PL5 keywords, one step closer, many steps still to go

DxO PhotoLab
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Your link displays RDF-code

RDF, Resource Description Framework is a set of tech standard acknowledged by World Wide Web Consortium] (W3C).

RDF is a data model to express metadata but has become important in the museum world and libraries. It´s one of the core technologies in the so called “semantic web” (the smart web). It enables for machines to exchange data automatically. If I for example search for something on my computer the same search can communicate with other systems and add that data and knowledge to the one I got from the main system I was querying. It´s “associative”.

That system also relies on a metadata standard called Dublin Core (which is a set of 10+ data elements the libraries has used a long time. Dublin core is like IPTC an own namespace in XMP. So it´s not IPTC in the bottom of RDF but Dublin Core and a big problem is that a lot of systems don´t do anything with the XMP Dublin Core or for that matter IPTC when it´s leaning on the old IPTC or even EXIF.

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There are a lot of issues that are not solved yet when it comes to integrity and I doubt they will be since we have started in the wrong end with this. Face detection systems are already here aren´t they? When I started with computers in the late seventies and early eighties the integrity issues were really discussed.

Today some still are talking but not that much is happening. Facebook has since long been buildiing sociograms with their users data that even has been leaking to for example the police and the face recognition China has developed is exported under the label “safe Cities” to many countries in Africa is out of control. Israel is under debate after selling spyware for phones to foreign authorities that want to monitor some of their citicens. EU is starting to wake up but still not very much is happening with the integrity issues in practise.

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Just to be clear I believe you are referring to Excire using RDF and not Imatch. Correct?

Have you seen anything that Imatch does to not follow the metadata standards that most of us should be concerned about?

Thanks for all your in depth explanations, although I must admit this stuff sometimes gives me a headache! :slight_smile:

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Yes the link was to a Exire example.

I have never used IMatch but what I can say after engaging myself in the metadata discussion in various treads here at DXO is that we have to test ourselves and analyze what goes where to be sure and we have to figure out working work flows that suit ourselves, and the combination of tools we are using. Sometimes we have to adapt to the limitations in the mix we have settled for and one of these is not to use structured keywords at least with Photolab and PHoto Mechanic Plus. Other combinations will reveal their unique interoperability problems that have to be addressed.

So far we have learned quite a lot since Photolab 5 was released and seen not so few examples of interoperability problems between Photolab and other software people try to integrate with.

… but It´s good with so many metadata standards - everyone can have his own ?!

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Oh, I can’t wait until auto-tagging arrives and saves me from this!

image

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What you can’t see in the two screen captures are the two keywords that have synonyms, too. PA-34 = Seneca, ZK-BJM = ZK-BJM2 (second issue of the registration).

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Good luck with the auto tagging of that structure :slight_smile:

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Apparently yes. So one more reason for me to not rely on keywords. Excire appears to use an proprietary standard (whatever that means, as I’m starting to ask myself “which standard are we talking here about anyway?”). Graphic Converter shows Excire’s keywords. DxO PL doesn’t and I’m not surprised.

Altogether: a lot PL users don’t want DxO to develop a DAM; so here is PhotoMechanic Plus (the other non-Plus version can’t build catalogs) for an “introductory price” of $299.-. That will climb to 399.- after introduction.

Happy keywording…

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That was the update from PM 6 to PM 6 Plus. The full retail introductory costs are 3× higher and the final price after introduction is 4× higher. Together with DxO and the fumbling with two apps I see costs 4× higher than I paid for an Aperture license including all these features plus some more. Very usable DAM, at it’s time also usable RAW converter. Elegantly integrated, I could use images from Aperture directly in the Apple text-proccessor pages and everywhere else. Compared to that comfort and ease of use, PM+FP+VP+PM plus look like some expensive corrugated iron barracks.

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Stenis, that’s the upgrade from PhotoMechanic 5 or 6 to PhotoMechanic Plus. CameraBits treated their existing users better than new users, which is a nice change from Adobe/PhaseOne and to some extent even DxO.

