Keypict

An easy and efficient program for adding keywords to digital photos.

Purpose

Keypict specializes in photo keywords. With it you can document and organize your photos. Keypict is designed to work with other photo software. It is fast and makes the task of assigning keywords to large numbers of digital photos manageable.

The keywords are stored in your photos, not in a database that needs to be backed up. You can think of Keypict as writing on the back of the photo.

Your pictures become more organized and valuable when they contain keywords. Once assigned, other programs can use your keywords to find and sort your photos.

Overview

You add keywords efficiently with minimum keystrokes by assigning your common keywords to keys on the keyboard. Then one keystroke adds one or more keywords to your photo.

One typical use is to assign a key to the full name of each member of your family. As you view each photo only a few keystrokes are needed to add all the names of the people. (Enter) saves the changes and displays the next photo in the folder.

You can add any number of keywords leaving infrequently used ones unassigned. You can add these to your photos by selecting them from a list or menu.

Contents

Install

Download InstallKeypict.exe and double click it to install. You uninstall using the Control Panel “Add or Remove Programs”.

Quick Start

Window Elements

Window Elements

  1. Title
  2. Filename
  3. Asterisk appears if a change is made. A padlock icon appears when the file is read-only.
  4. Keywords separated by commas.
  5. Description
  6. Rating
  7. Position of the current photo in its folder.
  8. Total number of files in the folder.

The main window area displays the photo, preserving the photo’s aspect ratio.

The title and description will display on the right-hand side of the image when the window is resized wider.

When there are more keywords than space on the bottom line, the keywords scroll up, possibly displaying over the top of the image.

Opening a Photo

You can open a photo several ways.

Hint: The File Open menu (Ctrl+O) selects the current file in the dialog. You can quickly find the current photo and drag it from the dialog to a photo editing application.

Adding Keywords to Photos

There are several ways to add keywords to a photo.

  1. Press the key assigned to a keyword.
  2. Click on the keyword line at the bottom and type.
  3. Press (Ctrl+,) then type. (Ctrl+,) toggles in and out of typing mode.
  4. Right click on the photo and pick a keyword from the menu containing all of your keywords.
  5. Double click on a keyword in the Key List.
  6. Select a keyword in the Key List and press (Tab). You can select using incremental search by typing the first few characters of the keyword.
  7. Press (Ctrl+E) to add or change the keywords using a simple editbox.
  8. Copy and Paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) are useful when several photos in a row contain many of the same people. In this case you enter the keywords for the first photo, copy them to the clipboard, then paste them to the proceeding photos.

Hint: Copy and Edit allow you to get the keywords out of a photo for use when making new key assignments or for use in other programs.

Adding Title and Description

You add a title and description to your photo using the Edit dialog (Ctrl+E).

Rating a Photo

You rate your photo using the keys 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, by using the menu, or by clicking on the stars in the bottom right hand corner of the window. The number of red stars tells the rating.

Saving Changes

The (Enter) key saves the title, description, ratings and keywords in the photo, then displays the next photo in the directory. The data is not written unless it has changed, so you can use the (Enter) key like the down or right arrow. The appearance of an asterisk in the bottom left indicates a change has been made. The (Enter) key is the only way to save the changes. Other keys that move to a new photo, like the left and right arrow, discard the changes. There are no “are you sure?” prompts and no duplicate photos are created.

Menu Items

File Menu

Edit Menu

View Menu

Help Menu

Key List

The Key List shows all your keywords and their assigned key combinations. The Key List appears with (Ctrl+K).

You create, change or delete all your keywords here. You can also pick keywords to add to photos.

The left column displays the assigned key name, the center column displays the shift keys, and the right column displays the keyword(s). A menu appears at the top.

You can keep the key list open while using the program so you can see the keywords and their key assignments. If you leave the list open, it can either be in an active or inactive state.

Note: Like all Windows programs you can tell whether the list is active by looking at the title. Highlighted titles indicates an active window, a dimmed title indicates an inactive window.

