What is tagging?
Image ‘tagging’ is the process of labeling files like photos, videos and vectors with descriptive keywords, called ‘tags’, that make the files easy to search for. Typically, the tags are words or short phrases that describe files’ content. A tag might describe what the ‘tagged’ file is about, or how it relates to other files, for example as part of a project. To make files easy to find via search, tags are the best tool to use.
When you search for images, type the name of one or more of the images’ tags into the search box, and Skyfish will return all the files ‘tagged’ with what you searched for. Using search to find files means you don’t have to navigate any complex folder structures. Let’s say you need to remove photos from Skyfish for legal reasons, for example: you can quickly search for those photos’ tags, identify the photos, and delete them.
By adding accurate and consistent tags, you can structure your content clearly for yourself and your coworkers. All your Skyfish users can benefit from your tagging, and everyone saves hours of work by finding files the moment they’re needed.
Some of the features are therefore temporarily only accessible from the old Skyfish Classic but you can switch between the two within seconds:
Go to the old Skyfish Classic:
1. Click your initials/picture in the top right corner
2. Select “Skyfish Classic” from the menu
Go to the new Skyfish Classic:
1.Click the link in the blue top bar
Do you always automatically log into Skyfish Classic?
1. Click the link in the blue top bar to go to the new Skyfish
2. Create a new bookmark for your browser
How tags work on Skyfish
In Skyfish, tags are stored in files’ metadata. This is because tags are information about the file.
Files are made of data. Most of the data in image, vector or video files encodes visual content. Other data, that relates to the file itself, is called “metadata.”
Image metadata contains important information such as the image’s size, details about its capture, and often, copyright data.
There are two distinct types of metadata:
- “EXIF metadata” contains technical information, such as camera and capture settings
- “IPTC metadata” contains information about the file’s visual content, and its authorship
When you start a search, Skyfish looks through the metadata of every file. All metadata is included in the search, not only the tags that you add.
For example: you do not need to tag images with their copyright information if that information already exists in the files’ metadata, because Skyfish can already search through it.
Skyfish imports existing tags when you upload
If your files already have tags before you upload them, then Skyfish has that covered too: all your existing metadata is preserved.
This includes any existing tags, but also all other metadata, like photographer details, copyright information, and any other descriptions.
Once you’ve uploaded files to Skyfish, if you decide to add and change additional details in the metadata, such as titles or descriptions, these new details will also be searched through when you’re finding files.
Tags added in Skyfish are not lost when downloading
When you download your images from Skyfish, tags, and all other information you add to files on Skyfish, get embedded in the images’ EXIF and IPTC metadata. This ensures that your added information will not be lost during export, and you can easily work with your files in other systems.
How do I ‘tag’ files in Skyfish?
Adding tags to your Skyfish files is straightforward, and is done with just a few clicks.
There are three ways to do it:
- Folder tagging
- Manual tagging
- Automatic tagging
Depending on your company’s way of working, you can use one or all of these methods.
Folder tagging
A lot of content might relate to a similar topic. Often, this content is stored together in a folder. You can ‘tag’ these folders in Skyfish.
Folder tags are continuously applied to the contents of the tagged folder. That is, when the folder has new files added to it, those new files also receive the Folder’s tags.
No need to tag each file individually! The same applies to subfolders: when you create a subfolder inside a ‘tagged’ folder, all the files inside the subfolder receive the containing folder’s tags, along with any further Folder Tags you add to the subfolder. When you create a folder, you can add Folder Tags as you wish, and remove them easily in the Info pane.
Manual tagging
To quickly add individual tags to files, first click on the file. Then open your “Tags” settings in the upper menu bar. There, you can add all the tags you would like.
You can also tag multiple files at once using the same process; just click on multiple files. Tags can also be removed again the same way, both for single and multiple files.
When you manually set tags, you maintain full control over how tags can be searched for, and what language they use.
Auto Tagging
Auto Tagging saves you lots of work (and time) when you want to tag a large amount of images as soon as you upload them. Enable Auto Tagging in the admin settings, and whenever you upload images, they will be automatically tagged with keywords related to their content. Skyfish’s AI scans the images, recognizes what they show, and adds all the descriptive tags you might need.
Tags overview, tag-based inspiration, and targeted search
In the ‘Tags overview’ for files or folders, Skyfish reveals whether an item’s tags were added automatically by image recognition, or manually, so you can always trace the origin of the tags.
You can also see which tags are used the most, or see what tags are attached to other similarly-tagged images, to get fresh ideas.
Once you add tags, you can search for them directly using the search function. You can also increase the accuracy of your searches by specifying whether any results should be excluded: just place a minus sign (-) in front of any search terms you want to exclude from results.