What sold me on PhotoMechanic Plus is that the paid upgrades are few and far between (v6 in 20 years) and that PhotoMechanic Plus is very usable as it is now. PhotoMechanic Plus is solving very different problems (serious cataloguing) than PhotoLab (RAW image development). I’ll be happy to do some metatagging in PhotoLab if it works (headlines/titles did not make it over to WordPress when I ran the first test so early returns are negative user error: I run ImageOptim on my images before uploading. As I was using a new computer, I hadn’t realised ImageOptim by default is set to delete all metadata. When I redid the experiment, including running the images through ImageOptim headline/title and caption/description did turn up in WordPress Media Library just as they do with PhotoMechanic headline/title and caption/description). I don’t expect the DxO photo catalogue features to ever work particularly well (just as Lightroom catalogue is still shaky after all these years).

I didn’t try Excire but it looks it can be useful for many focusing on keywording. I think there will happen a lot in the coming five years when tech like this will get more mainstream and much cheaper.

Excire is pretty much crap in every way (image quality, auto-tagging) but at some point someone will build something decent. Right now is a good time to stay on the sidelines. Putting one’s images through a US-based service (say Google or Microsoft) seems akin to self-harm to me.

When it comes to GPS-data I had a Sony A55 with GPS and the problem with that besides it consumed a lot of battery also was not to trust.

Apart from wrong GPS info, I don’t fancy the idea at all of having personal photos circulating with precise GPS info. It’s probably fine for travel photos while on the move but having all personal photos loaded with GPS data – it’s just asking for trouble.

We can all get 90% of the distance just by keeping photos organised by date in OS folders, using intelligent folder titles and dropping some basic keywords on our albums as we go. We don’t have to run a mini iStockPhotos.com on our personal archives, we just need to be able to find the photos we want when we want.

By quickly adding some keywords as we go when we dig into the archive, we enrich it’s quality in the most important sections as we go.

I’d hate for that archive to be stored in a database. I want the bulk of the info in .xmp sidecars so it can be reindexed properly by the much better systems which will be here in ten or fifteen years even if some of us won’t (our children will).

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Joakim you are right - old mans memory - I payed

|2020-12-20|$229.00|

|1 x Photo Mechanic Plus (New License)|

Aperture is no DAM and that goes for Lightroom, Photolab Capture One and Photo Mecanic Plus too. They are all purely photo centric photo management systems. A real DAM can handle all sorts of files and Digital Asset Management has an indefinite form of that reason.

… but I was extremely happy when I learned that PM Plus was released, because this is so far the only single user metadata centric archive program I have experienced is built as a real Enterprice DAM like for example FotoWare DAM (except the photocentric limitations I have asked them to open up). I have worked a lot with Fotowares client Fotostation that scale from single user to full Enterprise DAM and that software costed 700 $ around 2013. Of that reason some now are using som PM Plus as clients working in Fotoware-environment.

A real Enterprise DAM comes in several different parts and a system like that costs a lot (we are talking about tens of thousands of dollars to start up and a yearly subscription that isn´t easy to swallow). So I feel these 200$ I payed for PM Plus is a piss in the Nile for what we get and as you know there is no need to pay the full prise twice I think I´ll get away with a 100 bucks when I upgrade and there is no forced subscription either. What I also pay for is a multi catalog archive system without a single point of failure like Lightroom and that works with XMP and IPTC (the standards all image archives and metadata maintenance software revolves around these days - including Lightroom and Photolab) and that gives us all the usage flexibility and the possibility to migrate and scale up from the limitations the monolithic catalog concepts has.

We are still talking about IPTC and XMP as standards and there are no problems with that interoperability between Photolab and Photo Mechanic Plus today. All the metadata cirkulation between these application work perfect for me and others as we use them (with the only restriction really not to use structured keywords). I don´t know much about Aperture and Excire but it doesn´t sound good that at least the later is not compatible with Photolab. Proprietary means in this case a vendor specific system that is not compatible with other systems metadata exchange standards. It sounds like Aperture also was an example of that and Apples history is full of this I´m afraid so I would not be surpriced if that software is proprietary too. Unlucky you if you happened to picked two of that kind. You talked earlier about the importance of knowing how the metadata should be used but with proprietary systems you risk sitting there with systems that are fine for your own use but useless if you want even others to be able to see and use it. Systems with no or limited interoperability. That is a good recepie to get completely locked in.

There is no fumbeling going on here as you seem afraid of. It´s a very structured and consistent work flow we now are able to have if we want to scale up from for example Photolab PhotoLibrary and even Lightroom to Photolab and Photo Mechanic or other interoperable alternatives and that is just fantastic that we aren´t locked in anymore!