When the list is active, keys you type select items in the list. When the list in inactive, the keys you type go to the main window and the program looks for your assigned keys. You can control what is active using the keyboard with (Ctrl+K). It toggles focus between the main window and the Key List.

Key List Menu

Keyword Menu

Sort Menu

You can sort by clicking on the column heading. Clicking a second time on the same header switches from ascending to descending order or visa versa. Holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the Keyword(s) header, sorts by the second word, often a person's last name.

You can resize the column widths and reorder them using the mouse by dragging the column header dividers or column headers.

The first time the Key List appears, it's positioned to the right of the main window. You can move and resize the list and your position will be used until you quit Keypict.

Key List is saved to the KeySet.txt file. For more information about this file see KeySet.txt.

Making a Selection

Before you can use a keyword in the key list you need to select it. You can select with the mouse or with the keyboard.

To select with the keyboard, type the first few characters of the keyword quickly. The first keyword that matches the characters typed is selected as you type. Once the desired keyword is selected press Tab to add it to the current photo.

For example, typing "F" then "L" selects keyword "Flower" because it begins with Fl. You can also use the up and down arrows to select through the list or repeatedly type the first letter of the keyword.

New Key and Edit Key Dialog

You reach the New Key or Edit Key dialog from the Key List.

Use the New Key dialog to add new keywords and assign them to key combinations. Use the Edit Key dialog to change existing keywords or to change their key assignment.

Both dialogs contain the same three sections: key, shift key(s) and keyword(s).

Some key combinations are used by the system so they are not good choices for keyword assignments (e.g., (Ctrl+Alt+Delete), etc).

You can quickly generate new key assignments by following this procedure from the main window:

  1. Press (Ctrl+K): This brings up the Key List.
  2. Press (Ctrl+N): This brings up the New Key dialog.
  3. Press (key combination): This selects the key to assign and switches to the keyword(s) editbox.
  4. Type the the keyword or keywords for this key.
  5. Press (Enter): This saves the key assignment and closes the dialog.
  6. Repeat steps 2-5 to assign other keywords.
  7. Press (Esc) when done to close the Key List.

Hint: If you want to create many unassigned keywords, press Shift+N for step 2. Focus will be given to the Keyword(s) editbox and Unassigned will be checked.

Shift Keys

There are seven different shift keys to use with your key assignments. The shift keys are shown two different ways depending on whether you use a single shift key or multiple shift keys with your assignment. For a single shift key, the shift key is spelled out. For multiple shift keys, the shift keys are shown in parentheses using one letter abbreviations. For example: Ctrl+Z, Shift+U, Alt+P and (sc)+Z, (Sa)+W, (Csc)+L.

Shift Keys and abbreviations:

  1. Shift: s
  2. Ctrl: c
  3. Alt: a
  4. Apps: p
  5. Caps Lock: C
  6. Scroll Lock: S
  7. Num Lock: N

Hint: You can use the Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and Num Lock keys, and combinations of them, to make different “key sets” (e.g., family, girl scouts, and garden). Using the lock keys gives you seven additional sets, C, S, N, CS, CN, SN, CSN.

Edit Dialog

You can add and change your photo’s title and description using the Edit dialog (Ctrl+E) off the File menu.

Edit is also another way to add and change the current photo's keywords.

You can add linefeeds in the description by typing (Enter). Everywhere else in the dialog (Enter) closes the dialog as if you pressed OK. You can close the dialog when in the description field, or anywhere in the dialog, using (Ctrl+Enter).

The Save & Next button saves your edits and displays the next image. Shift+Enter is the shortcut.

The first time you open the Edit dialog it appears centered over the main window. You can move the dialog to a better position on the screen and this position will be remembered and used until you quit Keypict.

Program Keys

Keypict uses a set of keys to control the program. You cannot reassign these keys.

You rate photos using the number keys 0-5. You can reassign these if you like. You can reassign Ctrl+N, Shift+N and Tab but it might be confusing since the Key List dialog uses these.

