HOWTO: Add Flickr tags identifying everyone at a party

[sylvar]

Flickr is neat. It lets you add tags to each photo so that you can index your shots. At a party, for example, you might want to add the name of each person in an image. But that's a whole lot of typing.

I've got around 600 photos of our wedding and reception. There were around 200 guests, and I recognize about 150 of them in the photos. That's complicated.

Worse, if you want to use a full name as a tag, you have to put it in quotes.

The naive way to do it is to click "Add a tag" and then type:

"Ben Ostrowsky" "Matt Ostrowsky" "Peter Ostrowsky" "Ellen Fike" "David Fike"

Consider that some photos have 20 recognizable faces. Your fingers will be cramping!

Instead, use short nicknames at first:

me matt dad mom floyd

Then, when you've tagged everyone with nicknames, use Flickr's tag management options to change all instances of dad to Peter Ostrowsky.

Just make sure you identify people fairly consistently. If there are two people named Chris, you'll have to choose nicknames, use last names, etc. Capitalization doesn't matter, but spelling does (of course). So Rian and his son-in-law Ryan have their own tags, but if you use me for yourself, you mustn't use ME for Mary-Ellen.

And if there's someone in the photo whose name escapes you, just use whoami and come back to it later.

Comments

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Not a high priority, but the tagging system does make it easy to either give someone a pseudonym (which I generally try to do for tregoweth at his request) or select subsets of photos to make friends-only while leaving other photos unaffected.

Generally speaking, I hope people can find photos of my friends and relatives.

[ximinez]

I'd generally rather have a pseudonym, too.

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Okay, I've changed your tag to "cardinalximinez".

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Your maiden name is not a tag on any of my photos, nor (as far as I know) has it ever been. Was it listed on any pop-up notes?

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

OK, I have changed http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/56601211/ to show you as "Froglette" in the popup notes.

[tealfroglette.livejournal.com]

thank you. frogs pop up hoppy-like. :)

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

There's a Nina in my family (my stepbrother's partner). Should I just call you "Froglette"?

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'll just call you Froglette.

[tealfroglette.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :) I looked around on the web at froglette one day and was astounded at the number of people who use what i thought was my name. it led to a smile about tealfroglette because then hopefully i wouldn't be confused with some of the other folks. i should have used a number on all web stuffies, like froglette87, but i didn't know the 87 number would turn out to be so close to me.