Hi, all.
I have a lot of personal photos in JPG format. About 20000-30000 photos.
I'm not a professional photographer. This are my family and friends photos over the years.
Also I scanned thousands of old photos from my father - 30-40 years old photos.
All the photos of course are classified in some folder structure.
But this is not enough - I want to tag my photos with my keywords to be able to filter them.
So I started to search for proper software to do that task.
After testing more than 20 tools (paid or free) I found out that there is no program to satisfy me.
What problems I encountered:
1. I want to use only keywords. All programs works with ALL metadata.
But I need only keywords, I don't need all other 1000 metadata fields when I want to tag my photos.
2. I want quickly do copy/paste keywords from photo to photo. I want to drag and drop keywords from the list or from one photo to another.
I want to tag many photos with several keywords at once. I want to be able to quickly tag 1000 pictures with 10000 keywords in one day.
Most of existing software offer to select photo one by one and then enter your keywords.
And do this again on the second photo - too slow, too many repetitive work.
3. Language problem. Most of existing software assume that only language in the world is English.
And store keyword not in utf-8 but in Latin codepage. I want to tag my photos using several different languages.
I want to be able to have in one photo keywords in several different languages at once.
4. Metadata problem. I want keywords to be stored in proper place - in IPTC->"Keywords" metadata tag.
But some software "just in case" store keywords not only in IPTC->"Keywords" but in several different places - in captions, description or whatever else.
Even in EXIF section instead in IPTC section - "just to be sure".
5. Chars problem. Many of existing software says: "put your keywords here delimited by commas"
But what if I want to have a comma in the keyword itself? I want to use commas, quotes and all possible chars in my keywords.
For example want to have (one) keyword: ["abc" - this is a,b,c]
6. Database problem. Some programs use database to store which keywords to which photos belong.
I don't like this. I want keywords to be stored directly in JPG file. If I lost database - I lost my keywords. In JPG keywords stays forever.
I cannot copy my photos on other computer without this database. I want to save my photos for next 10-20-30 years.
Will this program exist after so many years? No. The keywords must be in JPG only.
7. Internet problem. Many programs use internet connection to work with my pictures. Why?
I don't want to save my photos in "clouds". Will this "cloud" exist after 10-20 year?
If I need "cloud" backup I can do that with my photos as with any other files. This is not a job for photo-program.
8. Clarity. I want to SEE my keywords. I don't want to select one by one photos to see what keywords they contain.
I want to see grid of 10x10 photo thumbnails and want to see all existing keywords next to photos - at a glance.
9. I want to have statistic of my keywords. How many files and keywords? How often keywords are used?
10. Filter problem. I want to filter by part of keywords. Not only by whole keyword.
If I have 3 keywords "white cat", "black cat" and "yellow cat" - I want to filter by "cat" and want to get all 3 keywords.
11. Rich functionality problem. When I want to tag my photos I want to tag my photos - nothing else.
I don't want to edit, rotate, cut, crop, color adjust or whatever picture stuff.
To do this there is a lot of other good software - this is not a job for keywords program.
12. Many other small details. Set font size for example (I have glasses). Etc, etc...
Because of this I decided to create my own program. So I created JpgKeywords program - a program that meets my needs.
And of course JpgKeywords uses the great ExifTool to manipulate keywords.
Program is written in Delphi and works for Windows only.
I hope that JpgKeywords.exe can be helpful for many people.
Let me know what you think.
Program site is
https://eedsoft.com/ (https://eedsoft.com/)
Looks good. Thanks for the post.
- Phil
Doesn't anyone need keywords for his photos?
I was hoping for some feedback.
Quote from: eed on September 27, 2020, 07:06:38 AM
Doesn't anyone need keywords for his photos?
I was hoping for some feedback.
I'm sure you program will be useful to many people, but in my case, it wouldn't fit in with my (stupidly complex) workflow. I use a combination of programs and scripts to insert data and something that just dealt with keywords wouldn't be enough for me. And for visualizing the keyword data (as well as other metadata), IMatch 5 does an excellent job.
I want to update my topic with info that new version of JpgKeywords is released with new improvements.
see
https://eedsoft.com/history/ (https://eedsoft.com/history/)
demo video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGamEtV69E&feature=emb_logo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGamEtV69E&feature=emb_logo)
Also I want to answer to:
"I use a combination of programs and scripts to insert data and something that just dealt with keywords wouldn't be enough for me."
Usually when working with photos a set of programs are used, not only one universal program, because there is no "universal" program.
And JpgKeywords can be a part of program set used to work with photos.
I think a tool should only do one thing, but do it well.
For example exiftool.exe does not have GUI and this is good. Exiftool.exe does its work perfectly - deal with metadata. GUI is not work for exiftool.exe.
There can be many GUI shell programs that provide GUI over exiftool. And their job is to provide comfortable GUI - not to extract metadata from files.
So the JpgKeywords job is to provide comfortable and quick way work with keywords in JPG files.
JpgKeywords does only this, but does it well (at least I haven't seen a more convenient keywords editing program).
I think that JpgKeywords will be most useful to tag personal photo collections.