Working with Albums

Steve Ohio

Can you give me a step by step or direct me to a post on how to create albums. I haven’t created any but there are quite a number of them showing in the Albums tab. Can’t figure out how to edit, delete or create them.

Andrey

Ok, first of all, there are not just albums, but also a tags that you can see on Albums tab. They have different icons:

Albums have “open book” icon, while tags have a tag icon. They are essentially the same things - a virtual collections of photos, with one important difference: albums only exist in your application database, while tags are actually stored in image metadata.

Therefore, if you add tag on some photos, files will get modifies on your hard disk, and that tag will be written into image metadata.

Same goes the other way around - if you already have images in your archive that have tags in thier metadata, Tonfotos will read those tags and will automatically add them into your Album tab. This explains where those albums come from that you haven’t created.

Apart from that, there are few special albums that get created for you automatically.

Recents - contains last 50 indexed images in your library. For example, if you have added something to your library recently, but can’t remember where it is exactly - you can easily find it using Recents album.

Favorites - all images that you press “like” button on (a heart button on top right of the Tonfotos window) will be added to this album.

Duplicates - this album gets created when you use “Remove duplicates” dialog, more about that here: https://tonfotos.com/articles/delete_duplicates/

Any image can can have several tags and can be in several albums at the same time. You can see the list where this image belongs to in File Info panel. Tags have light grey background while albums have yellowish one. You can click on those names to navigate to that album/tag:

And last thing to add is how do you add/delete photos to/from albums and tags. That is all done using context menu of the photo. Just select one or several photos and then right click one of them. In the menu you will see “Add to Favourites” and “Add to…”

After image is added to album, it can be deleted from it using same context menu:

Please let me know if that is helps.

Steve Ohio

Yes, thank you for the excellent explanation. I have never added tags to any of my photos, but I have some photos that were giving to me by my niece. She had added the tags to some of them, but I did not know they were there. I now see that her tagged photos generated the albums.

Again, I must say how impressive Tonfotos is working for me. I now have over 30,000 photos imported into the program and I can’t believe the accuracy of the facial recognition. Thank you for answering my questions in such a timely and concise manner. Now on to tagging some of mine!

Steve Ohio

Andrey,

First, I am not a programmer so I may not fully understand some of the posts related to database saving and so forth. But, if I am following, it seems facial information is saved in the .ini file within the given computer folder storing the photo but the album information is stored in the program database as noted in a different thread. Therefore, the album information would not show up in the album tab on a different computer. Is this a correct statement?

I have purchased a 5-user license with the intent to gift some of them to my children. I would like to be able to “gift” the album information to them as well when we initially set up their copies of the software on their computers. Is there a way to do that or will they just need to do it themselves? Unfortunately, I am working with a PC and my son uses MAC so that may compilate the problem, if it is even possible.

I really don’t want to go to the trouble of tagging each photo. But if I decide to do so, will the tag move with the files and show up as tags, not albums, in the program’s album tab on their computers? It seems it would be simple enough to create an album from those tags. Also, will a MAC computer read tags like a PC does?

Andrey

Steve Ohio Therefore, the album information would not show up in the album tab on a different computer. Is this a correct statement?

Correct.

Steve Ohio Is there a way to do that or will they just need to do it themselves?

Using tags will solve the problem.

Steve Ohio I really don’t want to go to the trouble of tagging each photo.

From usability standpoint, there is no difference in tags and albums. You don’t have to tag each photo individually. You can tag them as groups, just like you assign them to album. You can even select all photos in an existing album and tag them, this way you could “copy” album into a tag.

Steve Ohio will the tag move with the files and show up as tags, not albums, in the program’s album tab on their computers?

Tags are written into files, so moving files to other folder will not change tag information, and they will show up as tags on other computer regardless of their location.

Steve Ohio Also, will a MAC computer read tags like a PC does?

Yes, Tonfotos on Mac and Windows work with tags similar way, and Tonfotos on Mac can see tags written by Windows version and vice versa.

Steve Ohio

Thanks again!

Steve Ohio

Andrey,

Sorry but one more question about tags. Are the tags I put on the photos in the program “virtual” and not actual tags that will show up in the properties of the photo in file explorer? I did some photos, and they show up as gray tags in the albums but do not show up in the properties of the photo on my computer. Just want to make sure I’m doing it correctly.

Andrey

Steve Ohio Tonfotos tags are compatible with Windows explorer, you can see them in File Properties dialog:

Steve Ohio

Follow up question on tags…
I selected about ten photos of a person in the people tab and made them favorites. I then went to the albums area of the program. I selected all of them and added a new tag with the person’s name. The tag was created, and the photos have a gray box with the tag name I just created when you look at them individually within the album tab, but when I go to Windows file explorer, the tag is not showing up in the properties dialog box under details of the photo. What am I doing wrong?

Note: I tried to manually add a tag in Windows file explorer, and I got the following error message:
“0×80070057: The parameter is incorrect.” Side note: The file is not marked as read only in Windows file explorer.

Andrey

Can you please tell, what is your windows version? Also, how exactly you add tags?

Steve Ohio

Windows 10
I pick files and make them favorites.
I then go to the albums tab and select all of them from “favorites”
I right click and make a new tag.
The tag shows in the album tab and the tag shows in the file information pane at the right side of the screen.
I then right click on a single file and pick “show in file explorer”
The photo opens in file explorer, but the tag is not present there.

As a note: Once I have attempted to use Tonfotos to tag a file in the above way, I can’t manually add a tag to a picture in Windows file explorer, I just get the error “0×80070057: The parameter is incorrect.”
However, if I have not attempted to create a tag in Tonfotos, I am able to create a tag in other files in Windows file explorer and they show as tags in the Tonfotos album tab.

Andrey

Steve Ohio that is worrying, probably XMP data is already corrupt in your files, or at least not compatible with the srandard. Can you please send me samples of your photos before changing them in tonfotos to andrey@tonfotos.com? That should be similar photos as the ones you experience problems with (taken by same camera, processed the same way if they were processed somehow). I will try to make sure this kind of XMP data are also processed correctly by tonfotos.