Comments (49)

Mark Songhurst

Ah… press enter – so that’s how you enter multiple keywords in a single go! That could really do with being added to the online help. As someone who enters a lot of keywords on their images, this post has been really useful – thanks.

Mark Songhurst

*Major disappointment* – pressing enter in the Keywords entry box doesn’t appear to do anything on 7.0.2 for Windows 7. I really wish you guys would align your functionality between Mac and Windows releases, it does you no favours.

Hi Mark,

We’re really sorry for the confusion regarding doing keywords on Windows.

Unfortunately, the “hit enter” option does not work on Windows, and you need to click the plus icon for each new keyword. The post has now been updated with the correct information to avoid further confusion.

We know that is is far from an optimal solution, and we are sorry for the inconvenience.

All the best,

Niels

Way too slow! This is a area where I really hope too see progress. Lightroom is better but still far from what how things should be done. As a member in a photo agency keywording is a vital part in my workflow and very heavily used. Currently we have over 20 000 keywords!

So what is needed. Some ideas. Hierarcial system. Keyword sets, like in lightroom, but not limiting number of keywords in one set. Then these keyword set should be possible to drag to other screen (not possible in LR). Having several keyword sets in use at same time. What about situation when we need many languages. Meaning a way to put keywords in different languages. Now the specs are for one language only.

Not a Phase One fault! But in real life we need many languages. Customer demand.

As an example of need see http://www.leukuimages.com

Grant Perkins

Kirmo,

A couple of additional ideas for you to consider.

Firstly you can enter a comma separated list of words (cut and paste possibly?) into a single keyword field and then hit the TAB key (for Windows) and the list will be broken out into separate words (or phrases if more than one word between the commas.

Secondly you could take some time to build some “sets” of keywords and save them as presets. Potentially you couold then apply the preset(s?) when the images are imported. Job done.

HOWEVER I am aware, having been involved with encoding systems for smart data record retrieval many years ago, that coding (keyword) needs can vary from the very simple (for which this strategy could work well) to the slightly more complex (for which it might be OK sometimes but leave some work others) to the impossible (because ever image in a shoot is different.). Not forgetting that some coding (keywording) is so common that it is simply a waste of data storage capacity … but that’s another story. 😉

Either way once you have one image keyworded the copy facility should speed up activities for the rest – unless, like much of my library, you potentially have a mix of some quite generic identifiers that I can deal with my file naming and specific that require more effert than is easy to justify to find the information let alone apply it.

Do these ideas help at all?

I suspect the Good Professor’s post here only scratches the surface of what is possible – it’s not a feature I have investigated much for the reasons I mention just above.

I have no idea about languages in this context – some may work well enough other fail badly.

I think there are what we might call Factory Production Level applications out there that offer global types of support for images but are full multi-user library and business management tools so priced accordingly. Enterprise Level is perhaps the correct description.

Now I can insert only the 7 key words from the clipboard. How can I increase the number of inserted the words up to 50?

Hi Igor,

You should try contacting our technical support team throuhg the link below and let them take a look at it: http://www.phaseone.com/en/SupportMain.aspx

All the best,

Niels

Ray Butler

Metadata/IPTC is one thing, but…what’s more important to me is, can camera EXIF values be added or modified in the RAW files, using Capture One?

Hi Ray,

Unfortunately you cannot add or modify the EXIF values as Capture One only reads the original file and does not modify it.

All the best,

Niels

Ray Butler

Hi Niels,

Thanks for your reply.

Any chance that this could be added to the development wishlist for C1?

Many of us shoot with view cameras, or adapted lenses, or older manual focus lenses which don’t communicate aperture and focal length to the body/back; so the ability to add/update things like lens info in the RAW EXIF header *before* doing any downstream image processing would be extremely valuable.

Ray

Paul Franklin

This is the most archaic program I have ever used when it comes to keywording. It is slow and cumbersome. I simply do not have the time to keyword with this program. Why didn’t they make it like in Media Pro?

Grant Perkins

Because people who need the functionality can install Media Pro and those who, for whatever reason, don’t don’t have a more complex product to pay for and support?

When does a RAW converter need to morph into a DAM?

Now if the concepts of, say, face recognition could be extended to automate the allocation of keywords to an image based on content (as some pocket cameras can do in some ways today – perhaps use scene recognition as well? – then things might get very interesting.

Should be possible to spot a sunset, a landscape, a river, perhaps an article of interest given a reference file to analyse for a digital “model” description.

Now that might be worth a lot of saved time.

