Do backups provided retain IPTC data?

Stustaff

If I order a backup of my images how are they sent? yes on DVD in the post, but on the disc.. Are they in folders matching my gallery structure? are they all in one big folder? will my IPTC dta still be attatched? etc

Ta

mpmcleod

Stustaff wrote:

If I order a backup of my images how are they sent? yes on DVD in the post, but on the disc.. Are they in folders matching my gallery structure? are they all in one big folder? will my IPTC dta still be attatched? etc

Ta

http://www.smugmug.com/prints/backup.mg

What I have been told is that the original images, exactly as they were when uploaded, are preserved. The only difference would be the name of the file will have a number prefix cooresponding to the photo id on SM. To my knowledge you will not preserve the keywords, captions or anything else that is specific to your SM pages (e.g. not encoded directly in the files). I assume an official SM will correct me if I am wrong.

Ben

mpmcleod wrote:

http://www.smugmug.com/prints/backup.mg

What I have been told is that the original images, exactly as they were when uploaded, are preserved. The only difference would be the name of the file will have a number prefix cooresponding to the photo id on SM. To my knowledge you will not preserve the keywords, captions or anything else that is specific to your SM pages (e.g. not encoded directly in the files). I assume an official SM will correct me if I am wrong.

this is correct. We don't write to IPTC (for fear of overwriting data) on SmugMug, so anything you added before uploading to the site is preserved, but not captions/keywords/geography added on the site.

sean000

Re: Do backups provided retain IPTC data?

Ben wrote:

this is correct. We don't write to IPTC (for fear of overwriting data) on SmugMug, so anything you added before uploading to the site is preserved, but not captions/keywords/geography added on the site.

I can understand not-wanting to overwrite data. Perhaps you could export the file names, keywords, captions, etc. to one big text file. At the very least that would make it easier to manually rebuild the keyword structure using a local image management utility (like IMatch). If it is in some kind of standard database or XML format, it might even be possible to import this data into the IPTC Exif data for the images using a program like IMatch. Then again, as an IT support person, I can understand why you wouldn't want to open up that can o' worms. You'd get all kinds of people calling asking how they can get other programs to import the data.

I try to go the opposite route: I can embed keywords into the IPTC fields locally and Smugmug will recognize them; but then I always end up making keyword adjustments on Smugmug's site. I've found I like to use fewer keywords online anyway. So many of my local files are already tagged, but it would be nice to have an export of the Smugmug data as well.


Sean (who is still working on getting his entire family signed up so we can have our own little Smugmug community).

Andy

sean000 wrote:

I can understand not-wanting to overwrite data. Perhaps you could export the file names, keywords, captions, etc. to one big text file. At the very least that would make it easier to manually rebuild the keyword structure using a local image management utility (like IMatch). If it is in some kind of standard database or XML format, it might even be possible to import this data into the IPTC Exif data for the images using a program like IMatch. Then again, as an IT support person, I can understand why you wouldn't want to open up that can o' worms. You'd get all kinds of people calling asking how they can get other programs to import the data.

I try to go the opposite route: I can embed keywords into the IPTC fields locally and Smugmug will recognize them; but then I always end up making keyword adjustments on Smugmug's site. I've found I like to use fewer keywords online anyway. So many of my local files are already tagged, but it would be nice to have an export of the Smugmug data as well.


Sean (who is still working on getting his entire family signed up so we can have our own little Smugmug community).

Thanks for posting, Sean and WELCOME to Dgrin