Guide and tips for fast and efficient metadata tagging of your photos.

This give you an idea of the workflows I use store, index and tag and geotag my photo collection.

Quick guide by priority:

  1. Directory naming: Group photos into directories named by date and grouping keywords.
  2. File naming: Extend the photo filename with keywords. For special photos.
  3. IPTC keywords: Add the keywords from the name and additional
  4. Geotagging: Use a tool to geotag the photographs.

DIRECTORY NAMING

Principle: organise by date and grouping keywords.

This is simple enough to do when you first get your photos off the camera or memory stick.

Put your photos into different directories organised at least by date and grouping keywords.

eg (date) (grouping keywords)

where
date = yyyymmdd
grouping keywords. These are:
- short
- are used by indexing programs to find groups of photographs (eg Picasa)
- identify an event not a specific photograph
eg “fromBruce”, not “from Bruce” (otherwise a search for Bruce will be too wide)
eg “birthday party ofBruce, not “Bruces birthday”
- use leading zeros in sequences
eg day001 or day01, not day 1 or day1 (otherwise a search for Day1 will be too wide), as searchign day1 matches day1, day10, day11, day 110 etc

Here are some good examples

20090101 nyd atBobs house
20090101 nyd atSurnames house
20090102 surprise party forBill atJerry Helsinki
20090103 skitrip day02 Helsinki withBruce

This way, a search for photos of Bob or Jerry will be not confused with photos at events at or with them.

That’s enough for now, when you have time, continue with file renaming.
TIP: If you have photos from many dates, put them into directory with the oldest name. Then, as you separate them later, creating directories for each subsequent date, they will be in chronological order.

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