I've been trying to setup some process flows for myself and my genealogy work - an attempt to create good research habits. But, I struggled with photos. I have photos on my phone, on websites like Facebook and Shutterfly, in Evernote, on my pc. Ugggggg - it's a disorganized mess. And don't get me started on file naming. I started out with a naming convention but what about group shots and groups shots with different families/surnames. Was I supposed to make duplicates and file them in each respective family folder? It was just a nightmare.
I kept hearing people online throw around the term 'metadata', but I didn't really know what that was or how to get it attached to my photos. So, I did some research and found that you could add a lot of information to your photos in Windows Explorer on your computer. Awesome! Now I can tag each image with names, places, document types and dates. I don't need to worry about the file name, because I can filter on any of those items. I can even copy and paste a source citation for the photo or document into the comments field. Problem solved, right? Wrong!
What I found out is that after you go through all the hard work of entering that metadata, the minute you copy the file to a different location, the metadata gets left behind. Poof! It's-a-gone.
Enter ImBatch. This application allows you to setup a task to copy files to a folder of your choice along with the metadata (specifically the XML data that you've entered in Windows Explorer). And, you can copy files in batches, so if you want to share a series of photos with a cousin, you can select them and then use a task to copy/paste them all to say a Dropbox folder and those files in the Dropbox folder still have all your metadata. Finally, problem solved.
So back to my process flow in case you were wondering. I now scan my photos in .tif format to get the best quality. I save them all in one folder named Family Tree Photos - TIF. These are my master files. I add all the metadata I want to them. Then, I use ImBatch to copy everything in that folder, make it .jpg format and save it to my Family Tree Photos - JPG. Now I have a version with metadata that I can use for sharing, adding to websites, etc.
ImBatch is free for non-commercial use, so check it out and let me know what you think.
