Keyword appears on some of my photos - not my keyword!

pond damsel

The keyword "_favorite_" is associated with over 800 of my images. I have assigned no such keyword to anything. Is there something that triggers Smugmug to apply it?

Marion
http://mariondobbs.smugmug.com/

Andy

So for this photo, http://mariondobbs.smugmug.com/Dragonflies-and-Damselflies/Georgia-and-the-Southeast/2008-Dragons-and-Damsels/9616822_6mG6g#1002721278_XTdpy

1) how did you upload it - exactly which method and uploader?

2) where and how did you apply the other keywords that are there?

3) where and how did you apply the caption
2008_07_21_NC_Macromia margarita_Mountain River Cruiser - 12

pond damsel

1) I use MacDaddy so that I can preserve the captions I have added in iPhoto.
2) Most keywords come along with the uploads, i.e., I have added them in iPhoto. Occasionally, I add or delete keywords in SmugMug.
3) The caption you refer to was added in iPhoto. This brings up a question I submitted via email. I want to remove those underscores connecting the caption words, but I am unable to select a character within a string in the batch edit mode in SmugMug. I wonder if that will be an option in future?

Andy

But your keywords aren't embedded in the original photos... so I'm at a loss here to understand how _favorite_ would be attached unless you added it.

pond damsel

Keyword issue

Andy wrote: »

But your keywords aren't embedded in the original photos... so I'm at a loss here to understand how _favorite_ would be attached unless you added it.

Let me try again.

Me, too. I searched every conceivable field (title, description, keyword, etc.) in iPhoto for _favorite_ and found it nowhere. If I had ever had favorite as a keyword in iPhoto or SmugMug, I would not have flanked it with underscores. And to prove a point to myself and anyone else interested, I uploaded a big batch of photos today, many of which now have _favorite_ associated with them as keywords! I can assure you beyond the shadow of a doubt they didn't upload with the photos, nor did I add them once here.

Some other bizarre things seem to be going on that I'm still sorting out. For instance, some of the keywords that come up with my images seem to be arbitrarily grouped, rather than comma-delimited, as of course I would prefer. There seems to be no rhyme, nor reason as to which are separated by commas and which are not.

I think there's more, but like I say, I'm still mucking about in there to see what I can see.

Marion

richpepp

I don't know but is it possible that iPhoto uses '_favourite_' internally to track photos that you have marked as favourites/starred in some way. It then hides that tag from you when you look at it in iPhoto as they mean it to be internal to iPhoto rather than for the user? Is there a way of making a photo in iPhoto a 'favourite', e.g. by marking it as selected for uploading?

pond damsel

Now that's good thinking! It sounded like such a reasonable possibility that I investigated it every way I could imagine, all without much to show for my efforts. There is a star ranking system in iPhoto , 1 to 5, but of the 25,000+ images in my library, I only have 199 with a 5-star rating. Since over 1500 (and rising!) of my photos on SmugMug have the "_favorite_" keyword, that doesn't seem to be the answer. The other two "marking" systems in iPhoto besides keywords you have designated are "flagging" and "checkmarking." Each is a temporary marker to signify whatever you want it to: "Send these to Aunt Jane" or "Print these to use in the bottom of the birdcage." Nonetheless, I compared photos that bore either of these markers to the _favorite_ photos on SmugMug. No correlation that I could find.
I think it's poltergeists.

habanr

Try to use ExifTool for metadata export

pond damsel wrote: »

Let me try again.

Me, too. I searched every conceivable field (title, description, keyword, etc.) in iPhoto for _favorite_ and found it nowhere.

Try to use one of the most respected program for metadata manipulation ExifTool see http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
to export all metada that your test image contains

WinsomeWorks

The heroes at the Help Desk should really help you out with this... because it's really rather wacky and should get sorted out correctly, especially if it's still happening. They can see the internal workings of everything in a way that the rest of us can't... Keywords are important to me & I want to see that this got some needed attention. This site needs to know why/how all its keywords are getting added.

Andy

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

The heroes at the Help Desk should really help you out with this... because it's really rather wacky and should get sorted out correctly, especially if it's still happening. They can see the internal workings of everything in a way that the rest of us can't... Keywords are important to me & I want to see that this got some needed attention. This site needs to know why/how all its keywords are getting added.

I've looked and don't see anything in the original files. I'm at a complete loss as to how _favorite_ gets added unless by the site owner.

pond damsel

Well, I thought I posted a lengthy reply to this last night, but I've had some connection issues and don't see it, so here goes again. There are several points I'd like to make.

First, I just can't come up with any source for the "_favorite_" keyword try as I might. I've been known to do some pretty dumb things, but if this is one of them, I can't figure it out. Also, I am unable to batch delete this keyword, and in fact, batch edit of captions/keywords no longer seems to be working for me at all, though it has certainly done so in the past. After I make my selections and choices, nothing happens when I click preview.

Another keyword issue that I've mentioned before - when I upload an image with multiple keywords assigned in iPhoto, sometimes they are comma delimited in SmugMug, sometimes not. Thus, I may upload an image with keywords "odonata," "Thailand," "travel," and get all those keywords, or I may have single a SmugMug keyword "odonata Thailand travel."

And another. Sometimes I upload an image with a CAPTION that reads something like "Kids St. Louis 2005," and I may end up in SmugMug with KEYWORDS like "louis" and "2005" but not necessarily "kids" or "st." and I've not uploaded any keywords at all.

