Krogh's Book on LR Organizing Worth it?

[OogieM]

Title says it all. I'm cleaning up my entire keywording system.

I have and use both The DAM book by Peter Krogh and The Missing FAQ book by Victoria but am wondering if Peter Krogh's book "Organizing Your Photos with Lightroom 5" is worth it given that it's talking about an old version of LR.

OTOH I can't see how much would change on the basic concepts and that's what Im looking for more ideas on how to keyword and set up hierarchical structures before I lock myself in to a system I can't really use well.

I'm not really looking as much for the mechanics of how to apply, edit or change keywords in LightRoom. I can do that already. I'm really looking for the philosophy behind why you select certain ways to select, organize and structure keywords.

Any ideas or suggestions appreciated.

 

[clee01l]

The principles contained therein are valid. However, IMO they are not the ONLY principles of organizing images. I read the book 10 or more years ago and while it was a start, I developed my own organizing philosophy. Now that I think about it there were some organizing principles that I saw in the book that I down right object to. IIRC, these concern renaming originals and organizing folders.
There is a lot more current stuff on the web today that when Peter first came out with his book. If you feel that you must give Peter your money, you can. But IMO, you can get the same and more current information by searching the web (and usually free).

 

[Tony Jay]

The older version that the book is based on changes nothing with respect to the subject matter applied to later versions of Lightroom.

I agree with Cletus that it is an excellent resource, just not a BIBLE.
Ultimately, it is a great source of ideas, but, at the end of the day the onus is on you to consult as widely as possible to in order to construct a system that suits your needs.

Tony Jay

 

[Roelof Moorlag]

It's a great reference and he made some changes (about starratings for example) compared to his first DAM book. He is explaining his ideas very thoroughly so you can make your own choices.
Peter has contributed a lot of his ideas to the site dpbestflow, you can find some very good (free) stuf there.

 

[rob211]

I've heard good things about the book, and I like the advice at dpbestflow as well.

But if I was gonna plunk down cash these days, I'd want something with updates on the Lr CC/Mobile workflow as well. I'm not sure how much the book covers in regard to even Lr Mobile, let alone the options available now with both Classic and CC. Maybe with a purchase you get access to updates on that.

 

[OogieM]

Looking at the TOC the chapters that look most interesting are 5, 6 and 7. I'll go looking online a bit more. I'm really hoping for examples and options of various ways people have done this and what worked and didn't for them. I find that useful when deciding how to apply tools to my own situation.

 

[PhilBurton]

The older version that the book is based on changes nothing with respect to the subject matter applied to later versions of Lightroom.

I agree with Cletus that it is an excellent resource, just not a BIBLE.
Ultimately, it is a great source of ideas, but, at the end of the day the onus is on you to consult as widely as possible to in order to construct a system that suits your needs.

Tony Jay

And post questions/ideas here on this forum to get lots of great feedback.

Phil Burton

 

[PhilBurton]

It's a great reference and he made some changes (about starratings for example) compared to his first DAM book. He is explaining his ideas very thoroughly so you can make your own choices.
Peter has contributed a lot of his ideas to the site dpbestflow, you can find some very good (free) stuf there.

The older version that the book is based on changes nothing with respect to the subject matter applied to later versions of Lightroom.

I agree with Cletus that it is an excellent resource, just not a BIBLE.
Ultimately, it is a great source of ideas, but, at the end of the day the onus is on you to consult as widely as possible to in order to construct a system that suits your needs.

Tony Jay

The total value of that book depends in part on how comfortable you are with general notions of workflow and backup for an application that processes lots and lots and lots of files. If you are not comfortable with your knowledge in those areas, then that book could be invaluable for you.

Phil Burton

 

[OogieM]

The total value of that book depends in part on how comfortable you are with general notions of workflow and backup for an application that processes lots and lots and lots of files.

Thank you for that assessment. I as a matter of course deal with thousands of files and lots of redundant backups. I am more than comfortable with my plans/procedures/methods in that area.

Where I am hesitant about is my knowledge of restricting vocabulary and future selection based on queries against a database.

My own LambTracker program has taught me that database queries can be complex and defining things too soon can cause problems later.

I would love for people to share why they selected various top level hierarchical keyword schemes, what they would do differently if they had it to do over and what they are in the process of changing now.

