Keywording Best Practices

galla47

Hey Everyone,

I was thinking about going back and starting to keyword my photos, but I don't know the best place to do this... I've found at least the following:

1) Windows explorer - File properties, summary tab
2) Image cataloging program database (I use ACDSee 8.0)
3) IPTC data
4) Directly on Smugmug (related to #3)

First of all, is there a "best" place to put keywords? Am I missing any?

Secondly, is there a way to sync all of these keyword locatoins? I realize that there really is no way to sync with smugmug short of re-uploading pictures (might break links) or manually adding them (pain in the neck)...

Third, what is the best keyword locaiton for being searchable? I put a unique keyword into #1, 2, and 3 above and tried to search in Yahoo Desktop Search (YDS), and it was unable to find any of them (yes, I re-scanned the files). Yahoo claims it catalogs EXIF data, so I tried putting someting in the EXIF caption (comment), but it couldn't find that either. Which brings up another discussion about where best to caption photos... I'll leave that for another time.

Any thoughts? Words of advice? Is this a worthy topic of discussion?

-Kevin

PS, I did a dGrin search on keyword, and read just about every thread on this. I couldn't find this topic adressed. If I missed it, I appologize.

mercphoto

galla47 wrote:

I was thinking about going back and starting to keyword my photos, but I don't know the best place to do this... I've found at least the following:

1) Windows explorer - File properties, summary tab
2) Image cataloging program database (I use ACDSee 8.0)
3) IPTC data
4) Directly on Smugmug (related to #3)

First of all, is there a "best" place to put keywords? Am I missing any?

I use item number 3 myself. Don't know if that is "best" or not, but my keywords end up in my master file, and therefore propogate to any edits and uploads.

I use Photoshop CS and File Browser to set my keywords, though honestly I'm not thrilled with this. But not so unthrilled that I have attempted iView Media Pro or another solution. Apple's Aperture seems to have a unique and useful solution to the keywording problem.

Secondly, is there a way to sync all of these keyword locatoins?

Best way I know is to start with the keywords in your master file.

I don't have answers to your other questions.