Managing metadata

[vintageman]

I've been taking digital photos since the early noughties and have now amassed some 50,000.
Most have had pp in various ages of lightroom up to 6.4(with a few other trials of other sw) and although I have tried ,the categorisation and keywording is now either inconsistent or missing.
Recently I've found that the tools in Affinity photo are superior to those in LR and have decided its time to update my workflow and get my cataloging into a more useful state.
With regard to the latter I've built a hierarchical 2800 line keyword tree as a text file.
However I'm now stuck as I can't find any software that will
(i) import the keywords
(ii)embed XMP data in the exported jpegs
(iii) Save search results as a collection in a folder or similar

Any suggestions or examples of a way forward gratefully received

 

[Harlequin565]

I only have LR I'm afraid. But if Affinity has a way to import a LR catalogue you could do all the keywording in LR then import the catalogue into Affinity? Failing that, do steps 1 & 2 below and when all the keywords are written to the jpeg they will (presumably) appear when you import them into Affinity.

In Lightroom...
1. Import your keywords with Metadata>Import Keywords
2. Once you've done your keywording you can save the xmp data into the jpeg (again in Lightroom) with a Select All (CTRL+A) and Metadata>Save Metadata To File (CTRL+S)
3. Your third thing is easy to do in LR (Create a new collection, find your images with search, drag into new collection), but I don't think Collections work when you export a catalogue to another software. You can also do Smart Collections which will pull images based on your shiny new keyword system and will update the collections as you add new images with those keywords, but that's beyond the scope of your question.

The big issue is of course, the actual task of keywording everything. Again, I used Smart collections for this. Happy to outline it here if you want, but that wasn't your question...

Sadly no other software comes close to Lightroom for Digital Asset Management. I believe that if you sign up for the Adobe CC 30 day trial then let it lapse, Lightroom continues to work as an Asset Management tool, but the Develop module (the bit you don't need if you have Affinity) stops working. Just what I've been told though.

 

[4tea2]

@vintageman have you looked at Digikam? I've paired this with Affinity to provide a suitable DAM. However I was not migrating from LR. I was trying to organise what was a disorganised collection of folders containing my images.

A quick Google search seems to suggest that some people have tried to tackle this migration, but without LR I can't test their recipes.

 

[vintageman]

I only have LR I'm afraid. But if Affinity has a way to import a LR catalogue you could do all the keywording in LR then import the catalogue into Affinity? Failing that, do steps 1 & 2 below and when all the keywords are written to the jpeg they will (presumably) appear when you import them into Affinity.

In Lightroom...
1. Import your keywords with Metadata>Import Keywords
2. Once you've done your keywording you can save the xmp data into the jpeg (again in Lightroom) with a Select All (CTRL+A) and Metadata>Save Metadata To File (CTRL+S)
3. Your third thing is easy to do in LR (Create a new collection, find your images with search, drag into new collection), but I don't think Collections work when you export a catalogue to another software. You can also do Smart Collections which will pull images based on your shiny new keyword system and will update the collections as you add new images with those keywords, but that's beyond the scope of your question.

The big issue is of course, the actual task of keywording everything. Again, I used Smart collections for this. Happy to outline it here if you want, but that wasn't your question...

Sadly no other software comes close to Lightroom for Digital Asset Management. I believe that if you sign up for the Adobe CC 30 day trial then let it lapse, Lightroom continues to work as an Asset Management tool, but the Develop module (the bit you don't need if you have Affinity) stops working. Just what I've been told though.

Thanks Ian
My problems arose because I wanted to have lots of keywords which are very specific, and only apply to generally less than 10 photos e.g. car registration number and driver, hence 2800 keywords! This has proved difficult to control using the keyword pane in lightroom and I've ended up with a dis-organised structure which is preventing me from building coherent collections.

If other DAMs cannot meet my needs at least LR has the facility to import a keyword text file which will save me a humungous amount of typing

 

[vintageman]

@vintageman have you looked at Digikam? I've paired this with Affinity to provide a suitable DAM. However I was not migrating from LR. I was trying to organise what was a disorganised collection of folders containing my images.

A quick Google search seems to suggest that some people have tried to tackle this migration, but without LR I can't test their recipes.

Thanks John
I'm trialling the win 10 version of Digikam at the moment. and it looks good. The sticking point is that I've restructured the keywords to a sensible hierarchical tree and saved as a text file with 2800 lines using PSpad; However, I can't find a way to import this into Dk and I can't face up to that amount of typing again :banghead:
I have learnt that for successful long term storage its necessary to be able to see where your photography will be in 15 years!

 

[ianp5a]

Thanks John
I'm trialling the win 10 version of Digikam at the moment. and it looks good. The sticking point is that I've restructured the keywords to a sensible hierarchical tree and saved as a text file with 2800 lines using PSpad; However, I can't find a way to import this into Dk and I can't face up to that amount of typing again :banghead:
I have learnt that for successful long term storage its necessary to be able to see where your photography will be in 15 years!

I use Digikam for my DAM and the batch tool is nice and easy. But I've not edited metadata in batch before. There is a forum where you can ask questions here:

digiKam

digiKam forum. digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX.

digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com

 

[vintageman]

Thanks to all for your thoughts.

I believe that not reporting the final solution to any request diminishes the value of any forum topic, so here is where I am now.

I trialed Digikam, XnviewMP and Photosupreme aka ID imager but realised that none of them were going to fit in with my workflow using my existing txt file of keywords.

More searching on the internet came up with ACDsee which has an integrated workflow with both built in batch editing and DAM. With 1 day before the tempting sale price ended I got stuck in and found that it was good enough to make a purchase. Although not stated in my original requirements, the integrated editing was advantageous as many of the early photos include others not taken by me but needed for club records. However they require lots of pp as well as DAM and the 'one stop shop' workflow is saving lots of time.

When I get to the end of cataloging the existing processed jpegs, I will change my workflow to accommodate my more usual shooting in RAW.

Just hoping that the light at the end of the Covid tunnel is not a runaway train!