[Digikam-users] How to tag (not technically)

[Thomas Hummel]

Hello,

I'd like to have your thoughts about how to choose a good tagging scheme.
Having thought about metadata, I came to the following conclusion :

There is in fact 3 levels of meta-data :

  . a collection name is a metadata common to several albums

  . an album name is a metadata common to several pictures

  . a tag is a metadata specific to one picture

In fact there is a fourth one, implied by the directory layout of albums :

  . a subdirectory (containing only albums or subdirectorires) is also a 
    metadata, common to several albums

So, what seem to be a good idea in the beginnig, that is for instance, tagging
each shot with

  . people on it
  . location it was taken

may be not so good because it can bring some information redundancy.

For instance, an album named "New York" will obviously hold pictures taken in 
New York. So the metadata "New York" may not need to be duplicated as a tag on
each picture of the album.  On the other hand, if, for some reason, one picture
from that album is moved elsewhere, the location ("New York") metadata is lost.

The same question may arise for each level of metadata mentionned above.  So,
what would be the most interesting strategy to deal with that kind of issues ?

Thanks.