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Agree!

The way a software like PM works there is not as work to maintain as one can belive. I use 22 element in my maintenace- and template forms and in the template (that I can have as many as i like) and of these 22 in all as many as 17 are either handled by hardcoded text or variables. In this example even some common keywords are used in the first batching. As wrote I have 70 000 images on my computer now and I got my first camera when I was 13 1963. That was 58 years ago. These 70 000 images are already digital but I also have three boxes of 70 x 40 x 30 cm with analog negative film with copies and these ones I haven´t even starting to think of digitizing. Even if select what to digitize it´s a really time consuming job and I do take new pictures too :slight_smile:

Template before basic batching

template
template2054×1980 216 KB

After an initial batching you continue with Descritions and specifik keywords

Other good things is that PM has a metadata element to mark the images as “tagged”. That way it’s also easy to find images that are not tagged. There is a lot of smart tools in PM like variables that are really smart if you have to fork the same data to several elements and it feels it’s a mature software built on 20 years of user experiences.

PM is also ready to get opened up to support all types of files, not just images and video. In Enterprise DAM-systems you can tie XMP to any type of files like Office documents, programming code or what ever. For example some PDF-files are also capabel of embedding XMP and the PDF-types not compatible can get sidecar XMP too. For example you can have as many templates and info forms as you like in PM Plus and that’s a must to be able to match the different needs the different file types and company specific demands put to the system.

Would’t it be really great even for photo entrepreneurs to get some order in their docoment mess? When Photoware was transformed from being just a photo centric system to a real DAM it saved the company by opening completely new markets. A real PM DAM I think could be a very compelling offer to many photographers and small companies and it could offer something Adobe would not be able to match with an integrated software like Lightroom.

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No matter how long your answers, Sten-Åke, I don’t buy it:

Reading this forum, a lot of fumbling IS going on as one person says, DxO’s keywords are according to standard, the other says no, PM’s keywords are standard, and I say keywords are a very limited, yet time-consuming help to find the pictures I’m looking for. I’m not sure if I’d reach the break-even point when the time I invested in keywording would really be noticeably shorter than a normal search.

Be happy with your keywords, to me it’s a lot of work and a extreme brake in working to need keywords to find my own pictures within all these RAW converters.

EDIT: I just recalled some numbers of you, like 70k of pictures and 27k of them got keywords. Meaning 43k need some work? [/edit]

As I already guessed, you know nothing about Aperture, sorry to be so blunt. In Aperture I have access to all music of iTunes (yes, the “old” iTunes). Slide show with music and a couple of transitions? No problem. Organizing images on a light-table? Sure. Creating a web gallery? Why not.

Intelligent albums, projects? Well, just because DxO and PM (for 400$ !!!) are missing that feature, doesn’t mean, old Aperture has to miss it, too.

I just don’t want to waste endless time with keywording because the so-called “Fotothek” is programmed to be incapable of building a useable library which deserves the name. And I’m really, really fed up with guys who think their own library folders with some lonesome keywords are the knee of the bee and so superior, yet have no clue about how it could be done better. That’s fine, I also don’t know better about the majority of things. And after all, it’s only a piece of software.

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If I am understanding you correctly everything is fine with PL5 Keywording as long as it is ‘Flat’, not Structured or Hierarchical in the DAM that sends the photos to PL5. I would think that for a lot of people that would be a BIG limitation. I have been close to buying IMatch and setting it up with hierarchical keywording. Now I may hold off. (Please excuse me if I have it totally wrong - I am quite new to this stuff.)

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Joakim, you don´t need to buy anything at all but sooner or later your Aperture will cease to be supported and didn´t you self say that they don´t support it or sell it anymore because it´s discontinued?? Howcome when so many seems to like it??

That day, if not earlier, when Apperture isn´t compatible any longer with a new Apple OS, you will have to migrate. Good luck with that with your proprietary systems! We can update the discussion then. If you don´t think that will happen it´s just to zoom in on the pretty infected discussions around all problems people seems to have had to adapt to the fact that Apples new M1-architecture have made both some hardware and software incompatible. Some of Apples Sony photographers seems to have got really upset when they couldn´t update their cameras firmwares anymore because Sonys installation program didn´t work anymore. That´s just one of the small ones.

