Working with Catalog Labels

The previous section described how you construct a catalog label structure using the Catalog Explorer. As read in the previous paragraph, we can open the Catalog Explorer by clicking the Spider web icon in the left Explorer bar. Also make sure that you have read the quick start paragraph of the Catalog Explorer in the "Getting started with IDimager" chapter.

The Catalog Explorer visualizes the catalog database which contains branches. One of these branches is the "Catalog Labels". This branch contains the hierarchical representation of your catalog label structure. If a label has underlying sub labels then these will be recognizable by a plus sign

. Click this plus sign to open the catalog label and display all labels that are on the level below the selected label. You can repeat this for every next level. The number of levels that you can use to build a catalog structure is not restricted. It is also possible to fully expand the tree from a certain level and below. Select the label and then press the keyboard combination [Alt]+[*]. This is the * key on the numerical part of your keyboard.

By browsing the catalog structure, IDimager will show all assigned images as thumbnails on the right side in the Collection Viewer. If an image has multiple labels assigned to it then that particular image will be contained in the collection for every of these labels.

The first level in the Catalog Labels branch represents the "catalog categories". While there are predefined categories available, you are free to create an unlimited number of additional categories. Some of these categories are fixed because they are used internally by the application. These fixed categories are People, Keywords, and Auto Catalog. Fixed in this context means that you can not delete them. Then again, you can rename the categories to whatever you like. Keep in mind though that if you rename one of the fixed categories that their name may no longer match what IDimager uses them for. So best to leave them untouched.

To create a new top category you select the "Catalog Labels" branch, right click and select "New Item" or press [Insert].

Name	The name of your category. This will be the name as it is displayed below the "Catalog Labels" branch
Private	By setting a category as "Private", you are actually saying that the catalog labels that you add under this category should not be written to images. Private categories are recognizable by the golden book icon, where the other categories have a blue book icon. You would typically use private categories to contain labels that you don't want to be available to the person that receives your images. For example; you shoot stock images and send these images to several stock agencies. However, you don't want these agencies to know which other agencies are approached with the same image. Still, you'd like to keep that info in your catalog. That is when you need a private category. The labels in this category are not written to the image file.
Use custom colors	Select this option if you want to use different colors for the category. Using different colors for a category allows you to make it "stand out" more. You can specify what background and font colors should be used.
Order	Specify the sequence order number as listed in the Catalog Labels branch