Keywords are important, if you want to find a specific image again. However, there are lots of other metadata fields that provide as much utility, such as the Caption/Description field, the geo-location fields (location, city, state, country, country code), as well as star ratings and color labels. The latter two are not supported as well between applications, but most applications support at least the binary form of the IPTC (Image Information Model/Image Resource Block) when reading/writing information.

Those that are interested in more details on the various types, forms and methods of storing image metadata should visit the Photo Metadata website (http://www.photometadata.org/) that the Stock Artists Alliance trade association put together with an award from the US Library of Congress. In addition to information about the various types of metadata and how they are stored in an image file, there are detailed tutorials on how to use these standards with various applications, like Photoshop, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, Expression Media and more.

David

I do actually export with location tags attached (via Friedl’s Flickr plugin) but do find as ‘keywords’ they’re in the wrong place – even though I seem to do it!

I use Friedl’s GPS magic too – http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/4052/54221276.jpg there’s a bulk option available-and the setting of neighbouring vicinity distances for the same places etc. It’s pretty fab – perhaps you updated without seeing the ‘What’s New’ update.

Hope this is of help to you and others!

I am a big fan of geo-tags. I think that putting my photos into online mapping software is one of the most useful things I can do with metadata. For folks who are curious here is a link to my photo map at Flickr!

Your comment made me wonder though how you are getting the geo-tags and reverse geoencoded data back into Lightroom? I use Jeffery Freidl’s wonderful “GPS-Support: Geoencode Plug-in”. Do you have another method?

Thanks,

David

Again, personally I use a combination of Picasa and Lightroom: I geotag/place on Google maps my photos, then in LR I simply reverse-geoencode this data to pull in area/city/country to the photo. Far simpler than keywording 100s of images etc.

Anyway, just a personal preference- I don’t keyword as much as I should, but for me finding a photo of JKF airport, Niagara Falls, or someone’s wedding is easily done once I’ve geotagged images.

-Scott

Whilst its always good practice to use keywords, its sometimes difficult for those starting out to produce a set list so that everything is tagged in a similar and consistent manner. Because of this I developed a series of keyword list which I’ve also provided for free on my site:

http://www.nickpotter.net/keywords

In total there are now over 1,200 individual keywords in the collection and I occasionally add new categories when my own tagging means I’ve created a sufficiently large list.

Keep up the good posts!

Nick