(Or it might end up with many false identifications that people hate it. Actually, given a group of more than one person, a conflict of agreement is almost certain! 😉 )

C1 just a RAW converter? Then why are there sections “print”, “slideshow”, … Yes, I have Media Pro, Lightroom (LR), Photoshop, .. but see the future that these separate sold products will integrate into one working workflow. This is what LR is clearly aiming for.

If only RAW converter, then where to put tyhe lines. I don’t need Microsoft based systems, so why should I pay for C1 support of that part, if I don’t use thethered shooting, should I pay for that part in the software, … never ending

I did software developement over 30 years and now just want photograph, that part of life for me is over. Just see so much easier ways to do things and make the whole workflow much more efficient and save peoples times to do something else like photographing instead of using a bunch of different kind of software which are changing all the time.

THings ar ehappening but so slowly!

Grant Perkins

Kirmo,

Not sure why I cannot hit a reply button to your post but I do not see one so will reply to my own post!

I agree with you about more thorough and consistent compatibility … however these things take time, as you know already, and in my experience rushing them along does not make for a good product very often.

If you do all the work to make them right – great, but it costs and the market moves on without you. Simple facts.

Add to that the market will always want something different to what you have available (which in some ways is quite good for the future of the business), outside influences come into play and there will always be a subset of customers who wish to buy only the bit(s) or the product they see as being valuable to them. See threads in many forums (“Why can I no longer get just what I had with version 0.1 back in 1998 but updated to work with my Nikon D888E” and similar.)

In theory anyone buying into the Adobe suite at the “All products level” will have everything they are ever likely to need. Most of them will use about 1% of it in the course of a year. Maybe a little more if that are professional users especially graphic designers.

But you know all of this anyway.

“C1 just a RAW converter” is a historical footnote but one that is often referenced by users who mostly want just that and little or nothing more. How many people use a front end RAW converter and image preparer and then immediately send the results to be hacked around in Photoshop? I think quite a large percentage. They need “just a RAW converter”.

I’m sure if Adobe thought they would persuade all of their $xx LightRoom and Elements users to sign for the full $xxxx CS6 Suite they would change their marketing tomorrow. If they are not sharing a lot of routines in those application they are missing some tricks.

However, despite all of that I have a lot of sympathy for just wanting to take photos and enjoy them for what they are. The camera manufacturers seem to be trying quite hard to provide that to what they see as a generally acceptable level direct from the camera.

They have to in order to compete with the phone manufacturers. Sadly it seems that the influence of the camera phone generation may be leading to a reduced expectation of what is required from a photograph. Such is progress.

Grant Perkins

Michael J. Amphlett

Metadata and keywording is very important for data searches (i.e. not just images) but, unless you are choosing your keyword terms from a pre-formulated set of terms, a ‘controlled vocabulary’, then it’s just random, inconsistent terminology being applied to each image – fine if you know what you’re looking at… but, what if somebody else wants to interrogate your picture database? Which keyword will they use to search and will it apply to all relevant images?

e.g. If you are searching for a picture of a ‘turkey’ (the bird), how do you stop all the pictures tagged with the keyword ‘Turkey’ (the country) from appearing in the search…? In a structured thesaurus, this will be easier, if you use the term ’turkeys’ (for the bird) and ‘Turkey’ (for the country).

The organisation I work for has a ‘bespoke’ thesaurus of over 250,000 (and still growing!) specific terms which cover all the areas in which we work (publishing/Life Sciences), e.g. agriculture, animal health, human health, crop protection, biocontrol, forestry, aquaculture, etc. All the data records we create are tagged appropriately with terms (mainly from our thesaurus), hence our customers have a regulated, consistent and logical set of records in which they can search very easily and, more importantly, very quickly.

Unless photographers, as well as software developers, use this type of approach, i.e. controlled vocabularies and bespoke thesauri for various areas, keywording is all but a waste of time.

Completing the various IPTC fields in LR and Photoshop, etc., is a start, but it’s nowhere near powerful enough if you want maximum searchability for your valuable images and, let’s face it, the more accessible (i.e. better keyworded) your pictures are, the more hits you’ll get on them.

Clean and consistent metadata is the aim, how we get there is another matter.

These links may help:

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/

This organisation is worth supporting:

http://www.isko.org/chapters.html

Grant Perkins

Michael,

If you are AP, or Getty Images or one of the other major photo libraries I dare say you are right, just as with your organisation. They will have some specialised software to handel the volumes across their servers ensuring instant kywording and (hopefully) verification pretty much as the images arrive.

If you are a small photography business you may feel the need to offer some keywording for some of your photos to attract your specific perceived market.

If you are a hobbyist you only need worry about your own searches mostly.

