Categories automatically in EE

[c_by_sinus]

Hi Pekka and others,
I discussed yesterday with 4 people about EE.
All think, this is the best system to put images online.

But all use also some Image-Management-tools.
One uses Portfolio, one Thumbs and two of us (including me) uses IMatch.
Every system has of course its own "category-system".
For example we at IMatch can create Categories and then put an image in one or more categories.

Now, you with your great EE has the same thing.
Now, when I want upload images into EE, I must create first also some categories and then I must "say" for every image, in what categories it should go.

The best thing would be of course, if EE would support for example IMatch and would take the categories from there.
But I know, or I guess, this is not possible without a huge effort for all the image-management-systems.

But your categories and all images with categories from other systems could have ONE "reference": IPTC.

Therefore I would ask you: Would it not be interesting, that those images, what comes with categories in iptc (additional categories) that they would "flow" into your EE - categories?

The best thing would be even, that EE would look, ah, this category we have here already, I put this images there. And this images has a category, what is not in EE, ok, so I create this category new and put this image there.

If this would be possible, from my point of view, all users, who uses iptc, this would be a great time-safer!
And thogether with your iptc-support now (THANKS, works great now), a user must only put images in categories once.

And users without iptc-images? They could work of course like now, create categories and then put images into categories.

When you look at all the image-management - tools out there, you will see (and have already, I guess), that iptc is a serious standard.
Most used fields are "headline" and "description" (the first (or both) are often under an image).
Followed by "Supplemental category" and "keywords".

You have done now a lot for iptc, my proposal is, why not use the categories from iptc in your EE (if technically possible)?

If this would be possible, I could upload my 2000 images quite fast, because all are iptc and EE does support keywords and description and more for searching, great, and if EE would also support my categories, wow, this would be a really cool thing.

Thanks for thinking (I wrote once about this, but only in once sentence).

Best wishes
Markus

[Pekka]

I've had these category features on my todo list fro a while:

- read IPTC categories (done already) and do a "guess category" which works like "guess location" now which adds location if it is not found on database.
This will be in 1.5 release candidate.

- make a powertool which lets you add or remove certain category from selection of photos.

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IPTC has two kinds of categories: category (only one) and "supplemental" categeories (one or many). A way to handle these must be decided. One way is to combine these. If you have on IPTC

Category: Music
Supplemental categories: classical, violin, solo, pizzicato

EE would add (and make if it does not exist) to category

MUSIC

and add (and make if it does not exist) to categories

MUSIC: classical
MUSIC: violin
MUSIC: solo
MUSIC: pizzicato

If there were no supplemental categories then category MUSIC would be used. The category list would be pretty long, but at the same time easy to use (one click and you're there).

Above solution would be most likely easiest for me because basically thos would not need any new database code.

Adding a second menu for supplemental categories could also be possible (and menu where you would see only those supplemental categories that the database has for displayed photos under current main category). This method would not give an overview of available categories.

I would not like to go into nested option menus yet, because all good solutions are commercial (need to buy a bulk licence if I'd share them with EE) and I do not know DHTML like PHP so that I could make cross-browser solution in reasonable time.

Of course some super-duper-power search can be made in later EE's to let you select number of categories and keywords etc. but that's not for 1.5 (now there's already too many new features for one version :) )

[c_by_sinus]

Hi Pekka,
Thanks a lot for answer!
You are right, iptc has 2 categories-types.
But the "Category", what we can only put in one, is limited on only 3 numbers/strings.

That is why -from my point of view- these type of category is not used a lot (mostly only in VERY big agencies), most users, who I know, do only use "additional categories".

Because we can choose only 3 letters with this type, the second type "additional categories" is far more used and important.
Here we can add several categories, and far more letters (32).

Therefore your example with music you could only enter an abreviation like "Mus" or "msk" or something like this, therefore a lot of users would choose to enter in the "additional categories" for example:

-Music
-Entertainment
-lifestyle

and enter the other words like

-classical
-violin
-solo
-pizzicato

in the keywords.

Because then a user could choose to look in the "additonal category" ALL music-images.
And when he wants to see only classical, then he could enter the keyword "classical".

Of course there are different use of the iptc, but as far as I can see, something like this is most used.

That is why I would not combine these two category-types, or, that the user would have a choice, for example: combine OR only Category OR only Additional categories.

When you ask me, I would be more than happy, if I could "let flow" all my "additional categories", sometimes called "supplemental categories", into the ee-system.

I thank you a lot, that you are thinking about it.

Markus