manningtree

As Kristopher Tate promised, EXIF and IPTC extended metadata is now supported on Zooomr.

Here’s a link to the metadata test image I uploaded before on Zooomr, this version has tag’s and the description populated from the original metadata and the title has been used to replace the default image filename. (I think this means that you’d need to reimport images previously uploaded to get the metadata through – but that’s no great shakes considering.)

Technorati Tags: zooomr, metadata, IPTC, EXIF, thankyou

There’s a theory – which in my experience has a stack of supporting evidence – that doing an excellent job of fixing a problem or addressing an issue puts you in a better position than if the problem or issue had never existed.

In a previous post I commented on the lack of metadata support in Zooomr. Thomas Hawk, Chief Evangelist for Zooomr no less, commented that EXIF should persist through into Zooomr without the need to retag. Looking again, here’s what I found…

Original camera EXIF data is being preserved through the Zooomr upload process, but additional metadata (including mapping IPTC keywords to Zooomr tags) isn’t.

For example, take this picture uploaded to Zooomr:

zooomr

It has the camera EXIF data from my Sony DSC-V1, but additional
metadata (in this case added using Picasa, IrfanView and Photoshop
CS2) hasn’t been preserved (or if it has, it isn’t displayed).

If you look at the same file uploaded to flickr:

flickr

You’ll see a number of tags, the title and description have been populated from the EXIF and IPTC data in the uploaded image [1].

Thomas has already responded that they’ll take a look, even though I’m guessing they have plenty of stuff on their hands at the moment.

So, full marks for the response so far, and I’ll be watching with interest to see how Zooomr evolves.

[1] In the flickr example the only tag added in flickr was flicrUploadTag, likewise in Zooomr, zooomrUploadTag was added in the Zooomr upload screen.

Technorati Tags: zooomr, flickr, metadata, exif, iptc

[Disclaimer: zooomr is offering free 'pro' accounts to people that link to their pictures hosted on zooomr]

I’ve been using flickr for quite a while to share pictures, but there’s a new upstart on the block called zooomr. Zooomr has just launched version 2.0 which has some nice touches – my favourite after a quick 5min skim is the ability to easily geotag pictures and to see nearby tagged pictures in the normal zooomr picture view.

Here’s a picture of the Camel Estuary taken from a friends flat in Padstow:

padstow
Hosted on Zooomr

In the Zooomr screen shot below you can see the map that shows where the picture was taken as well as other pictures in nearby locations:

zooomrscreenshot
Hosted on Zooomr

which is really, really, nice. I’d pretty much given up on geotagging stuff pending a better (easier) way of doing the tagging.

Zooomr first caught my attention because of a reported disagreement with flickr over zooomr automagicaly exporting data from flickr to help people move accounts to zooomr. My concern on the flickr side was around metadata – any hint that flickr might tighten up on exporting metadata gets me nervous.

Unfortunately, Zooomr trips over on metadata. Last time I looked consistent support for metadata between different applications and online services was messy to say the least. On first inspection, Zooomr is worse; not only does it not export tags etc when you download images (i.e. when exporting from zooomr) but it doesn’t even handled tags in images that you upload. That means that if, like me, you tag images with metadata prior to uploading to an online service, when you use zooomr you’ll need to do it all twice – once locally and again when you’ve uploaded.

Another problem with Zooomr is the lack of an API (or at least an API that I can find – reportedly Zooomr are working on one) so for now, although I’m glad to see the competition, I’m sticking with flickr…

Technorati Tags: flickr
zooomr
metadata
geotagging

flickr

This is crossoak as seen by Websites as Graphs (via Kieren McCarthy). There’s a flickr tag for images of graphs of other sites.

Technorati Tags: websitesasgraphs

The piccy’s of our England-football-BBQ took a while to post, partly because of the general air of depression following the result, and partly because of a self-imposed block on downloading pictures from the camera until I’d automated that part of the workflow.

I’ve always had a strange feeling about software for copying pictures off camera cards, I couldn’t work out what the problem was that these applications were solving. But, the more digital photography I do, the more time that get’s soaked up in the administration – including what I realised was a significant chunk in copying, archiving, converting and tagging images as they came off the camera.

I’ve now implemented a automatic process that enables me to stick the flash card in the reader and retire with a cuppa in hand. The workflow I now use does the following:

• scan for source files – for me that’s JPG, TIFF, CR2 and DNG
• copy to a target directory on the PC – the workflow creates date-based subdirectories consistent with my archiving structure
• validate the copies – I’m using a MD5 hash to check content
• convert camera RAW files, in my case CR2s, to DNGs – using the Adobe DNG Converter via a command line driven sub process
• validate the converted DNGs – using dng_validate from the Adobe DNG SDK
• wipe clean the source flash card ready for the next day’s shooting

I have a few things on the todo list, first up is running a backup session on completion of the workflow, second is looking at improving the process I’m using to tag images with metadata, oh, and giving it a pretty UI…

I use Windows machines a lot, but I also use Macs and various flavours of Unix. For a while I’ve been recommending Macs to friends and family – especially for people who want something for normal life tasks: email, web, music, digital photo’s, basic authoring (letter writing), simple financial planning and personal decision making support. There’s a few reasons for this. Macs traditionally have come ‘fully loaded’ which, although not the best thing for people on a very tight budget, at least means there’s no lurking extras; Macs are well integrated, the user experience is normally a good one; Macs do a good job of hiding complex stuff – which makes the learning curve shallow; Macs are not popular, which has a side effect that people don’t try as hard or as often to exploit them with worms, viri and other malware; and finally, Macs are a good bet for creative and style-aware folk (that obviously doesn’t include me, but due to a quirk of marriage, them’s the circles I find myself in

I took a pause from recommending Macs after the Mac Intel announcement – i didn’t want people splashing out on a dead duck – but now even when Intel-based Macs abound, I’m questioning whether a Mac is still sound advice.

Recently Paul Thurrott highlighted a BBC report recommending people switch to Macs to avoid malware. Paul makes a good point

switching is hard, and making a blanket statement like “just switch to the Mac” is disrespectful of the difficulty real people will experience if they actually try to do so

This is especially pertinent, because someone I know with a Mac was just telling me what a pain it is – they are a teacher and, here in the UK, the exam boards don’t supply Mac compatible software for marking. Since their Mac has recently given up (the screen has gone and the quote for repair is most of the way to a new notebook) they’re looking at the possibility of a PC replacement.

There is however a more sinister reservation lurking, which is harder to articulate than the “loads of software won’t run on it” statement. You might have noticed that maintaining access to data is an important issue for me (see DNG and Backup) and that means more than just having copies or backups of the data, it’s ensuring that the data is in a format that you trust to be readable in the future, on whatever system you happen to have in the future. The problem is that the nice software that Apple ships with the Mac, and which is so good from a usability perspective, appears to lock away that precious data. Recently, there’s been a spate of high profile defections from Mac OS to Ubuntu (a Linux distribution) [1] and the openness (or lack thereof) of data formats crops up as a contributing reason. If those power users are worried about accessibility of their own data, then I’m loath to recommend it as a platform for friends and family to archive their lives with.

Now I’m probably biased on this, but dual booting a Mac between Mac OS and Windows with bootcamp, might help with application compatibility woes, but you’ve still got the thorny problem of open data access… and while we’re on this thought train, ubuntu doesn’t cut it because stuff doesn’t “just work“.

Maybe it’s time to start compiling a list of apps that just work, and just work with open data formats…

[1] See also Mark Pilgrim, Tim Bray, Cory Doctrow and this O’Reilly piece.