Automatic labeling of images with metadata info

zubenelgenubi · February 15, 2016

Just wanted to add my voice to the many users who have previously requested an easy way to annotate image displays in galleries with image info (ESPECIALLY "date taken"). Yes, the user can invoke an "image info" button manually. But many of us want to create galleries where this info is automatically displayed for each image, as part of an extended caption. An obvious example would images in a blog gallery - it should be trivial for us to include the date taken (or other metadata) into the title, caption, or another label field for galleries like this.

I am honestly mystified by the lack of progress on this request. It is clear that many users would like it, and I just can't imagine it being technically difficult to implement. (The "Info" button proves that the image info is not too deeply or obscurely buried in smugmug's system. I strongly suspect that there might even already be some undocumented CSS code that could be used to retrieve and display it?)

Anything smugmug can do to help us users add image info labels to our galleries would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,

- Mark

Ferguson · February 15, 2016

My apologies I had not noticed the request but I do have a question - why not just include that information in the caption in the metadata when uploaded?

Or are you suggesting some kind of more structured overlay and not just a caption?

HaraldE · February 16, 2016

zubenelgenubi wrote: »

Just wanted to add my voice to the many users who have previously requested an easy way to annotate image displays in galleries with image info (ESPECIALLY "date taken"). Yes, the user can invoke an "image info" button manually. But many of us want to create galleries where this info is automatically displayed for each image, as part of an extended caption. An obvious example would images in a blog gallery - it should be trivial for us to include the date taken (or other metadata) into the title, caption, or another label field for galleries like this.

I am honestly mystified by the lack of progress on this request. It is clear that many users would like it, and I just can't imagine it being technically difficult to implement. (The "Info" button proves that the image info is not too deeply or obscurely buried in smugmug's system. I strongly suspect that there might even already be some undocumented CSS code that could be used to retrieve and display it?)

Anything smugmug can do to help us users add image info labels to our galleries would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,

- Mark

+1 Totally agree, Harald

pilotdave · February 16, 2016

zubenelgenubi wrote: »

Just wanted to add my voice to the many users who have previously requested an easy way to annotate image displays in galleries with image info (ESPECIALLY "date taken"). Yes, the user can invoke an "image info" button manually. But many of us want to create galleries where this info is automatically displayed for each image, as part of an extended caption. An obvious example would images in a blog gallery - it should be trivial for us to include the date taken (or other metadata) into the title, caption, or another label field for galleries like this.

I am honestly mystified by the lack of progress on this request. It is clear that many users would like it, and I just can't imagine it being technically difficult to implement. (The "Info" button proves that the image info is not too deeply or obscurely buried in smugmug's system. I strongly suspect that there might even already be some undocumented CSS code that could be used to retrieve and display it?)

Anything smugmug can do to help us users add image info labels to our galleries would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,

- Mark

I agree with you completely, but I don't see smugmug heading anywhere near that direction. Functionality absolutely takes a back seat to looks and simplification. But I still want metadata in my captions (filenames, which include date taken). Here's what I end up with:

So here's how I do it. First, I switched to doing my captions in lightroom. My method requires lightroom, but you can still edit captions in smugmug after adding the filename (or any other metadata) to the caption. Another note here is that I'm not using title fields at all... if I was starting from scratch, I'd probably put my captions in the title field and my filenames or other metadata in the caption field. It would be easier that way. But since I have thousands of images on smugmug from before they offered a title field, I decided to just not use it at all (for now).

The metadata gets added to the caption using a lightroom plugin called LR/Transporter (http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrtransporter.php). It's donationware... you pay whatever you want for it. Here's what it looks like (inside of lightroom):

The complete text in there is: {caption} <br><span class="filename" style="font-size:14px">{fileNameNoExtension}</span>

So what that does is takes whatever is in your caption field, then adds the filename with no extension (.jpg removed) inside of some html that allows you to style it as you wish and add that little photo icon.

The accompanying CSS (in all galleries):

span.filename:before {
font-family: 'SmugMug Icon Font Small';
font-size: 24px;
content: '\e28d ';
}

It works fine in smugmug style galleries, the lightbox, and on mobile.