Quite frankly unless someone is paying me a lot of money to do the job there is no way I will be diving in to try and understand a 250,000 word thesaurus (times how many langauages?) ust on the basis that someone somewhere on the public internet may be searching using those terms rather than using an image library or agency or even, good heavens, commissioning someone to take some images for them. And I have looked at these collections of key words before to see how the wonders of computing have moved things forward.

Some years ago, in the context of problem solving aids for knowledge bases, I studied the use of codes (think of them as short keywords as required by data storage capability at the time) and how easy it was to make them relevant and useful without needing a lot of technical understanding. Most of the “codes” that were used in the samples I looked (they came from several unrelated sources and had been collected “in use” over an extended period) were, in terms of any usefulness, noise. A bit like tagging every photo with any and every search term that describes a photograph.

Of the remaining 20% (or less) most of them related to common knowledge (we were dealing with technical fault analysis and seeking to provide real time diagnostic assistance) so that the answers delivered added nothing new that helped the majority of people using the service. If you invert that for an image search scenario the challenge is to find the few terms that provide quick access. For that you really need very skilled encoders and very skilled searchers. Or you let Google work it out for you based on a much simpler regime – online search engines have come a long way since the early days. (And yes I am perhaps being slightly less than totally serious about that. 😉 )

An even worse scenario would be a world where every inexperienced man and his dog are let loose with a control set of key words that they have no real idea how to use to best effect. Once the search databases of the world are flooded with inaccurate codes there would be a very good chance that the whole process would fall into disrepute as a useful source for finding anything. And the ‘Net being the ‘Net, that would never be fixed, so new systems would be generated, all the previous work would be thrown away over time and then the cycle will repeat.

It’s human nature to keep inventing new wheels. The clever thing is make them perpetually useful. That often means double guesssing what people might do to your wheel in the future.

Just my 2 cents for what they are worth.

Grant Perkins

Andrew McAllister

Importing keywords would be a great help. Also how do we get access to iptc extension or PLUS fields? As a museum photographer access to the “artwork or object in the image” is vital. Currently I have to do an additional step in Bridge that adds hours of work. However if I could add IPTC artist info and keywords when I capture it would be a huge improvement in efficiency. A checkbox to apply metadata from previous capture would be great.

Very Frustrating in following your procedure:
Adding Keywords to Multiple images:
Step one of using the copy button in the copy settings dialog seems to work, but in trying to use the apply button in the same dialog box does not do anything. It did work using the actual Adjustments menu command> Apply Settings but only to one image at a time. And I can’t get this to work on a multiple selections – only on the first image in the selection. Also experiencing many crashes with these attempts. On a mac Os 10.7.5 with Capture 7.0.2.

Grant Perkins

Not being a Mac user this may not help you but on a PC I find to apply anything that has been copied to be pasted to a group of images you need to hold down the SHIFT key while pasting/copying. This should then update all the pre-selected images.

Also I am relating to Version 6 but as far as I know the same applies to V7.

It is,potentially, quite useful to be able to differentiate between updating a single image, several images one at a time or all selected with whatever one has just copied. However I cannot deny that it can be confusing at times.

How would C1-7 work together with Media Pro???

Hi Lothar,

We are currently working on an update for Media Pro that supports Capture One Pro 7 and creates a better workflow between the two pieces of software.

All the best,

Niels

Grant Perkins

A further thought on how to assign keywords (etc).

If you consider use of the route C1 offers an Import feature for presets. I assume this is primarily intended to facilitate the sharing of presets from machine to machine and so on.

A preset file is an xml file and so, with some care, can be edited.

Therefore it should be possible to prepare some keyword presets, even a specific set for a single shoot, using a text editor – or maybe a small form filling exercise exported to a fixed xml format.

This could then be imported ready for automatic application when the shoot images are imported or at a later point when selection has taken place …. or whenever it suits the workflow.

If only one image is updates with the Keyword list the Keywords will become available within the system (Presumably on a by catalogue of by session basis? I don’t have V7 so no quick way to check) and that would make the “drag image to keyword” feature available for any new words. However I assume it is just as likely that the words will become available if the preset file has been imported even if they are not currently used for any image.

Does this suggest any solutions for people’s general needs?

Grant Perkins

To be perfectly honest, I see the combination of Media Pro and C1 is more effective.

Instead of importing files into C1, I download to computer and import into Media Pro. I do first the editing of a my Pre-Selection and then I work with all Metadata, IPTC, keywords etc.

The GREAT feature here is that you can save your MP catalog, your Preselects and then you can use Capture One to directly import that catalog. It is straightforward, so now you have all your images in C1 with all proper information embedded, respecting your star ratings and color labels, if you used those in Media Pro.