 

[Ian.B]

too much info is often worse than not enough; especially when one suggests something that someone else say not to do it.
It's a bit like tiding the house --- plenty saying how to do it but in the end YOU have to do the tiding yourself to suit yourself .
at least I do more in Lr than in the house :whistling:

 

[LouieSherwin]

I for one found it very useful. Keep in mind that there have been essentially no changes in the Lightroom DAM functions since the book was written. So every thing applies. Since you are familiar with this original DAM book you will appreciate his clear complete discussion of the topics. The strategies covered are basically evolved from those in the original DAM book but implemented with current technology.

There is in the works a new DAM book version 3. You might want to subscribe to his newsletter to be kept up to date on the release of this new book.

-louie

 

[OogieM]

too much info is often worse than not enough; especially when one suggests something that someone else say not to do it.

<GGG> Well I'm a retired systems engineer, there is never too much information. ;-)

 

[tspear]

Since you have the systems engineering background. I am gonna go old school.
How many projects fail because requirements not defined?

Before you can figure out how to organize the information flow, read how people use the information. Read blogs on how people publish, where they publish....
Only once have you defined the prospective outputs, can you begin to develop the information management criteria which drive the information capture, which will drive a large part of the workflow and information structure.

At this point, I suggest you look on here for some examples of "smart workflow". You will see mine and others discuss the whole structure and flow; and we even cover/discuss how the images and data are used. For example, my outputs are all for family and friends, while Cletus has a specific branch for his photography competitions....

Tim

 

[OogieM]

Since you have the systems engineering background. I am gonna go old school.
How many projects fail because requirements not defined?

Before you can figure out how to organize the information flow, read how people use the information.

Very good point. Right now there are multiple requirements.

1. Digital backup of family pictures
2. Archival backup for historical purposes for some potentially important images (these include photos of petroglyphs and pictographs that are now destroyed and similar items that are historically significant to other individuals and organizations outside family and friends)
3. Use cases include

locate specific images or groups of images for use in physical and digital scrapbooks
share images with family and friends either physically or digitally based on their specific search criteria
produce hard copy prints of images for display both personally and for showing at local art galleries
produce hard copy prints of images to use as models for other art formats (oil paintings being the most used example right now)
provide digital and hard copy prints of specific images to scientists, researchers and historical societies based on requests for specific images or images from specific timeframes
produce small resolution digital images for web applications
2 or more different people will be cataloging all the images and need to coordinate the terms used and methods
an unknown number of different people may be using the catalog to search for images (right now we know for sure of about 12 people who will want to search it for images)​

Other issues
There are a number of sources including various digital cameras from point and shoot to digital SLR, color and B&W negatives in a variety of formats from the early 1900's to present day, color slides, color and B&W prints. A separate project is the selection and scanning of the non-digital media to archival standards. We are exploring both doing the scanning ourselves and sending originals off for scanning. We are also determining the resolution required for each of the media types to meet Library of Congress standards for archival digital capture.

since metadata and keywording is critical to the ability of others to use the catalog to find images of interest it warrants some special care in deciding the structure and methods we will use to input that information to the cataloging system.

My own bias is that I like to hear about and evaluate a bunch of different ways people approach their use and categorization of their digital images.

 

[tspear]

Family and historical have different requirements.
I would effectively build two keyword trees. If there is an overlap on the root keywords, add a a "historical" and "family" root and have the sub-trees from there.

I use people, captions, and locations to drive a fair amount of my searches. So my keywords are more geared to event and general class of data. You can find my posts on here discussing building my flow to see examples.

In your case, I would consider the additional EXIF data elements and look to use keywords for attribute classification. e.g. for historical, add time period, general type.... then use the EXIF location data, captions, titles and other fields in standard ways to document the specific tribe which created it, the year...

Tim

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

I loved Peter's the DAM book, and I did purchase the Organizing Photos book, but for me, I found the book version much more captivating. I can't seem to get through all the videos, and from what I did look at it didn't add much to my knowledge. I do also think doing some internet research and a special look at dpbestflow are great places to try before you go that route. Also, there have been some excellent threads on keyword hierarchy philosolphy right here.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Thank you for that assessment. I as a matter of course deal with thousands of files and lots of redundant backups. I am more than comfortable with my plans/procedures/methods in that area.

Where I am hesitant about is my knowledge of restricting vocabulary and future selection based on queries against a database.

