keywords" always writes all the parent labels to metadata, why can't this reflected / be a default choice for labels?

[Mke]

I understand the idea re hierarchical keywords...

Just checking

...however ASFAIK this is only refers to when 'label(s)' are synced/written to the file.
What if I don't want keywords written to the file? This is indeed a choice in "Store metadata to the database only".

Hierarchical keywords work the same when not written to file (in the database only); I do this from time-to-time when working in travel mode (until I exit travel mode and sync them, the labels are in the database only).

If you search for them as 'categories' using the top left 'find' function you will also see the parents; for example:

FindExample.png (16.01 KiB) Viewed 11728 times

where you can clearly distinguish between the two 'BBB' categories:

AlsoAssign.png (4.14 KiB) Viewed 11728 times

May I ask if you agree with this statement...." labels and keywords are not the same thing....

I'd phrase it that:
- Keywords are individual descriptive tags (which may or may not include one or more parents) which can be written to or read from an image's metadata;
- Catalog labels are a structured hierarchy of descriptive tags, together with other optional data (synonyms, descriptions, GEO coordinates, and more) within PSU's database (catalog) which can be written to an image's metadata.

as a default I do not allow 'read' keywords to create labels - I would lose control of my vocabulary (and would only turn this on if I was very confident of who by/how the keywords were created)

Good to be cautious! Another option is to import them into a temporary catalog, clean them, then import them into your main catalog.

what harm would it do to have a default of assign parents Yes?

I wouldn't call it harm, but the result would be to assign more labels than 'normally' necessary.

BTW, I'm not opposed to it being an option in principle but, at the moment, the only time I can think of where it might be useful is if you were submitting images to Alamy, Getty, etc., and therefore wanted the parent keywords to display separately in their catalogs. Though I guess that there are other reasons too.

You could always propose it as an enhancement on Mantis, if it's not already there.

[BrianS]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the response ( BTW I am having trouble getting notifications of replies to my posts hence the delay in responding)

FYI I just found a script by Hert in the Repository that changes all Labels to have Apply Parents to Yes.

I just tried it and it works fine.

[G8DHE]

I have to say i have used this option as well. However it can also have its downsides, see below.
I use it because at times not all users of the images will be using PSU and having the full hierarchy available means its flexible.
It can be a pain not having the default as "Apply Parents" and there are situations where like merging labels doesn't seem to trigger the parent associations either.
It would be nice to have the option to make this a default if required.

[BrianS]

Agree Geoff,

And come to think of it - these three could all be settable defaults.
- Apply Parents
- Unassign Parents With same parent (could/should carry a warning 'use with caution')

Metadata Settings
- Process Parent Mapping

I don't see defaults for any of the others being useful.

BTW, it would be nice to be able to update / cascade a change to Apply Parents. The only way I can see is to select all with that label, unassign it then re-assign it. Which means it has to be done one label at a time. I mean if you decide to change this for a labels(s) then why would you not want to update the Labels applied to all those images? Either the parent is the parent or it isn't. Maybe this should be automatic - although a mistake could cause a lot of out of syncs. A script to do this for selected labels might be better.

[fbungarz]

I do not like the option to always assign the parent and thus prefer the default as it is right now.
But for some categories that have labels/keywords that are exclusive I would very much like to be able to set the default to "unassigned labels with the same parent".
A thing cannot be black and white at the same time. Or in my case: the photo shows either one species or another one...
So, I would love to be able to change the default settings for a particular label category (in my case the taxonomic hierarchy of species names).