Drawing Digital Negatives

Drawing a Digital Negative (DNG) file can take a couple of seconds depending on the speed of your computer. To make it appear faster Keypict renders the high resolution data in the background. If you see the message "Generating high resolution image...", the background process is working on the image. The thumbnail image is drawn until the high resolution data becomes available.

If the menu item “Draw Thumbnail” is checked, the thumbnail image is drawn instead of the high resolution data. Since the high resolution data is cached it is recommended that you use it (uncheck Draw Thumbnail) since it will be faster.

There are several possible types of thumbnails in the digital negative file of various sizes. It is recommended that you create your files using medium or full resolution JPEG thumbnails, since they look good on screen and increase the size of the digital negative file by less than 100K. There is always a small, 256 pixel, TIFF thumbnail available but it appears pixilated when drawn at normal window size.  When you edit a DNG file the thumbnail becomes out-of-sync with the image unless you tell your DNG editor to update the thumbnail when you make changes to the image.

Supported Formats

Keypict supports Digital Negative (DNG), Tiff and JPEG digital photo files.

Installed Files

The following files are installed:

The following files are created in your user data folder when you run Keypict:

Keypict.ini

The Keypict.ini file contains Keypict’s current settings, one setting per line. When you launch Keypict these settings are used:

The first time you launch (when a Keypict.ini or the current file is missing), the main window displays simple instructions to help you begin using the program.

You can find Keypict.ini in your user document and settings folder. For example, c:\Documents and Settings\your-folder\Application Data\Keypict\.

KeySet.txt

KeySet.txt contains the keywords and their key assignments. This file is created and modified by the Key List dialog. It is a comma separated Unicode text file.

Keypict reads in the file every time you switch to Keypict from another application. Advanced users can edit the file in a text editor and see the changes in Keypict without closing down and re-launching. You can use Windows Notepad to create and edit Unicode files. From Notepad's Save As dialog use "Unicode" as the encoding.

You can find the KeySet.txt in your user document and settings folder. For example, c:\Documents and Settings\your-folder\Application Data\Keypict\.

Metadata

The photo's title, description, ratings, and keywords (among others) are called photo metadata. Keypict saves the metadata in the photo using standard formats so you can access the title, description, ratings and keywords by many other programs.

For DNG and Tiff photos, the metadata is saved in XMP. Most often the photo size remains exactly the same after writing the metadata. This is possible because XMP metadata contains padding. If the metadata exceed the padding space, the photo is resized to hold the keywords plus new padding. Initial padding is about 2K.

For JPEG photos both XMP and IPTC Headers are written to the photo. XMP is a newer format that includes all the data of IPTC. However, not all programs are updated to use XMP so Keypict writes the older IPTC headers as well. If the XMP and IPTC data become out of sync, the Duplicates dialog appears, see Duplicates Dialog.

For more information on XMP and IPTC see:

Keypict uses the Adobe XMP metadata library. Here is its copyright notice:

Copyright 2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated and others. All rights reserved. The original version of this source code may be found at http://adobe.com.

Duplicates Dialog

JPEG photos contains title, description and keywords in the XMP and IPTC Headers sections of the file. Keypict writes both, keeping them in sync. Some photo editing applications only change the IPCT Header section and some only change the XMP section. When Keypict displays a photo with different titles, descriptions or keywords, the Duplicates dialog appears. The dialog allows you to pick which version to use. It also allows you to always use the XMP or always use the IPTC Header information.

About Box

The About Box shows the copyright and version number. For a registered version, the licensed user’s name is displayed. In the trial version, the number of remaining evaluation days is shown.

Enter Key Dialog

When you launch an evaluation version, a reminder dialog is displayed. The Enter Key button allows you to register Keypict. When you buy a license to Keypict you receive an e-mail with your key code and user name that you use to register. The first time you launch after registering, Keypict is activated using the internet.