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That´s right so this is something they have to sort out and they also have to make an interface to make it possible to import structured keywordlists exported from for example Lightroom.

I started with a structured keyword vocabulary in PM Plus both soon dropped it because that vocabulary didn´t at all cover the type of material I have and to create these structures by my self I could not justify. That´s why I use flat keyword lists and that was I god choise for me since the structured ones gave me some dataexchange issues I didn´t get with the flat system. To use the flat keywords in PM Plus I also found was way faster and simpler. To maintain structured keywords yourselves can be pretty demanding too.

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No the correct numbers are 25 000 that are ready and 45 000 that are not prepared at all. 27 000 is the number of historical images the City Museum of Stockholm has.

Only the RAW-files are the masters if there are RAW-files, så derivates gets metadata correctly automatically when the derivates are exported after the RAW has been postprocessed by Photolab.

The keywords gives me a possibility to search theme oriented and that is a dimension you never can achive without proper keywording. The contact info is vital when my images starts to floats around on the net and so is copyright info and license conditions. Of that reason I also add Creative Commons Code “BY”. If you don´t add relevant metadata some consumers will not be able to use the images because they like to know the conditions tied to the images before they do.

My contact info gave an author writing a book about the Saur-revolution in Afghanistan a possibility to get into contact with me after seeing the images on the net and I could connect him with a swedish author that had written a book about the same topic. Just to give you one good example. He was very interested in some of the images I took during that day and the days after. Images without a context are of significant less interest for many image consumers.

Thats why also Headline, Caption/Desciption or maybe Comment is very important metadata elements. Metadata that isn´t compatible with XMP- and IPTC-standard today or written in your local language is in reality useless for anyone exept the one writing it. … and if it´s landlocked in a proprietary system not supporting XMP as a mean of migration you are bound to get into migration problems sooner or later.

… but if you don´t have needs I have, it might work perfectly fine for you to use your proprietary old applications like Apperture and even Excire as long as you can and I´m sure you will save a lot of money too but it´s ashame that you can´t see the keywords in Photolab … but if you are OK seeing them only in Excire I guess that´s fine too. Who needs interoperability - really??

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Until DXO can sort out their import/export interface issues there is what would seem to be a very simple solution and one that has been requested. That is provide a setting that if enabled would prevent PL5 from touching any keywords. For the user all keywording would be done in their DAM either before or after being in PL5. This would then follow the logical rule of only one software deals with keywording.

I understand that for you the structured keywording was not workable because of your required vocabulary. It seems though that many people do successfully use it and it is their preferred method. PL should not prevent them from that choice.

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Not only the cameras :grin: I have a card reader here, on purpose not from Sony but a company called ProGrade. It’s meant for CFExpress cards and the producer promised compatibility with XQD, after downloading and installing a? Right, Sony-driver :laughing: Which of course doesn’t work anymore after updating to Mac OS 11.5 (12. something is the newest) Fantastic thing of ProGrade and Sony, thunderbolt III device is sold, customer won’t come back but money is in the bank :money_mouth_face: so what?

And you’re sure you mentioned every hiccup Windows ever had? :smirk: driver issues, incompatibility and suddenly no longer working printers are no exclusivity of a company with bitten apple as logo :grin:

Let’s skip the Aperture discussion, that battle-ship has sailed when you were still young and in spy-ware business :relaxed: and I even younger. Just show me the “other RAW-converter” able to read only your .dpo-files So, if DxO goes out of business tomorrow you just need to keep a machine running with the last app, else you loose all edits. Same what I do with my 10 year old iMac. Migration of a library, which by the way are ALL proprietary, be it LR, C1, DxO or what else, is never a mind-melting amusement. Just forget the “amusement” part… DxO PL5 could not even take over the “projects” of PL4, I first had to make a backup of the PL4 database and import it into PL5, as these two apps apparently don’t know much about each other (same with the tool panels :rofl: )

What’s the point in migration to a much weaker product, except seeing what other apps are missing? And I’m not talking about simple hierarchical keywording according to whatever standard.

