You are not going to fill out 10000 cards manually unless you are a librarian, a tax department employee or simply a mad person. Many images have something in common and they should be processed automatically to save your time. It's very bad if you tend to update more than 3 images manually when you deal with such fields like Location or Groups, it's a choice of blockheads. Before updating several records manually, always ask yourself: "Is it possible to process this field for at least some of these files in a batch process?". If you find at least 3 such files, don't be lazy to run the batch processor. If you take this rule as a habit, you will save a lot of your time. You will find a few batch strategies at the end of this page.
Click [Show batch floating window] to open an auxiliary window. By default it overlaps the preview image to fit old 800x600 screens, but you can move it to another position if your screen is larger.
Before batch processing files you should check them. Please don't confuse "checked" and "selected". The file is checked when the checkbox near its name is ticked. The file is selected when its name has blue background (in contrast to light background of unselected files). To select a group (or groups) of files, use standard Windows combinations of Ctrl and/or Shift presses and mouse clicks; Ctrl-A selects all files. To remove selected files from the file list use "Del" keyboard key (neither actual files nor database records are deleted). To check a group of files first select them and then use the file list pop-up menu to check selected files.
Now that the files are checked you may check the fields you want to alter in the Batch floating window, fill out these fields in the edit form and click [Batch update] button.
Be careful: before starting a batch process always ensure that only needed fields are checked in the floating window, otherwise you may casually erase or overwrite a great piece of information in the checked records! Remember - batch processes are not revertible!
[Batch remove] button is used to delete checked records from the database.
Description and Comments.
In most cases it's useless to fill these tags for every single file, so you may use a generic description that suits the whole group of photos, something like "My friends and me in Meyrones". Of course, when you were young and had nothing to do, you may have added precise descriptions for every single photo, like "Mike hits Joe with a 50-centimeter fish". If you ever did this work and the description are saved in exif or iptc, you can batch import them now! When importing exif or iptc metadata in a batch process, you should use tag names from SHORTCUTS submenu. Shortcuts will be inserted wrapped in %-signs, like %Description%. When the batch processor finds such a shortcut, it will replace it with "Description" tag for the file being currently processed. You can combine text and tags, for example "The photo was taken on %DateTime% by %Copyright%" will be replaced with "The photo was taken on 2006:02:28 13:23:56 by Anatoliy Kovalenko".
Keywords.
There is no sense in batch updating this field because it is used to help you find single photos. If you feel that several photos should have one and the same keyword, maybe it's better to create a separate group for them?
Datetime.
Actually, it's recommended to batch update all newly added photos with "%DateTimeOriginal%" value - it will save you a lot of time later. You may also want to batch update this field when you don't remember day and month when the photo was taken but remember the year. In this case use "1988:01:01 00:00:00". Sure, if you see that the picture was taken in Summer, set "1988:06:01 00:00:00". This simple trick will give better results when you use "search by season" method.
Location.
This field is in love with the batch processor! Every time you come back home with some images in your digital camera you surely have a bunch of photos taken in one place.
GPS.
Although it seems illogical to batch process this field because almost every your photo should have unique coordinates (moved to 1 millimeter - another position!), still you'll use batch processor with this field often enough. The problem is that cameras with a GPS receiver aren't going to be popular at least in the nearest 5-10 years, and by the time you'll get such a device, you'll have to calculate positions manually. It's recommended to select a central position for a set of photos and batch update it! For instance, if you made many shots in one city, you can use the coordinates of the city center for all these images. It's up to you to decide what precision will suit you - in most cases 10 km will be acceptable.
Groups.
It's more convenient to batch update groups than any other field because there three methods:
Impression and quality.
These fields are rarely modified in batch processes because these parameters are usually individual for every image. At the other hand, you may prefer to select your favorite images in the PV using thumbnail mode, drag them to Enot and set "vivid" impression to all dragged files.
The following strategies are optimized for the PVs working in standard mode only. If you work in stupid mode, you should drag files to the File List from real locations only - do not drag PV thumbnails shown by pressing [View] button in stupid mode.
Batch updating Location.
Assigning groups in a batch process.
This is probably the most boring work because you'll have to examine every photo you have, but sensible grouping gives you 100% success in your further searches. Moreover, you will need to do it only once. Although the time losses to sort out all your photos may be horrific, you may reduce it if you take advantage of Enot and PV interaction. There are two well known facts:
The idea of this is as follows: the sorting of photos is a rare case when double or even triple work will save you a lot of your time. Instead of analyzing each of 10000 photos separately, it's better to divide all photos to smaller groups before you start to analyze them. For instance, you want to create groups
\People\Friends\Jane
\People\Friends\Mike
Besides, you have a lot of other photos that will make it difficult to sort out all Jane and Mike photos easily. Don't try to pick Jane and Mike photos one-by one - it will take a lot of time to analyze 10000 photos. First, create a auxiliary category:
\People\All
Let your PV show all your images (can do it by means of [View] in Enot), use the PV's thumbnails to sort out all photos with people. It's not difficult to tell a human from a car. At this step your brain won't be distracted by finding details in the photos to tell Mike and Jane photos from others. Save all these photos to "\People\All" group. Now, make Enot show only people photos in the PV thumbnail view. Select only Jane thumbnails, drag them to Enot and save them to "\People\Friends\Jane" group. It is much easier to do it now, because, first of all, you have much less than 10000 photos: non-people photos are not shown; second, the brain is concentrated on face details only - no need to think "Is it a man or a tree trunk?". Then make Enot sort out "\People\All" excluding "\People\Friends\Jane", show them in the PV; sort out Mike photos.
