After reading this chapter's somewhat theoretical introduction, you might think that working with meta information is a complex task. But this is not the case: adding meta information to your images is no more complicated than entering information into some entry fields.
To describe your images in IDimager, you can open the image’s properties. Do this by pressing [Alt]+[Enter] on a selected thumb or by clicking the pen icon in the lower left corner of the thumbnail. The properties dialog (referred to as the Image Details panel) will then open.
Note each field has a caption in bold typeface. By placing the mouse over the caption, you can display help information for that field.
This Image Details dialog contains all fields (properties) that are defined in the IPTC4XMP schema. These fields are organized in tab sheets; simply enter information into any field (or fields) of interest and then click OK to store it (or click the next button in the toolbar to skip to the next image).
In addition to being able to enter meta information on a per-image base, you can also enter meta information for a series of images (batch data entry) in a similar way.
|
Tip!
Sometimes it is convenient to be able to quickly copy a property's value to the Windows Clipboard. You can do that by double clicking on the caption of each property. The value will always be copied to the clipboard in text format (even for non text typed properties). |
Keywords
Because keywords are widely used for describing images, we will have a more detailed look at that field because it has some additional features.
In particular, IDimager's lookup feature allows you to quickly enter keywords based on a selection of catalog labels. Enter a few characters of the keyword that you'd like to assign and then press [Alt]+[Down]. IDimager will open a drop-down box that displays all the catalog labels starting with those characters.
Optionally select a keyword from the list of catalog labels and press Enter to confirm it. You can then skip to the next/previous keyword field by pressing [Tab] or [Shift]+[Tab]. If you have dotted keywords switched on, the keywords will automatically be replaced with a dotted notation.
If a keyword is bold-faced, that indicates that the keyword is also available as a catalog label and matched against it.
Press {Ctrl]+[Del] to delete a keyword from the list.
Press [Ctrl]+[Ins] to insert a new keyword at the current position
Press [Ctrl]+[Up] to move a keyword up in the list
Press [Ctrl]+[Down] to move a keyword down in the list