My own LambTracker program has taught me that database queries can be complex and defining things too soon can cause problems later.

I would love for people to share why they selected various top level hierarchical keyword schemes, what they would do differently if they had it to do over and what they are in the process of changing now.

Lambys!!! NIICE!

I'll get back to you on my own keyword scheme after tonight - I don't have laptop at work with me. Keep in mind that opinions are many and sometimes intense, so take them all with a grain of salt, and yes- knowing how your situation compares with others makes a big difference.

I work with a lot of personal heritage photos that have digital and paper counterparts that I want to keep track of, so I have some keyword groups that others would probably not agree with, but that work for my particular situation.

 

[PhilBurton]

At this point, I suggest you look on here for some examples of "smart workflow". You will see mine and others discuss the whole structure and flow; and we even cover/discuss how the images and data are used. For example, my outputs are all for family and friends, while Cletus has a specific branch for his photography competitions....

Tim

Call me crazy for this idea, but. Victoria, would you be amenable to setting up a forum section where people could upload their smart collections, or at least a link to their smart collections.

Phil

 

[PhilBurton]

[QUOTE="tspear, post: 1224070, member: 33346"


In your case, I would consider the additional EXIF data elements and look to use keywords for attribute classification. e.g. for historical, add time period, general type.... then use the EXIF location data, captions, titles and other fields in standard ways to document the specific tribe which created it, the year...

Tim[/QUOTE]
One issue for using EXIF data for scanned images is that you may not know the exact date of image capture, maybe not even the specific year. AFAIK, IPTC hasn't defined "fuzzy date" formats. An archivist I met told me that her enterprise-level DAM allows for approximate dates.

Phil Burton

 

[Roelof Moorlag]

If you are familiar with the first DAM book then maybe the second one is not your best choice but the 'Digitizing your photos' is.
Not the scanning part is your goal then but the principles Peter describes are used by museums and institutions.

 

[tspear]

One issue for using EXIF data for scanned images is that you may not know the exact date of image capture, maybe not even the specific year. AFAIK, IPTC hasn't defined "fuzzy date" formats. An archivist I met told me that her enterprise-level DAM allows for approximate dates.

Phil Burton

I could have been a little more clear. I was just referencing that there are many more fields such as IPTC or EXIF metadata which can be used in addition to keywords. I have seen/read a few examples of keyword vocabs where basically keywords was the only meta-data used. There are well understood and defined preexisting specific metadata fields. e.g. GPS Coordinates, Location.... and some more fuzzy ones like title and caption.

Tim

 

[OogieM]

Call me crazy for this idea, but. Victoria, would you be amenable to setting up a forum section where people could upload their smart collections, or at least a link to their smart collections.
Phil

I'd second this, I'd really like to see this and also a link to keyword hierarchies.

One issue for using EXIF data for scanned images is that you may not know the exact date of image capture, maybe not even the specific year. AFAIK, IPTC hasn't defined "fuzzy date" formats. An archivist I met told me that her enterprise-level DAM allows for approximate dates.
Phil Burton

I use circa data for some things. Generally I can get it to the decade so I have things like c1950s, c1890s or c1910s as keywords for the historical images. If I can only get it to the century I use c1800s. So far this is not an issue for pictures but for some documents it is a problem. I use the same cataloging scheme in my genealogy files.

 

[Ian.B]

<GGG> Well I'm a retired systems engineer, there is never too much information.

true; but information needs to be adding in time ---- no point starting in grade 1 and then skipping grades 3 to 10. That is imo is too much info in one big package. Everyone has a different learning curve --- mine is pretty flat at timed

 

[OogieM]

I work with a lot of personal heritage photos that have digital and paper counterparts that I want to keep track of, so I have some keyword groups that others would probably not agree with, but that work for my particular situation.

I'm very interested in how you do that, that is an area that is expanding in my own image cataloging.