And more. Often I will upload images that have neither captions nor keywords. Then I often get a SmugMug-assigned keyword that is the file name of the image, i.e., something like "dscn2337." Not at all helpful!

FWIW I generally use MacDaddy to upload images in order to preserve the captions I've added in iPhoto, only dragging and dropping when I have no captions.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Marion
http://mariondobbs.smugmug.com/

WinsomeWorks

pond damsel wrote: »

Well, I thought I posted a lengthy reply to this last night, but I've had some connection issues and don't see it, so here goes again. There are several points I'd like to make. ......
And another. Sometimes I upload an image with a CAPTION that reads something like "Kids St. Louis 2005," and I may end up in SmugMug with KEYWORDS like "louis" and "2005" but not necessarily "kids" or "st." and I've not uploaded any keywords at all.

And more. Often I will upload images that have neither captions nor keywords. Then I often get a SmugMug-assigned keyword that is the file name of the image, i.e., something like "dscn2337. " Not at all helpful! ......
Marion
http://mariondobbs.smugmug.com/

As to the problems I've highlighted, I meant to mention this to you earlier & forgot: you can go to your control panel, to Settings> Site-Wide Features> Filename Keywording and turn that off if you don't want your captions & filenames automatically turned into keywords. Many of us feel this should have been turned off by default, since we now have a ton of useless keywords on this site that people don't control, but it's not. It's on. You may have to go back & clean up a bunch of keywords after you turn it off. I spent hrs. & hrs cleaning up mine... PITA. As to why some of the words don't become keywords, that's probably because they only contain 2 letters (I don't recall what happens with characters, or combos of letters & characters.) I wanted PA (for Pennsylvania) as a keyword on my photos, but they'll never show up because it's only 2 letters.

I don't know why you can't bulk edit. Are you definitely hitting "Save" after previewing? You also have to preview first, you can't just save. I've also had the problem you had where some strings of words are delimited and some not. I think that was only in the past though when keywording under-went some changes. Currently, I believe phrases (such as New York) delimited by commas in PhotoShop are remaining phrases on Smug and aren't getting automatic commas put in, which I like. The rest of the problems you mentioned... I'm hoping someone else will shed light on them.

WinsomeWorks

Andy wrote: »

I've looked and don't see anything in the original files. I'm at a complete loss as to how _favorite_ gets added unless by the site owner.

Hopefully it can get sorted out. Obviously no one would purposely add a keyword with underlines on both sides of it, and so I would think it must be something to do with how Smug interacts with iPhoto or whatever programs are being used.

pond damsel

Thank you for the ExifTool suggestion. I downloaded it but haven't quite figured out how to use it yet.

Marion
http://mariondobbs.smugmug.com
http://www.mamomi.net

habanr

pond damsel wrote: »

Thank you for the ExifTool suggestion. I downloaded it but haven't quite figured out how to use it yet.

Usage in your case is very simple. Open command line and type e.g.

exiftool.exe investigated_image.jpg

Program lists all metadata in this image. There is also a graphical user interface see http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/foto/exif/exiftoolgui.htm

pond damsel

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

As to the problems I've highlighted, I meant to mention this to you earlier & forgot: you can go to your control panel, to Settings> Site-Wide Features> Filename Keywording and turn that off if you don't want your captions & filenames automatically turned into keywords. Many of us feel this should have been turned off by default, since we now have a ton of useless keywords on this site that people don't control, but it's not. It's on. You may have to go back & clean up a bunch of keywords after you turn it off. I spent hrs. & hrs cleaning up mine... PITA. As to why some of the words don't become keywords, that's probably because they only contain 2 letters (I don't recall what happens with characters, or combos of letters & characters.) I wanted PA (for Pennsylvania) as a keyword on my photos, but they'll never show up because it's only 2 letters.

I don't know why you can't bulk edit. Are you definitely hitting "Save" after previewing? You also have to preview first, you can't just save. I've also had the problem you had where some strings of words are delimited and some not. I think that was only in the past though when keywording under-went some changes. Currently, I believe phrases (such as New York) delimited by commas in PhotoShop are remaining phrases on Smug and aren't getting automatic commas put in, which I like. The rest of the problems you mentioned... I'm hoping someone else will shed light on them.

Thank you for the filename keywording tip. As luck would have it, I had discovered that a few hours earlier. I think in my case, it will be easier and much faster to delete the affected galleries an upload them under the new algorithm, rather than manually deal with hundreds of files in several galleries.

As for batch edit, I can't figure out what's going on with that either. The problem with all this is that I can't find rules; so much of this seems random. I can say that, under no circumstances can I remove the dreaded "_favorite_" in batch edit. It simply isn't recognized when I enter it as the character string to remove. No matter if I as for "all" or "selected images." When I click preview, nothing happens; the word has not been removed. This is also now happening with some other keywords.

As if my headache had not developed into a full scale migraine, I just went to my one smart gallery, which has worked perfectly after I was told that I needed to save the smart rules again every time I uploaded new images that would meet the criterion for inclusion, only to find that all photos had vanished from the gallery.

I begin to sound like a complete idiot or someone with a "possessed" web site. At any rate, there seems to be some major instability on the part of the site or me.

Marion
http://mariondobbs.smugmug.com
http://www.mamomi.net