I went another step and have a different version for videos that looks like this:

Just a different class name and different icon called out in the CSS. I don't upload a ton of videos so I just edit those captions manually within smugmug.

If you have lightroom, this is a really easy way to get metadata into your captions. LR/Transporter can basically modify any metadata field with any other metadata and anything else you want, so it's pretty powerful and flexible. Once you make a template in LR/Transporter and add the necessary CSS to your site, it only takes a few clicks to get metadata into your captions. But if you don't already use lightroom, it'll require a complete change to your workflow.

Dave

Ferguson · February 16, 2016

pilotdave wrote: »

But I still want metadata in my captions (filenames, which include date taken). Here's what I end up with

Thank you for the example, I understand now. I suspect there are other tools that can do that as well as lightroom (e.g. photo mechanic can do almost anything with metadata based on other metadata and also does a smugmug upload).

But I see what you mean. The biggest issue I see with this kind of kludged solution is the caption then becomes less than ideal for other programs (e.g. local browsers). I also wonder if it works correctly in Smugmug's own tools like the ios/android app?

But regardless, thanks for the example for context. I personally do not care about this, but I can certainly see why people would.

pilotdave · February 16, 2016

Ferguson wrote: »

Thank you for the example, I understand now. I suspect there are other tools that can do that as well as lightroom (e.g. photo mechanic can do almost anything with metadata based on other metadata and also does a smugmug upload).

But I see what you mean. The biggest issue I see with this kind of kludged solution is the caption then becomes less than ideal for other programs (e.g. local browsers). I also wonder if it works correctly in Smugmug's own tools like the ios/android app?

But regardless, thanks for the example for context. I personally do not care about this, but I can certainly see why people would.

I guess I should have said that I want my filenames displayed. I'd rather they not be in the captions at all. But this was the only way I know of to display them. And yep, I'm sure there are plenty of other tools that can do this about the same way.

Dave

zubenelgenubi · February 16, 2016

Thanks folks (Ferguson, HaraldE, pilotdave) for the quick suggestions, which I greatly appreciate. But, as you've already commented, adding this info to the title or caption fields is a kludge at best. Here's three reasons why I would like smugmug to offer a "proper" solution:

1. Fields like title and caption have clearly defined logical purposes and, ideally, they should be used only for those purposes. Co-mingling captions with other metadata quickly becomes impractical to undo once you have a large archive of images (as you've already noted.) So yes, you can insert "date taken" into the captions using tools like lightroom. But then you're stuck with that format. What if you subsequently want to create a new gallery style with captions, but for which you really don't want users to see the other metadata? There is no way back. By keeping the information in logically separate places you can (if you have access to the metadata) create new formats dynamically and easily at any time. This is how computer data is supposed to work.

2. It would really be best if we have a "native" smugmug solution that works for all users. For example, I personally don't use lightroom; I use Capture One Pro instead. I'm guessing Capture One could do something similar with the metadata to pilotdave's clever LR/Transporter solution, but it would require separate re-invention of the wheel. A native smugmug solution would work the same for everyone.

3. I just don't see a need to force us to undertake additional custom workflow steps during uploading (even if a lot of it can be automated if you have the right software.) Even without any extra steps on our part the metadata already do get propagated into smugmug's system - so why not give us a native, supported way to access it? I'm quite comfortable adding a bit of CSS to pages in order to display the data and, as I said in my original post, I strongly suspect that there might already be a way to do this. But, with the interface undocumented, it's hard to discover if this is true. (I even tried guessing some code that I thought might work, based on elements I could see on existing pages. But so far I haven't found anything that is successful.)

Of course I have no idea how smugmug stores and retrieves these data elements. However, based on my experience elsewhere, I would be very surprised if there are any major technical difficulties associated with allowing us to access the metadata for ourselves on our pages. I know there's lots of things for the smugmug team to work on - but this seems like a very obvious and desirable feature that probably wouldn't take much work.