Then Capture One is used for what it does best: processing files. In this field nothing beats C1, BUT, the “Catalog” functions are still too young and immature to be used effectively in a “flexible” workflow, that allows for improvisation or changes on the fly.

As for shooting tethered, with Phase One still having trouble to update the DSLR tethering (Canon shooting is still a disaster), I have opted for shooting tethered to LightRoom, so I still would not have to deal with metadata/IPTC/Keywords issues during the shooting process.

Jorge Parra

Grant Perkins

Jorge,

I don’t know Media Pro at all but I suspect you are right. A dedicated DAM to suit specific (an perhaps personal) needs makes sense to me although I tend not to want that extra layer of what I see as administration. It’s just a personal choice thing and relates to what I tend to be shooting and how disposable it is.

If my working model changes the chances are that a DAM will become a requirement. Meantime, for ‘lighter’ use, there seem to be some options for at least doing something directly in C1.

Good guidance for Lothar (above). Was the answer mainly meant for him – it seems well structured for that purpose.

Grant Perkins

How come I can’t see IPTC data I batch added on C1 is not visible on Media Pro, Bridge or Photoshop. Not even on “Get Info” on Finder on Mac. IPTC I’ve added on MediaPro is visible on these softwares. Any reasons or is this normal way of C1 handling things?
Thank

Dear Shin,

Capture One Pro 7 does not write to the original raw files and to secure your precious original work, you need to enable syncing metadata to XMP sidecar files. That can be enabled in the preferences.

I hope this answers your question.

All the best,

Niels

Grant Perkins

Niels,

I think this post (and maybe others?) have been discovered by a spam bot. Most of the recent posts look like they have been generated by some sort word and phrase machine (possibly even one that is human!) attracted by something in the post – maybe the use of the word “keyword”.

If this were my blog I would be removing them for being useless clutter.

Best regards,

Grant

Michael J. Amphlett

Yes Niels,

Grant is quite right, my mailbox is also littered with what, on the face of it, look like genuine Image Prof emails, but the content is obviously ‘junk – this has been going on for over a week now… can it be fixed to stop this junk-mail ruining a good blog (and overloading my email system)?

Have a good day!

Mike

If I keyword an image, the filter can see it. If I them apply those keywords to other variants, it “works” (In that I can click on the image and see that the keyword is applied), but the filter can not find it.

And I can not apply keywords to multiple images by selecting them and entering a new keyword…

Why?

Question: Are there any way to refresh or update the catalog metadata information if I added metadata thru other applications into my photos? I can’t find a solution to this problem. I am trying to use the C1 catalog function but If I add captions or keywords to some images using other software then I have not found the chance to update the metadata info of my catalog. Is normal for me as a professional photojournalist use other softwares to add captions like PS or Photo Mechanic. Any idea of a possible solution? Many thanks

The Image Quality Professor

Hi hernanzenteno,

There absolutely is, but you need to enable XMP sync in the preferences of Capture One 7. Setting the preferences to load will mean that Capture One will only read from the files, setting it to full sync Capture One will also update the XMP sidecar files when you change the metadata inside Capture One 7.

When enabled, Capture One 7 will create XMP sidecar files next to the image raw files and the application will read them. If then opening the raw files in another applications and changing the metadata, Capture One will read the updated XMP sidecar files.

All the best,

Niels

Wonderful, finally I can see the updated keywords or captions. Please, can you explain what is the difference between Load and compl sync in the options? Are there a way to use C1 so the metadata is inserted in the photo and not in sidecar XMP? Many thanks for the help

Hi again,

As we’ve always respected the ‘sanctity’ of RAW files, to avoid corruption and conformity, we never write data directly to the RAW files. Because of that it is not possible to write metadata directly to the raw file.
The difference between Load and Full Sync in XMP Preferences, is that load only reads from the sidecar files, which means that metadata from Capture One will not be written to the sidecar file. Full Sync means that metadata is both read from and written to the sidecar file.

All the best,

Niels

Sorry I still have problems with metadata issue. All was fine until I quit C1. When I open the software again starts to load all the metadata again, not only the last photos imported, all the photos in the catalog. This makes the system run slow (I am on a new macbook retina). I tried to come back to the default preferences but still there are not way to manually updated or refresh the metadata fields. When I click with the right button on the photo and select Load Metadata, appears the panel of activities showing like something is doing but when I check the image still shows no caption or keywords. I tried too with the options showed when click the arrow at the extreme right in the metadata tool panel. Equal. Nothing changes. I read that others have the same problem in the forum. Some suggest to use sessions but the Express version only have one default catalog and no sessions. Any idea how solve that?

