Upload Annotate and Share Photos with PictureSyncPosted by Andy Atkinson on September 12, 2006 | Post type: Gain PictureSync is an application that lets users easily annotate and upload their photos to various photo sharing services, or move annotated photos to another folder (FTP them to a remote site). Annotating a photo means to add descriptive information to the photo (metadata), such as a title, description, keyword, or geographic location (latitude and longitude). This data is different from the EXIF data that your digital camera records and embeds into the output file. Unlike other applications that let you annotate photos, PictureSync stores annotation data according to an extensible Adobe standard called XMP (Extensible Media Platform). The tremendous advantage here is that you can annotate your photos on your local hard disk first, where it's fast, then upload your photos to a photo sharing service. Photo sharing services like SmugMug and Flickr will read XMP data and implement the display of that data differently, but they do it for "free," you don't have to duplicate the effort of annotating photos (plus the data is embedded into the photo should you decide to use a different photo service or application). I've uploaded around 1000 photos to SmugMug using versions 1.4, 1.5 and the Beta version of 1.6 of PictureSync, and I think it is great application. The application is available for free, but US $14 is requested for "frequent or professional use," a small price to pay for such a valuable tool.
FeaturesThere are a lot of features in PictureSync, I'll briefly summarize the ones I use most. First I use only the full screen editor to tag my photos. Currently I have to advance through photos with the mouse, and cannot move forward and backward in Fullscreen edit mode with the keyboard (which would be faster when annotating large sets), but this is merely a nuisance (and I’ve notified the developer). A useful feature of PictureSync is that, once connected to a photo service, you are able to see whether the photo is already uploaded. This feature may break if you start moving galleries or sets around. I'm not sure how the developer implemented this feature and it probably varies among photo services. The desktop integration feature I use is the drag-and-drop. I open a folder in OS X Finder, and simply drag one or many folders of pictures into PictureSync (or individual photos). If I drop a collection of 200 8 megapixel photos (which can be 2-4MB each in size) into PictureSync, it takes about 2-3 minutes on my G4 iBook with 1.5GB RAM before I can begin annotating the collection (this is fast enough for me, your results will vary). Once I can begin annotating photos, I open the full screen editor and add titles, descriptions, and keywords. When I am done I select a SmugMug gallery (which I’ve already created through the SmugMug user interface) and let it begin uploading. It shows me a thumbnail of each image as it is uploaded, the upload rate, and the overall progress. I've posted some screenshots of my upload workflow below. What about iPhoto?I am primarily a PC user, so when I use my Mac, I want applications that are, ideally, operating system agnostic, like web applications or applications that have been ported to multiple environments. Jacob, the developer of PictureSync whom I've corresponded with, assures me a Windows version of PictureSync is on the way. I’ll be sure to post a review here when that happens. I’ve tried using iPhoto but found a number of problems with it. First I don't use iPhoto for any other reasons, so to use it exclusively as an annotation tool is too difficult. Second the Title field and Comments field are the only useful options to input metadata for my pictures, and they are not handled by SmugMug as I expected. My minimal research turned up a proprietary format for the way Apple encodes the metadata. This happens to work with SmugMug, since they’ve implemented handlers for Apple metadata encoding, but I’m thinking long term, when I won’t be using SmugMug anymore and want to preserve the hours and hours of effort I put in to add descriptive titles, captions, and keywords. The Title field in iPhoto is too restrictive with the character limit as well, and there is no field for keywords or tags, which is a critical annotation I make to my photos.
PictureSync supports many photo sharing services Photo servicesI was surprised by how many photo sharing services PictureSync is compatible with. I'm not sure if Jacob has plans for new photo services like Zooomr or Riya, certainly the development effort must be justified by users requesting the update to PictureSync, so make sure to contact Holocore if you use those photo services.
Upload to SmugMug gallery Frequent or professional useAnything beyond minimal use constitutes "frequent or professional use" in my opinion, and at US $14 you can't really go wrong. The upgrade process to the paid version was very easy, and took just a few minutes to set up. My upload workflow with screenshotsThe following brief guide will show you how I acquire, annotate, and upload a photo to the photo sharing service SmugMug. I may augment this with a video in the future. (1) Acquire the photo using the software that came with your digital camera, software preloaded in your operating system, or from another device like a scanner. PictureSync supports a number of file formats, such as JPG, PNG, even video formats like AVI. In this example I'll be dragging and dropping a photo of some seashells into PictureSync.
From the Finder, drag an image or an entire folder onto PictureSync (2) Now I can click the picture to select it, and I'll see annotations options on the right where I can add a title, caption, keywords, and other metadata. I actually use the Fullscreen mode to annotate photos (which Jacob told me is less popular), which can be found under
Fullscreen edit mode makes it easier to annotate photos (3) The Fullscreen edit mode is a nice brushed metal looking, simplistic form with various text boxes and text areas where you can input your annotations (a.k.a. metadata). Each time you navigate forward or backward between your photos, your annotations are saved. In the event that PictureSync or your Mac crashes (hey, it could happen!) your annotations are safe since they are embedded into the photo during your authoring session. The primary way that I think PictureSync can be improved is performance between photos (although I am impressed with performance on my machine and 8MP photos in general) and keyboard navigation to make data entry faster. Additional features like autocomplete or auto-suggest of keywords, titles, etc. would be nice as well.
There are many fields of information to choose from (4) I've already created my photo sharing account in PictureSync, so the only step that remains is to select a gallery (that I've already created from my SmugMug administration page) and hit Upload.
For SmugMug, I create a gallery in advance, then select it here When PictureSync completes it gives me a nice message that tells me if all photos were uploaded or not. From there I navigate to my gallery page at SmugMug, refresh the page, and presto, all my images and annotations are uploaded. PictureSync is an interesting application with a bright future. For now it fills a gap in adding useful annotations. With recent developments by Flickr to allow people to easily "geotag"(add geography data to pictures), there is certainly no shortage of features to add to PictureSync. A Windows version is expected, at which time I’ll be able to recommend this great application to more friends and family running Windows. Stay tuned to the PictureSync website for the latest information. About the author(s) Andy started Pain in the Tech in 2005 as a way to share tips and tutorials with friends and family, and evangelize great products and services. By 2008, Pain in the Tech had 7 contributors, thousands of daily page views. Site ownership was transitioned to Matt Thommes in 2008. Comments
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