Managing Image Metadata in SharePoint Image Library

By Jeff Tincher | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) (784 views)

 

Ever upload images in huge batches to your SharePoint Picture Library? I just did the other day and then had to think how I would update keywords and metadata for hundreds of photos. I sure wasn’t going to click Edit Properties on all of the photos!

If this was a normal Document library, no problem. I’d have just “Edit in datasheet” and bulk edited the metadata, but you cannot do this in an picture library. I’m not 100% sure of the reason, but probably has to do with how the images are stored in the database.

So what you’ll have to do is create an Access View, that is if you have Access 2007 installed on your PC.  The new Access view will allow you to modify the metadata for your images.

 

Ok, so how do you start?

1. Go to your Picture Library and Create a new view

image

2. Choose Access View 

accessview

3. Save the Access DB file somewhere, such as your desktop or My Documents

4. Create Access View window appears, select Datasheet. That is the best way to edit bulk data.

create access view

5. Edit your metadata. to save, just click in another record

image

I updated all of Springhouse’s official logos by copying and pasting “Official Logo” into each record.

Why didn’t I just click and drag?

Oh I wish I could have done that but it is not allowed when using Access, that’s more of an Excel feature. If you just have a hundred or so images to update, I’d just suggest editing the metadata on each item. I did it this way and just copied and pasted. You could probably come up with a nice update query within Access to find and replace for the images you just uploaded. If you do resort to a query, I’d suggest uploaded images in groups of common metadata so you can find all new images or those with blank column/metadata and update those first.

Hope this helps you with large image galleries and Picture Libraries.

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Topics: Featured Articles, SharePoint, SharePoint Tips and Tricks
  • Hi Jeff,

    I am a part-time photographer so I take quite some photo's that I wanted to upload in SharePoint. But finding my images fast and easy in SharePoint was quite an ordeal. So I discussed this with the SharePoint developers I work with in my company SYNERGY4 and the result was a tool that we called the Picture Library Enricher. What this tool basically does is automatically extracting the embedded metadata from the image and storing them in SharePoint. The metadata are information like Exif data, title, description, keywords, copyright. Basically all information I added in Adobe Lightroom is now automatically added in SharePoint. When I search for let's say New York, I get in my search results all my images I took in New York. As the Picture Library Enricher takes care of this all during uploading it doesn't cost me extra effort. We got customers who needed GPS coordinates as metadata so we developed next to our Basic version a GPS version.
    More info can be found here:
    http://www.synergy4.eu/products/picture-library-enricher-for-sharepoint

    Your version ofcourse is much cheaper as our tool will cost money, but if you are not that tech savvy like me and images are important to a person or company than the Picture Library Enricher can be an alternative.
  • Thank you for the comment and info on the product. It definitely sounds like a great tool for photographers and people that need an easy solution to all of the metadata of the image.

    Thanks again.
  • Pat
    I do not see the option for creating an Access view in the document library. Does this only appear with Office 2007, or maybe with SharePoint 2010?

    I am using Office 2003, WSS3
  • Ben
    I am using wss3 and have this option, maybe u need to install office access?
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