Your Keyword System?

Question

Hi -
I'm about to plunge into Keywording with Keyword Manager and wanted to see if I could get any "best practices" before I get started. I'm assuming the number one tip is to think out my keywording scheme BEFORE I get started? Any other tips you learned along the way? I wish there was facial recognition - sigh - that would save me about 9,000 hours given my 25,000 photos! I'm mostly doing family and life events, lots of people, places, occasions.
I have posted with Terence Devlin before and so I'm hoping he'll be OK with the fact that I'm copying and posting his advice to me below. I don't want to be ungrateful and make for redundant work! So, anything else to add to below?
One small question among below is that if the info is in the EXIF data (date and camera), does the iPhoto search automatically search that or do I need to tell it to do that? (When I'm choosing date, and it gives me the little calendar of months, is that going by EXIF data or by the "event" data?
Thanks!
Alexa
[From TD - post was http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8247004#
I keyword on a
Who
What
Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.
Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my 20k library in a couple of seconds.
So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.
File -> New Smart Album
set it to 'All"
title contains Seattle
keyword is mountain
keyword is snow
rating is 5 stars
Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?
New Smart Album
Keyword is John
Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending
Want only the best pics?
add Rating is greater than 4 stars
The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.
Keywording takes time to set up, there's no doubt about it. I use Keyword Manager as it's much more powerful than the inbuilt system, and adds the possibility of nested keywords. So, for instance, if I add John to a photo it also adds 'Family'. Now I can add many keywords to a pic quickly.
In the end, organisation is about finding the pics. The point is to make locating that pic or batch of pics findable fast. This system works for me.
Also, the Exif contains the camera information already, so no need to keyword for that. Have a look at the options in iPhoto -> New Smart Album... click on the drop down
Regards
TD

Answer 1

My experience of keywording is that it bears revision as you go. And you need to ask yourself how often will you need to find these particular shots:
For instance I come well supplied with Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, Nieces and Nephews. When I began I started keywording for each individual.
So a Keyword Hierarchy might look like this:
Family -> Devlin -> John -> Michael (Where John is my brother and Michael is my nephew.)
But as I worked I realised that I don’t have that many pics of Michael, so I simply grouped him under his Dad. So the keywords became
Family -> Devlin -> John
And this will get me Michael’s photos too - or close enough. After all, how often do I look for pics of Michael?
In the end I found that I have individual keywords for my own kids, and everyone else’s goes under their parent. Ditto for Spouses etc, If I want a pic of my Brothe in Law I search on my Sister’s Name. That works for me.
Then you have to be a little forgiving of the system too...
There is an exception for one family of nieces and nephews whom we see often, often holiday together and so we have a large number of pics of them too. So each of those kids has their own keyword.
By all means have a general idea before you start, but don’t be afraid to revise as you go.
Regards
TD