Tutorial Categorising Images

Tutorial - Categorising Images

In this section of the tutorial you will learn how to categorise new images. You will categorise the images imported in the previous step.

If you have not already done so select View - Database and clear any selected categories (you can use Categories - Clear All). You should now see thumbnails of the imported images. As they have no categories associated with them yet, they are displayed when no categories are selected!
Right click the first of these images (it should be a shot of a mountain up a valley) and select Edit Image Properties. You should now see a dialog box with no information in it except the index location and file extension which are all taken from the image file name. If there are already some selected categories and other data then you must have hit OK instead of Cancel in one of the earlier steps when viewing this dialog. If that is the case then clear all the old data out of the fields except the Index field and unselect all of the categories. You can use the two Clear buttons to achieve this. Then click the Show All button if it is displayed.
Now, this image is from Pakistan, so we need a new sub-category under Location. Click Location so that it is highlighted (it is not necessary to check the Location box as this will happen automatically later).
Click the Add button and type Pakistan as the new category name. Click OK and you will now see this new category alongside all the other Location sub-categories.
Click the check box for Pakistan. You do not need to check the Location category as this will be added automatically.
Under Subject check Mountains and under Activity check Climbing. You could also check Colour under Media.
This mountain is called Sangemar Mar so in the caption field type that (or anything else you wish!). We will leave the other fields as they are not required at this stage.
Click OK. You will return to the thumbnail view but now that image will have gone as it now has categories associated with it. We will come back to it later though!
Now right click the next image - a shot of some Edelweiss flowers - and select Edit Image Properties. You will immediately see that all the same data has been copied from the previous image with the caption highlighted. This is designed to make the categorisation process as painless as possible. Typically you are likely to be editing a sequences of images of similar (or identical) subject matter, and you may be able just to hit enter again or maybe just edit the caption to continue. However we are going to change some of the data for this image.
Change the caption to Edelweiss.
This image is not really relevant to climbing so uncheck the Climbing and Activity categories, however it is still Pakistan and is a mountain flower so we will leave the other two categories selected. It is also a flower so add a new category Flower to the current Flora category that is already under Subject (using the same steps as for Pakistan above) and check that new category.
Click OK. This image has now been categorised and is also no longer displayed. We could continue with the other images but that is probably enough for now!
Return to normal database viewing by selecting View - Database and have a play with the category tree (which now includes the new categories that we have just added) to view the new images. If you select Mountains then they will appear along with all the other mountain shots. If you also select Flora then the Edelweiss will be displayed (if Mountains is not selected then a shot of some moss will also be displayed. Continue to experiment with other combinations if you wish!

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For more information on the categorising images go here.