I understood your points for keywords very well. I just don’t see my use-case for them if the image catalog gives me better options to find and access my images, for my use (and not for public display). I’m not working for consumers, my images are my hobby mostly and the ones I use for professional purpose in my job are well organized with a couple of more metadata than only keywords. Also, we can agree on that your contact found the image because of it’s title and keywords - but that would not mean a lot if the image itself would not haven been of good quality. That was a compliment for you, just in case…

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This hierarchical keywording mess is of Adobe’s creation. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish style participation. DxO doesn’t owe anyone anything in regards to keywords. That said, there should be a way for PhotoLab to not touch metadata at all. I believe just disabling the metadata palette is enough.

Granular controls about which metadata is touchable and which is not will certainly complicate the preferences. As a software developer, I’ve said yes too many times and our software now has too many preferences. Each argument seemed okay at the time but I’ve got some regrets now. It’s not the end of the world as we service a professional market and have a loyal following as our player does allow more complex configurations.

The winning hand here would be for DxO to accept and work in multiple hierarchical keyword formats: Adobe and PhotoMechanic for example. There should probably be a preference to choose which structure, though the really cool touch would be for PhotoLab to recognise the keyword structure and slip into that dialect for working on that image.

It’s not that easy though as those hierarchical keyword lists have to be imported to be used properly. Next issue is what happens if the photographer has already screwed up the metadata badly enough to have both flat keywords and Adobe hierarchical keywords or even worse Adobe hierarchical keywords AND PhotoMechanic structured keywords. Which takes precedence?

Which goes back to a preference to choose one or the other keyword structure and stick to it for all the photos processed in PhotoLab.

The smart photographer sees these hierarchical keyword conflicts and nightmares and runs in the other direction, using just flat keywords. Hierarchical keywords are really an agency thing where there are full time minions whose only job is to fiddle around with keywords.

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Thanks for sharing your simple template. My point about just adding the metadata in PhotoLab 5 still applies though. Since 17 of the fields are semi-standard it wouldn’t be that much more trouble to add that metadata to a set in PhotoLab 5 and then go and add the Headline/Title, Caption/Description and keywords image by image.

Now that you do have a workflow which has helped you through tens of thousands of photos, I can definitely understand why you wouldn’t want to change it.

Aperture was a great start on photo library software. Like so many Apple projects, Apple took our money and just abandoned the software. Final Cut Studio (v7 of FCP) was a great piece of software which spent seven years in barely working condition after Apple pulled the plug for FCPX when all editors wanted was a better render engine under the same interface. If Apple had wanted to add their magic magnetic timeline as an additional view, no problem. But no Apple blew up the workflow of thousands of pro studios around the world (mine included), sending editors through years of struggling with Premiere, unrealised hope for DaVinci Resolve (a badly coded hardware hog until recently). Finally FCPX is looking better and Blackmagic Resolve performs reasonably on off-the-shelf hardware. Ironically, in the end Apple did bring back the non-magnetic timeline for the many editors who prefer to work with a building block style timeline (it took Apple ten miserable years to admit their mistake).

My point is that anyone hoping or counting on anything except a kick in the stomach from Apple is either naive or a fool. Apple’s blessing is that all their lives they’ve been competing with Microsoft, a talentless lot who destroy good software and destroy any interface with which they come in touch.

Even in its best days (and Aperture was my favourite editor/DAM for many years, with a full price purchase and two full price upgrades under my belt – I wasn’t one of the latecomers who got Aperture 3 almost for free), Aperture behaved absolutely horribly with XMP and other programs. Everything was written just a little bit different to almost guarantee incompatibility. Making Aperture reliably write out to .xmp files was a constant headache.

This nostalgia for Aperture is misplaced. We should judge Aperture for what it was not what it could have become.

What’s great about your systems Stenis is that you don’t allow the files to go into a database and retain all the metadata in .xmp sidecars. In thirty years or fifty years, there will be software out there which will read those .xmp sidecars. What’s important to us is that PhotoLab follows the PhotoMechanic model of compatible and relatively standards compliant .xmp metadata and not slip into the Aperture/Lightroom game of trying to break metadata for their own advantage.

With honest and experienced referees like you on the pitch, it makes a lot harder for DxO to pull a fast one here (or more charitably, accidentally code something non-compliant).

Note: I’ve corrected my original note about WordPress compatibility with PhotoLab 5 headline/title and caption/description. So far perfect compatibility. At the moment, PhotoLab 5 metadata editor is looking like a drop-in replacement for PhotoMechanic metadata editing for my purposes (captioning and keywording sport photos for publishing online with the same captions and titles).