Thanks for the explanation about iPhoto. Storing information about a file in someplace other than within the file is destined to fail over long periods of time.
A friend of mine pointed out that iPhoto and other applications strip the metadata from the image files and store them in an external db for performance reasons. He said that the iPhoto export function reinserts the metadata on export. If there was some setting that would make this the default behavior (regardless of performance) so that I don't have to do it on every change to every file, then it would meet my needs. I don't mind it using a cache of the metadata for searching. But when I enter content I insist that it gets inserted into the file and not hidden somewhere else. Any other behavior is just a waste of time, as far as archiving goes. Any ideas on how to get iPhoto (or anything else) to do this? Richard On Friday January 14 2011 09:37:32 Lonnie Olson <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 12:24 AM, Richard Esplin > <[email protected]> wrote: > > How do you label and organize your photos in an archive-able, preservable, > > cross-platform, vendor-neutral way? > > <snip> > > Just for your information, iPhoto comes close to your requirements. > * Archive-able - Backup the iPhoto Library folder > * Preservable - Restore the folder > * Cross-platform - No > * Vendor-neutral - possibly with some simple import scripts > > iPhoto stores very little in the EXIF data in your file, but the meta > data is available in quite a few different ways inside your folder. > * XML - Look in the AlbumData.xml and AlbumData2.xml > These connect your albums and such to images. > * Binary plist - easily convertable to XML, Look into Metadata Backup folder > * SQLite database - Look into iPhotoMain.db which contains a whole lot > of data about your images. > > Personally I doubt that there will ever be a single standard for > storing meta data about your photos. Especially since this meta data > will always be dependent upon the features of the software you use. > IMHO, the best you can do is to make sure your meta data is exportable > or accessible in some way. > > --lonnie /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
