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Custom Metadata
I use a lot of custom metadata fields, in fact I’d find it hard to use any organisation tool that didn’t have them...
So what do I use them for?
Status
A lot of my images or merely ‘source material’ - images which are going to be stitched together into panoramas using PTGui. These panoramas often go through several stages of processing outside Aperture, so I’ll end up with the following statuses:
‘source image’ for the images used to make the panorama,
‘rough preview’ for a quick stitch of the panorama generated from 1024px thumbnails,
‘fullsize’ for the full resolution, cleaned pano,
‘print-ready’ for the final, sized, sharpened image in the right colour space and with borders added.
In hindsight, the IPTC ‘Edit Status’ field would probably have done for this.
Non-Standard Information
Information which doesn’t really fit into IPTC tags, such as:
Title - many of the panoramas have a title, and there’s no direct equivalent that I can find in IPTC. Version Names I tend to keep for internal use.
Location, mainly because City/Sub-location doesn’t fit with my way of categorising locations, and it looks bad in book layouts etc.
Maximum Size - final output size in millimetres.
Image ID - this is a unique ID for each panorama, usually made up of three letters related to the commission or job plus a number for each panorama, such as GNT003 or PTM103.
File Paths
Sometimes I’ll have non-image files associated with a photo, such as a QTVR interactive panorama. As Aperture is primarily a photographic asset manager rather than a full-blown digital asset manager it won’t read in these files, so I put the file path of the related files into a custom field for easy retrieval. Not ideal but better than nothing.
Job-Specific Information
On shoot I do each year involves taking photographs of entries in a typographic design event, which requires keeping track of the entrant’s name, the brief they chose, their institution and final grade.
Private Data
Custom tags are never embedded in exported Versions or Masters. Obviously this can be a pain if you want to pass on the information to someone who doesn’t have Aperture, but it also means that you can enter data into custom tags and never worry about clients and end users seeing that data.
So, what do you use custom tags for?
One thing that I use custom tags for are to store the status of a photo with an online stock agency, such as "Ready to Submit", "Submitted", "Approved", "Rejected", etc.
This should not be a custom field, but I am unable to find the standard field that indicates what mode I am shooting in - Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or Manual. On another discussion forum, I was told that it exists, but only presents as a numeric entry that is not decoded. Please let me know if this is correct and how to decipher what it means.
Thanks -
I also use it for assigning status to images I submit to stock agencies. Additionally, I have created custom fields for things such as images that have been sold, published, as well as where, images that have a release available, etc.
For me they are a key element of Aperture that I use a lot.
> Title - many of the panoramas have a title, and there’s no direct equivalent that I can find in IPTC.
@Ian - it's early days for me with Aperture yet, so this is a sincere question. Why not use "Caption" instead of "Title"?
@Dudley - Look at "Exposure Mode" among the EXIF data fields. Then shoot yourself a series of test shots, one in each of the exposure modes that your camera has. Maybe you could shoot pages of scrap paper and write on each one "Program", "Av", "Tv, "M", etc. Then import each image and "decode" the Exposure Modes for yourself... Then write down your results on a post-it note which you stick on the side of your display for future reference, before deleting your test images. :-) It's likely that different manufacturers have their own "codes". In fact, they might possibly even vary a little from model to model. I doubt there's any official standard for this information.
> Title - many of the panoramas have a title, and there’s no direct equivalent that I can find in IPTC.
@Ian - it's early days for me with Aperture yet, so this is a sincere question. Why not use "Caption" instead of "Title"?
@Dudley - Look at "Exposure Mode" among the EXIF data fields. Then shoot yourself a series of test shots, one in each of the exposure modes that your camera has. Maybe you could shoot pages of scrap paper and write on each one "Program", "Av", "Tv, "M", etc. Then import each image and "decode" the Exposure Modes for yourself... Write down your results on a post-it note which you stick on the side of your display for future reference, before deleting your test images. :-) It's likely that different manufacturers have their own "codes". In fact, they might possibly even vary a little from model to model. I doubt there's any official standard for this information.
(I hope this doesn't appear twice - my browser seemed to crash and lose the post just as I was submitting it the first time.)
Gary, using the 'Caption' tag wouldn't work, as some of my images have both a title and a caption...
Ian
i have only just picked this up, but it seems when you create a custom meta field in the 'other' tab, it does not add this to a master library, but just the current project. am i missing something? here are some screen shots
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p185/rhysbartels/picture1-6.jpg
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p185/rhysbartels/picture2.jpg
Custom tags are Library-wide, but they only show up in that list if you've selected an image where the tag contains something. :-(
Ian
but how can you add the metadata, when it is not in the list? i know i can just add the field again through the input box, but surely there is a way of using a generic custom library to add fields to the meta view.
even better, i would like to see a metadata view build menu item, that allow you to draw upon all the custom fields you have ever created, without having to do it on an image, then save off. am i looking at this wrong??
@Rhys: i have the same question.
someone out there that is able to help?
thanks - etienne
Rhys has hit on something that I noticed also. If you create a custom metadata view and include the custom field while viewing an image that has data filled in you can save it. I use custom fields for various data I include in order to export to a web template I modified. It's great for quick galleries but the custom fields aren't available when trying to create a custom name format in export version or to export imbedded to use in a filemaker database.
thanks
Steve