asset management
Unless you are a stock library you are not going to want to enter the amount of information that
the IPTC* metadata supports. I have adopted an ‘add them as I need them’ approach, deleting the
fi elds I do not require in Bridge’s preferences. Keywords have a tabbed section all to themselves
and cannot be added in the IPTC section of the Metadata tab. Keywords take a little thought and
preparation if they are to be of any use. You will need to sit down and write a list of words that
describes the sort of subjects you shoot and the sorts of words you would use to retrieve these
subjects if lost. As I am primarily a travel/landscape photographer I have broken my work up into
geographical regions (Asia, Europe, North America etc.) and topographical zones (Mountains,
Rivers, Beaches, Deserts etc.). After you have established a library of useful keywords you can
then start to select multiple fi les and click on the keywords to write the metadata to the fi les.
When Keywords have been assigned to your images you can search your drives by keyword (Edit
Find) as you would browse for a website where you are unsure of the URL. Use ‘Batch Rename’
for copying and renaming the fi les you fi nd to a new folder or use the Save As Collection feature
to create a collection of previews that link back to the original fi les.
*Useless information > IPTC stands for ‘International Press and Telecommunications
Council’ - an organization of the worlds leading news agencies who were responsible for
standardizing this part of the metadata information.