Re tagging all my photos

Support
1

I have an Image DB of more than 120’000 images and like to re-tag every image to meet the photostructure tag structure.
Currently all my images are tagged flat. So not in hierarchical order. I did all tagging with a self programmed tool.

Now I like to tag them again and like to get some help / suggestions from you what kind of program you use to do the tagging etc.
I just tried Photoshop Elements but was not able to export the hierarchical order to the file (it exported just flat). Maybe someone has a hint for me how to do it right.
image

thx

2

Wow, that’s a lot of work! Would it be more convenient to have a tag mapping feature within PhotoStructure instead?

Several users have asked for something like this: maybe something like:

[tagReplacements]
andreas = "Familie / Andreas"
franziska = "Familie / Franziska"

? (to be clear, this is not implemented, but a suggestion for a future implementation)

My go-to tool for anything metadata-related is ExifTool. It’s amazing.

PhotoStructure actually uses it under the hood (via exiftool-vendored, which I wrote). If you’re comfortable scripting in Node.js, I’d use that.

If you prefer scripting in ruby, I actually was the original author of that version, too.

It may be safer to write these new tags as sidecars, just so you’re not messing with your originals. It’s really easy to make mistakes. Please have a full backup of your photos and videos! I wrote the fancy date and tag inference within PhotoStructure to fix mistakes I made long ago to a bunch of my older photos and videos…

3

thx a lot for all the infos.
Hmm I most likely will fix it myself so you don’t have to and can focus on more important features :wink:

Will probably write some scripts that take the old flat tag data from an image and convert it to an hierarchical own so it gets better recognized within PhotoStructure.
Never used ExifTool before but looks great will look deeper in using it together with scripts.

4

Ok, before you make a bunch of changes to ask your files, you might want to verify things will work as you expect by using the info tool to see the resulting tags that PhotoStructure will extract.

https://photostructure.com/server/tools/#file-information

5

I use digikam, and its default for hierarchical tags work great in photostructure. (of course, digikam uses exiftool behind the scenes to write the tags to the files).

Basically, it creates the following structure:

People/Silver/Tom Silver

If you changed your tool to use this convention, I think it would serve you well.

6

This will absolutely work!

Know that PhotoStructure does have fairly robust name parsing, too: if you set the setting tagNamesFormatter="family/given", People/Tom Silver from Digicam (or ExifTool or LR) will be translated to Who/Silver/Tom.

It has maiden name support, so Michelle LaVaughn (Robinson) Obama will be name tagged with both Who/Robinson/Michelle LaVaughn and Who/Obama/Michell LaVaugn.

It also has given name support, so Joe "Joey" Smith will be name tagged with Who/Smith/Joe "Joey".

Check all the “tagNames…” settings, starting here:

https://github.com/photostructure/photostructure-for-servers/blob/1f6d907769fd2b01900eb88ce64bf0d732998aa0/defaults.env#L2767

7

oh thx a lot for the tip with DigiKam great tool.

so @mrm this means it’s enough to tag my photos with “People/Tom Silver” rather then “People/Silver/Tom” or are there advantages if i do tag it with “People/Silver/Tom”?

EDIT: Ok I see when we tag it this way “People/Silver/Tom” and there is a another person with “People/Silver/Jenny” we can then search for “Silver” and Jenny and Tom will be displayed…

8

You can mix and match. I do People/Silver/Tom for families. It keeps all the relatives grouped, it’s tidier that way. When it’s a one off person, I don’t bother with a group of 1. I do People/Tom Silver.