Read existing tags / keywords in the image metadata

[wonx]

Hi. I'm pleasantly surprised with the speed in which this tool is being developed. I use it almost daily and it's basically my main to access my photo library on my NAS.

Along the years, I have been manually tagging all my pictures. I have several thousand different keywords at this point, perfectly organized in a hierarchical way. For instance, I like nature photography, so I have any animal or plant species categorized by Taxonomy. Here's an example:

I have noticed that memories already reads some picture metadata. For instance, I can see the title and captions of my pictures in the app, which is great. I suppose this is extractex via exiftool. I wonder if the same could be done for the keywords in an image.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. No, it's just a feature request, not linked to any problem.

Describe the solution you'd like So, the same way recognize can generate tags based on the image contents and save it to the database, something similar could be done with already existing keywords. Although I wouldn't mind keeping them in separate sections.

Although tag hierarchy might not be a priority, it would be nice to have. The Places section of Memories already has a hierarchy support implemented (Country/State/City), so something similar could be implemented. I believe tags can be stored in three different spaces: EXIF, IPTC and XMP. I'm not sure, but I believe only the XMP space supports hierarchical tags.

Also, the whole point of being able to read tags is to be able to search for them. Just like the existing Tags section in memories.

At least for me, tags being read-only in Memories is perfectly fine. I use other tools to administer my library.

I'll be happy to provide tagged pictures examples that you can use as a reference, and assist with beta-testing if necessary.

Describe alternatives you've considered I currently use PiGallery2 for that specific purpose. It has tag and faces support and the search function is fast. Ideally I'd like to have everything in a single tool.

[troed]

I'm looking for this functionality as well, and have made a (albeit quite brief) look at the code.

Current handling of adding tags is done in EditTags.vue which contains code to not add duplicates etc. Automartic updating of Metadata is handled in Metadata.vue. A naïve proposal would be to break out some of the tag handling code from EditTags.vue into a utility method and then call it from Metadata.vue automatically as well when a suitable Exif field is found.

On that note, I've used exiftool with -MWG:Keywords to add tags to my photos, and it seems to only fill in the standard Exif Subject field by default. I think the full array of MWG:Keywords fields would need to be considered?

https://exiftool.org/TagNames/MWG.html

[poggenpower]

I am using hierarchical tags also. I am maintaining them via [Digikam] a desktop app for photo management. Other tools like shotwell and f-spot does the same.

[Franconian-IT]

I would also love to have this feature. Since most photo programmes (e.g. GIMP) are able to tag photos with keywords and the function is even integrated into the Windows File Explorer. Users who already have a tagged photo collection could then import these into Nextclud & Memories while retaining the tags / keywords.

Example: Exif Tools

Example: Windows File Explorer

[r-mclean]

I'd like to add another vote for support for hierarchical tags / keywords.

[Rapy]

I would like to express my support for this suggestion as well. Whoever takes photos minimally serious categorizes them in one way or another. A support for searchable stored-in-file photo tags would be an essential feature for MEMORIES.

I am fully aware of the "chaos" with stored-in-file photo tags. There are many standards (EXIF, IPTC, XMP) with non-compatible terminologies (Tag,Label,Subject, Keyword, Category)

By the way, memories is really awesome. Thnx!