You wonder, why it will take less time. See: when you sort out Jane and Mike photos from unsorted photos, the brain should always switch between two notions: does the picture shows a person and if yes, who is the person exactly. You should do the complete review of all your photos 2 times, studying the details of every photo. And suppose that you have not 2 but 20 friends, you will have to see 10000 photos 20 times to sort out 20 groups of photos. If you try this method, you will find that your brain gets tired quickly. Now see how it works when you divide your work to simple subtasks:
Step 1. Sorting out photos showing people, suppose initially you have 900 unsorted photos (the lines show random sets of 100 photos).
Image100.Is it a person? No.
Image200.Is it a person? No.
Image300.Is it a person? Yes.
Image400.Is it a person? No.
Image500.Is it a person? No.
Image600.Is it a person? Yes.
Image700.Is it a person? No.
Image800.Is it a person? No.
Image900.Is it a person? Yes.
Step 2. Sorting out photos showing Jane, working with 300 photos of people (bold in step 1) - no need to view 600 photos (italic lines) sorted out in the first step.
Image300.Is it Jane? No.
Image600.Is it Jane? Yes.
Image900.Is it Jane? No.
Step 3. Sorting out photos showing Mike, working with 200 photos of people, no need to view Jane photos again.
Image300.Is it Mike? No.
Image900.Is it Mike? Yes.
Step X. If you will ever have to sort out photos of other friends, you will find that you need to check only 100 photos (Image300 in our example).
Just simple calculations for our case: if you run 3 full reviews for 3 friends, you will see 900*3=2700 photos. If you use our strategy, you will see 900+300+200+100=1500 photos. The work that looked triple at first sight turned out to be almost 2 times faster. Even if you have more than two friends to sort out, the number of the pictures you will have to see again will decrease each time you add a new group. What's more important, the brain works automatically because the work is conformed at each step: In the first step all you have to do is distinguish people from trees, cars and other stuff, it's not that difficult. In the second step you need to tell Jane from your other friends, it's also simple because your brain analyzes not the whole picture but only face details. And in the third step you tell Mike photos from the photos of your friends, where the photos of Jane will not be shown.
It was a very simple example with just two notions (people/non-people, right-person/wrong person). But suppose you have more complicated subgroups:
\Towns\Large
\Towns\Small
\Nature\Rivers
\Nature\Lakes
\Nature\Forests\Pine
\Nature\Forests\Birch
\Nature\Forests\Oak
Can you imagine how overloaded your brain will be if you have to answer the following set of question 10000 times?
Is the picture shows a town? No.
Is the picture shows a river? No.
Is the picture shows a lake? No.
Is the picture shows a forest? Yes.
Is the forest Pine? No.
Is the forest Birch? No.
Is the forest Oak? Yes.
Instead of doing it, it's easier to sort out all forest pictures by asking
yourself "Is the picture shows a forest?". Your brain doesn't care
what forest exactly it is, so the work goes fast. Now, when you have only forest
photos, you go again with the question "Is this an Oak forest?". Your
brain already knows that it is surely a forest, so all you have to do is tell
Oaks from other kinds of trees.
To summarize: Try avoiding sorting out photos belonging to different
notions in one pass. Always divide your work to several smaller tasks when you
will have to ask yoursef only one question "Is it the thing I look for
or not". Avoid multiple questions like "Is it the right thing, and
if it is, what properties it has?". Make your brain work automatically,
this can only be achieved when you need to select "Yes" or "No".
Such an approach increases the processing speed and reduces the number of mismatches.
The smart strategy in practice.
You won't believe but I've spent only 2 days (worked about 4 hours per day) to sort out ALL my 4300+ photos to the groups. I use a separate subgroup for family photos, for photos of myself, for photos of each friend and for photos of other familiar people. Moreover, I've set up 2 groups for the places that I visit more often (it is about 1000 photos for each group, about 50% of all my photos in total). Such groups has also smaller subgroups, including subdivision into more specific places. The smallest subdivisions are called "Around the house" and "Inside the house". Do you believe that such a laborious work can be done in 2 days? I managed it because I used your stategy: first I sorted out all photos that were ever taken around, I've got about 1000 photos, and then I divided these 1000 photos into smaller groups like "shots taken near the river", "shots taken right around", "shots of the house", etc. Each time I sorted out another group, I had to work with less files, so when I started, I worked with 4300+ photos, and when I worked with final subgroups I had about 100 files to review for every group :-) It is very fast in ACDSee 5.0 - if you open ACDSee on full screen, you will be able to examine about 16 thumbnails at one sight, thus it takes about half a minute to see 100 thumbnails and select proper ones. Now I don't have to browse through all my collection to find all photos of my friends or the photos taken in my house! I just check the corresponding group in Enot and enjoy the results right away!
With many thanks,
<Satisfied User>.