All of our photos are on a "server" running XP, and are usually viewed on an
HTPC running MCE 2005 in the living room. My wife has a laptop with Vista
and has taken on the project of organizing and tagging years of photos with
Photo Gallery. The photos all remain on the XP box.



My question is, where are the tags saved? Are they written into the jpg
itself, or are they maintained in a database somewhere? If we upgrade the
HTPC in the living room to Vista, will it be able to read the tags she
created on the laptop for photos that remain on the XP box?

She is finding that while tagging is fast enough for individual photos, if
she tags a batch of photos opened off of the server it takes a very long time
to process. Is there any way to speed it up? She doesn't want to copy jpgs
to the laptop, tag them, then copy back to the server because it is very easy
to get confused about what has been tagged and what hasn't. Is it a simply
matter of improving network speed by plugging in


Ian

Ian Johnson wrote:

> All of our photos are on a "server" running XP, and are usually
> viewed on an HTPC running MCE 2005 in the living room. My wife has a
> laptop with Vista and has taken on the project of organizing and
> tagging years of photos with Photo Gallery. The photos all remain on
> the XP box.
>
> My question is, where are the tags saved? Are they written into the
> jpg itself, or are they maintained in a database somewhere? If we
> upgrade the HTPC in the living room to Vista, will it be able to read
> the tags she created on the laptop for photos that remain on the XP
> box?

==============================================

Maybe the following info will get you started...

Generally, this metadata is written back to the
original files but in some instances, especially
where certain file types are involved, .bmp, .png,
..gif, .mpeg, etc... it's not possible to write back
to the file itself. That's when the Windows Photo
Gallery database takes over.

This database named "Pictures.pd4" includes
thumbs and metadata and is found at the
following location.

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\
Windows Photo Gallery\Pictures.pd4

The file can also be found with an Advanced
Search for pd4.

Go to...Start / Search / Advanced Search.

Check the box..."Include non-indexed, hidden,
and system files" Enter pd4 in the Name field
and left click the Search button.

If you catalog lots of images, making regular
backup copies of your Pictures.pd4 file would
be an excellent idea.

If corruption develops, replace the current .pd4
file with your backup.

It may also be useful to know that any metadata
written only to the .pd4 file can only be accessed
by Windows Photo Gallery.

More info:

Metadata and the Windows
Vista Photo Gallery
http://tinyurl.com/3994ha

==============================================

> She is finding that while tagging is fast enough for individual
> photos, if she tags a batch of photos opened off of the server it
> takes a very long time to process. Is there any way to speed it up?
> She doesn't want to copy jpgs to the laptop, tag them, then copy back
> to the server because it is very easy to get confused about what has
> been tagged and what hasn't. Is it a simply matter of improving
> network speed by plugging in
>
>
> Ian

--

John Inzer
MS Digital Media MVP

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk