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Adding Notes to a photo

Levin Barrett
Hi, Is it possible to add some personal notes about a photo? I enter my photos into various competitions. In my photoshop elements catalogue, I could add notes to an individual photo to keep track of which competitions I had entered the photo into and what result I got.

I realise I can add keywords or colour tags to search for any of my photos that I have entered in a competition and then add them to a smart album so that all my competition photos are in one album. But what I am trying to do is add notes or a record of what I have done with each photo into the catalogue or session. Any thoughts or is it even possible?
Cheers
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Comments

8 comments

Date Votes
  • cdc
    You can hand write annotations, unfortunately there is not a text option with annotations or a "Notes" tool otherwise.
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  • SFA
    cdc wrote:
    You can hand write annotations, unfortunately there is not a text option with annotations or a "Notes" tool otherwise.



    The IPTC fields would be the most likely to offer you something you could use for your purpose.
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  • cdc
    SFA wrote:
    cdc wrote:
    You can hand write annotations, unfortunately there is not a text option with annotations or a "Notes" tool otherwise.



    The IPTC fields would be the most likely to offer you something you could use for your purpose.


    That's a good idea.
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  • Levin Barrett
    Thanks for the info. I looked at using IPTC fields but couldn't find one that would accept more than about 20 or 30 characters. Guess those fields are not really designed for what I want.
    Thanks again.
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  • SFA
    Levin wrote:
    Thanks for the info. I looked at using IPTC fields but couldn't find one that would accept more than about 20 or 30 characters. Guess those fields are not really designed for what I want.
    Thanks again.


    Description and Instructions fields will certainly take more than 20 or 30 characters. Maybe others. You could check the documentation for the IPTC standards.

    If a single image is placed in so many places that the fields prove to be too small have you considered creating a variant for each submission (might be required anyway of size and other factors are in play) and using a not against each variant?


    Grant
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  • OddS.
    SFA wrote:
    Levin wrote:
    ...If a single image is placed in so many places that the fields prove to be too small have you considered creating a variant for each submission (might be required anyway of size and other factors are in play) and using a not against each variant?


    Variants may not be practical if the OP needs to synchronize metadata between applications. I believe C1 can only handle a single XMP file (sidecar) per image file (not one per variant).
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  • SFA
    OddS wrote:
    SFA wrote:
    Levin wrote:
    ...If a single image is placed in so many places that the fields prove to be too small have you considered creating a variant for each submission (might be required anyway of size and other factors are in play) and using a not against each variant?


    Variants may not be practical if the OP needs to synchronize metadata between applications. I believe C1 can only handle a single XMP file (sidecar) per image file (not one per variant).



    True, but I did not read the request as something that had an XMP sharing need.

    If is does then the fallback would be to a single IPTC resource. Description may be the logical field choice but there could be others. I don't generally use them so I would need to check - which I guess anyone can do.


    Grant
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  • OddS.
    Levin wrote:
    I looked at using IPTC fields but couldn't find one that would accept more than about 20 or 30 characters. Guess those fields are not really designed for what I want.


    Several fields will allow you more than 30 characters. Just try.

    Use one image as an example. Write text into every field you can see in the C1 Metadata section. Start each text with the field name or a short form thereof, something you can recognize and know what field you wrote that text to.

    Next do a Sync Metadata and open the XMP sidecar file in a text editor. If you just wrote "xyz" in every field, you will se many of them and not be able to do this part of the exercise.
    In that XMP file; look for elements that contain a <rdf:Bag> element. The <Iptc4xmpCore:Scene> is one such element. If you entered text as outlined above, you should see the <rdf:Bag> element and one or more elements on the form <rdf:li>Yourtexthere</rdf:li>. "Bag" is for multiple list elements ("rdf:li") and each list element is a text line.

    Another "bag" is in <photoshop:SupplementalCategories> and it has <rdf:li>elements. Provided of course, that you did the first part and entered a descriptive text, say "iptc content supplemental cat 1" in the first line and then "iptc content supplemental cat 2" in the next line in the Metadata section IPTC - Content -> Supplemental Categori...

    Now you know how to identify IPTC field candidate fields available in C1 (those rdf:li inside a rdf:Bag).

    Having the text in the C1 Metadata is only half the battle, you need to find the relevant images. The Edit menu selection Advanced Search lets you select the metadata field(s) you decided to use for your codes and locate relevant images. Do study and experiment with the advanced search function, the criterias and the (smart)album to see if yo find a way out.

    EDIT:
    Just to add an alternative. Keep all notes in one or more separate files (text, word...) and just put the relevant file name in metadata field(s) on each image. Use advanced search to find images in C1 by the filename(s) where you keep the image information (competitions, exhibitions, presentations...)
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