Hi Michael,

Sorry for this. We will continue to do our best to avoid this spam.

All the best

Niels

Michael Amphlett

Hi Niels,

No worries, it seems to have been curtailed.

Thanks for the response!

Sincerely, Mike.

Hi Mike,

Ok, good. Let me know, if it gets worse.
Thanks for letting us know.

All the best,
Niels

Hi Niels, maybe I was a bit confusing explaining the problems. To put simple:
1-If I choose “Load” in XMP preferences every time I open C1 the activity panel shows me that the software is loading all the metadata of all my photos inside the catalog that previously was loaded(!?). So, this option is impractical. Could be the problem that I am using a trial version? I really want to purchase C1 for the quality of images but if the catalog don’t work makes nonsense get this software because I will need another app for catalog and C1 will accumulate a lot of previews of my developed images wasting space in my disk.
2-If I want to manually load the metadata of one or a set of images I can’t. I tried load metadata in the menu when you right click on a photo or in the tool arrow menu inside the metadata section without luck.
I will appreciate any help cause I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or if the software works that way. Many thanks again

Andreas Lentfer

Hi Niels,
I’d like to switch from Aperture to Capture One Pro 8 and I know how to get the pictures into Capture One. But what about the keywords? Yes, the imported pictures come with their keywords, but I’d like (and need) my hierarchical keyword catalog from Aperture in Capture One as well! I have exported the keyword catalog from Aperture to my hard drive, i.e.,there is a copy outside of the Aperture Library, it’s a .txt file. Is there any way to get that file (or any other format) imported into Capture One and if not, is it planned to work with future versions of Capture One?
Thank you for a reply on this!
Best regards
Andreas.

I’m coming over to Capture one from Aperture (after a short detour in Lightroom hell) — one thing I miss is a keyword browser.

I looked around a bit and can’t find it. Is it there and I’m missing it? If not, it has my vote as something I’d like to see in a future version.

Hello,

I’ve just been introduced to Capture One and working for a photographer to catalog his images. He regularly uses Capture One for his work but has not used the catalog option. This is an area we would like to develop. We both have a strong familiarity with archiving and catalog and have used other software programs in the past, ie Portfolio.

What is the best way to get a better understanding of how the capture one works for cataloging images? We would be looking at one large catalog.

Do you have an examples that I could use to extrapulate and form a catalog that will be specific to our needs?

Can you copy multiple keywords? Meaning if I have one image that has 6 keywords, but I only want to copy 4 of those keywords to another image, is that possible? Also, if that image has keywords already, will the copied keywords overwrite what is already there?

Any other tips or guidance since I’m a total newbie would be appreciated.

Thanks! Denise

David Grover

Hi Denise,

As a startpoint, why don’t you watch…

https://youtu.be/Uvk-oZB-WJ4

and

https://youtu.be/3BJL_tFciQk

and

https://youtu.be/yVzUFYhcitU

David

Sebastien

I switched from Aperture and it is a mess with my keywords! I lost my hierarchical organization and i can not find how to rebuild it since there is no keyword manager in C1 (just a tool to manage keywords attached to a picture and a keyword filter). Please add a global keyword manager!

Ideas :
– list of ALL the keywords used in C1
– rename a keywords with an effective change on every pictures attached (singular/plural fusion, uppercase issues …)
– drag an drop hierarchical management (= thesaurus easy to manage)

Ideas to improve the keyword tool :
– delete a keyword from multiple images in a single clic (select pictures, select keyword to delete, press enter …)
– when copying keywords from a picture, it would be great to choose which keywords will be paste to the others 😉

Hi Sebastien,
I can relate to your comment very well, as I am coming from Aperture too. I have somewhat managed to work with keywords in C1 by now but feel, that it really lacks the easy approach Aperture offered. I do hope like you, that a future up-date of C1 will bring a more convenient keyword manager tool.

I have keyword specific images and when I look at filters, the keyword does not show up. I can search for the specific keyword and then my images appear.

When you add a keyword to an image, does the keyword automatically show up in filters? Or do you have to add it?

Thanks!
Denise

I’m in the processing of bring images into C8 from Portfolio where the metadata has been embedded already. After reviewing, I noticed that some misspellings and corrections on the images. I can’t rename or remove a keyword. It appears the function has worked; however when I look in filters the keyword remains along with the images that have that keyword attached to it. In addition, the keyword still shows up on correct images.

How do I get these removed? What am I missing?

Thanks! Denise