Keeping tags, etc. when uploading to photos Flickr?

December 28, 2007 10:53 AM

How do I upload my digital photos to Flickr and make sure the metadata stays intact?

Currently I use Picasa as the organizing software for all my pictures. I was using the picasa2flickr plugin to mass upload my edited photos (keywords, captions, etc.), but the most recent Picasa release has borked it.

I've discovered that using the Flickr Uploadr (2.5, not 3.0) allows me to upload photos and will keep the metadata intact as long as I don't use uploadr to resize the files since that strips the IPTC/EXIF data. Not wanting to upload 50 to 100 giant sized images at a time, I've taken to resizing photos in Picasa, putting them in a seperate folder, and then dropping them into the Uploadr. Only problem there is that Picasa doesn't have a straight forward resizing tool (that I've found) short of the 'Export' function which likes to create a lot of folders.

Long story short, this seems like so much extra work for something that should be pretty straight forward.

Question 1: Other than Picasa, is there a photo managing software that will allow me to add metadata (tags, captions, etc.) and make it easy for me to do batch uploads to Flickr (I'm not afraid to spend money on this solution)?

Question 2: The picasa2flickr creator suggests rolling back form Picasa (build 37.27) to Picasa (buid 37.23) in order to keep the plugin's functionality. If I do this, do I risk corrupting/losing any data/images that have been edited with the 37.27 build? I know I'd need to back up the originals of edited photos that Picasa keeps squirreled away.

Full disclosure: I'm barely an armature photographer with a Flickr pro account. The only edits I make are titles, keywords/tags, and captions with the occasional red-eye reduction and crop.

posted by Smarson to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Question 1: Get Adobe Lightroom. It's terrific for managing photo collections and it's amazingly fast -- much faster than Picasa when dealing with large files like RAW images. This is because Picasa edits the image directly while Lightroom simply shows you changes based on a thumbnail of the image. It's only when you export that Lightroom merges the changes with the original image to produce an edited final image.

LR has extensive EXIF/IPTC settings and allows you to build various EXIF setting sets.

LR seamlessly integrates with the Flickr uploader or you can use the Flickr export plugin (which I use).

Question 2: Before I started using Lightroom, I was using the picasa2flickr workflow with build 37.23. Picasa would keep updating itself to 37.27 and I would repeatedly install 37.23 to downgrade it. I never noticed any problems with this. Eventually, I wised up and just turned off automatic updating.
posted by junesix at 11:02 AM on December 28, 2007

Question: what's an "armature photographer"?
posted by adamrice at 11:07 AM on December 28, 2007

Definition: A rigid framework serving as a supporting inner core for clay or other soft sculpting material photographer of course. :) Or I mis-spelled "amateur."
posted by Smarson at 11:24 AM on December 28, 2007

What OS are you using? If using Linux you can use digiKam with KIPI plugins to export straight to Flickr, much like the picasa2Flickr plugin. Metadata stays in place.
posted by kables at 1:42 PM on December 28, 2007

kables - Sorry, should have specified. I'm running Windows XP. Thanks for the suggestion though.
posted by Smarson at 2:13 PM on December 28, 2007

I forgot to include the link to the Flickr export plugin for Lighroom. [Link]

The plugin works great and has a ton of options for titles, captions, EXIF, sizing, upload order, etc. A preview image of the plugin is here.
posted by junesix at 2:49 PM on December 28, 2007