- Mark

pilotdave · February 16, 2016

zubenelgenubi wrote: »

Thanks folks (Ferguson, HaraldE, pilotdave) for the quick suggestions, which I greatly appreciate. But, as you've already commented, adding this info to the title or caption fields is a kludge at best. Here's three reasons why I would like smugmug to offer a "proper" solution:

1. Fields like title and caption have clearly defined logical purposes and, ideally, they should be used only for those purposes. Co-mingling captions with other metadata quickly becomes impractical to undo once you have a large archive of images (as you've already noted.) So yes, you can insert "date taken" into the captions using tools like lightroom. But then you're stuck with that format. What if you subsequently want to create a new gallery style with captions, but for which you really don't want users to see the other metadata? There is no way back. By keeping the information in logically separate places you can (if you have access to the metadata) create new formats dynamically and easily at any time. This is how computer data is supposed to work.

2. It would really be best if we have a "native" smugmug solution that works for all users. For example, I personally don't use lightroom; I use Capture One Pro instead. I'm guessing Capture One could do something similar with the metadata to pilotdave's clever LR/Transporter solution, but it would require separate re-invention of the wheel. A native smugmug solution would work the same for everyone.

3. I just don't see a need to force us to undertake additional custom workflow steps during uploading (even if a lot of it can be automated if you have the right software.) Even without any extra steps on our part the metadata already do get propagated into smugmug's system - so why not give us a native, supported way to access it? I'm quite comfortable adding a bit of CSS to pages in order to display the data and, as I said in my original post, I strongly suspect that there might already be a way to do this. But, with the interface undocumented, it's hard to discover if this is true. (I even tried guessing some code that I thought might work, based on elements I could see on existing pages. But so far I haven't found anything that is successful.)

Of course I have no idea how smugmug stores and retrieves these data elements. However, based on my experience elsewhere, I would be very surprised if there are any major technical difficulties associated with allowing us to access the metadata for ourselves on our pages. I know there's lots of things for the smugmug team to work on - but this seems like a very obvious and desirable feature that probably wouldn't take much work.

- Mark

Agree with it all. You'll be asked to drop your idea into the bottomless pit: http://feedback.smugmug.com/.

Dave

leftquark · February 17, 2016

Great suggestion and discussion here everyone. We do have plans to add additional gallery styles in the future, and one in which additional photo information is available is certain within the realm of possibilities.

zubenelgenubi · February 17, 2016

Leftquark - Thanks for this update; it sounds very encouraging. If something like this is implemented, I would urge the development team to try to expose the metadata in such a way that it's accessible in *any* gallery style, not just in a subset of new ones. My original motivation for starting this thread is that I simply wanted to add "date taken" labels to the photos in my blog gallery:

https://zubenelgenubi.smugmug.com/Blog/

Obviously this (and indeed any other gallery currently on smugmug) is based off one of the existing gallery styles. If the metadata capability is restricted solely to new styles then no existing gallery could be modified to include metadata labels by applying just a small tweak. Instead we'd have to completely change the gallery style, which would likely be too much of a change for photographers who have worked hard to create a particular visual style for their galleries. Rather, I at least would prefer to just insert a few lines of CSS to my existing setup, to add date labels without fundamentally changing the overall look. New (and I suppose even existing) styles could of course be upgraded to include a high-level non-CSS interface for displaying metadata, perhaps by associating a new metadata content block with the style's image display. But only a CSS based technique would allow for deep customization.

Thanks,

- Mark

HaraldE · February 17, 2016

leftquark wrote: »

Great suggestion and discussion here everyone. We do have plans to add additional gallery styles in the future, and one in which additional photo information is available is certain within the realm of possibilities.

Good ... don't hesitate, we would very much like a way to display things like Date Taken and Description and some other metadata. If you give us a hint of your planned format then we could give you much better feedback.

When it comes down to date info I would also suggest we have a way to format the value. Quite often you see formating info like "dd Mmm yyyy" to say you want the date to display like "17 Feb 2016". There are similar notations for time.

Very much looking forward to see this implemented. And I do hope it will be valid also for existing Galleries.

Best regards, Harald

Automatic labeling of images with metadata info

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