One of the things I spent some time today doing is looking at how I've searched for images lately. Knowing what questions I'll be asking is an important part of deciding on how to catalog them.
Here are some typical searches I've had to perform in the last few months.
Find pictures of AI sired lambs for NAGP to use in articles describing our non-surgical AI procedure.
Find pictures of the most recent version of the AI procedure showing me doing the AI I should be able to search for me, and AI and find them but again, not everything is keyworded yet.
Find pictures of the AV prep and semen collection procedure for a newsletter article.
Find pictures of guard dogs with newborn lambs for a newsletter article for the sheep association
Find pictures of the contents of my lambing bag for a blog post
Find the FLIR pictures with temperatures of the vulva and anus of all the ewes that lambed to AI for the paper on the use of FLIR to gauge the proper time to inseminate the ewes. None of the FLIR pictures are even in Lightroom yet so I've been using LambTracker a search for ewes that lambed to AI, then search to see when they were bred, then go back to the notes on exactly what time they were bred then locate the FLIR pictures from that group and cross reference with the EID ear tag scans of the inseminations to put the correct picture with the correct sheep.
Find pictures of the necropsy on sheep that died from clostridia infection
Find my best pictures of Mt. Lamborn on such and such a date for as many years as I have, I really wanted a fuzzy search so that If I was within a week of the same date in a different year I could find it.
Locate pictures of Desert Weyr Caridwen with her triplets. I went to my LambTracker database, did a search for lambing records for Caridwen, and wrote down the birthdates of her 2 sets of triplets then looked on that date and few days after that date in the LR catalog for photos. Ideally those pictures should have been keyworded with the sheep name and with the lamb names but they weren't. I did find them but it took a lot longer than I wanted it to.
Locate pictures of a specific petroglyph panel/location taken over the years showing the changes. I have some that are of the same panel taken in various years that dramatically document the destruction of the petroglyphs over time. These have been nearly impossible to find with a smart collection, I have some of them keyworded with either petroglyph or pictograph but that isn't sufficient and for security reasons even if I have the GPS coordinates they are not entered in the metadata as I don't want to share them. Still working on this one.
Find all lamb pictures of Desert Weyr Yoda and of Desert Weyr Yoda 2 for a scrapbook page on the 2 lambs. Again the pictures should have been keyworded with the sheep names but they aren't so I'm using LambTracker to find dates when they were born and then looking by date to find the pictures.
Find the pictures I took of the White Castle in Wales
Find the pictures of the riveted chainmail details from the Met's armor collection and send to a friend who is working with a smith to make some test pieces of historically accurate chainmail.
See if I have any herring cozy pictures like the ones from a Ravelry thread on a double thumbed mitten common in the Scandinavian countries. I thought I'd found and taken a picture of one at a local historical society museum. Haven't found that image at all yet, still looking.

So a rather eclectic set of searches and that's just in the last month or so.

Clearly I look for sheep by name more often than people. I also tend to look for sets of pictures related to specific times or activities so that's another major class of keywords I need to include. Locations are easy to add if they don't fit into the country city location fields already.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Very good point. Right now there are multiple requirements.

1. Digital backup of family pictures
2. Archival backup for historical purposes for some potentially important images (these include photos of petroglyphs and pictographs that are now destroyed and similar items that are historically significant to other individuals and organizations outside family and friends)
3. Use cases include

locate specific images or groups of images for use in physical and digital scrapbooks
share images with family and friends either physically or digitally based on their specific search criteria
produce hard copy prints of images for display both personally and for showing at local art galleries
produce hard copy prints of images to use as models for other art formats (oil paintings being the most used example right now)
provide digital and hard copy prints of specific images to scientists, researchers and historical societies based on requests for specific images or images from specific timeframes
produce small resolution digital images for web applications
2 or more different people will be cataloging all the images and need to coordinate the terms used and methods
an unknown number of different people may be using the catalog to search for images (right now we know for sure of about 12 people who will want to search it for images)​

Other issues
There are a number of sources including various digital cameras from point and shoot to digital SLR, color and B&W negatives in a variety of formats from the early 1900's to present day, color slides, color and B&W prints. A separate project is the selection and scanning of the non-digital media to archival standards. We are exploring both doing the scanning ourselves and sending originals off for scanning. We are also determining the resolution required for each of the media types to meet Library of Congress standards for archival digital capture.

since metadata and keywording is critical to the ability of others to use the catalog to find images of interest it warrants some special care in deciding the structure and methods we will use to input that information to the cataloging system.

My own bias is that I like to hear about and evaluate a bunch of different ways people approach their use and categorization of their digital images.

If you are interested in one perspective regarding personal heritage collections - digital and paper - and how to integrate, I wrote a series on it using LR. Feel free to read up on them here: Managing Legacy Photos with Lightroom