Managing your file information can be one of the more complicated aspects of long-term image management, but we can make it a bit easier, at least for the files you’re sending to your Fotobroker site. While it’s more efficient to do the bulk of your metadata in an image processing application like Adobe Photoshop or Photo Mechanic, you can also use our “local_scenario” system to add additional metadata to groups of files during the import process.

How “local_scenario” files work

In a nutshell, local_scenario files are simple text files (.txt) placed directly into a specific import folder. These files contain information that you’d like Fotobroker to associate with images that are imported from that folder. Fotobroker will read these local_scenario text files during import and apply the metadata instructions it finds to every image it imports from that folder.

Who uses local_scenario files?

We frequently create “local_scenario.txt” arrangements for organizations with no metadata system of their own. By adding new import folders to the site’s “incoming_images” directory — one for each “category” of image (sports, news, etc) — and placing a “local_scenario.txt” file in each folder, we can create a “category” system where none existed before.

In another example, say we have a group of images we want to be easily displayed all together on the site. We could use a local_scenario.txt file to add a unique keyword to all the images in this group. We could then use this keyword to create a Web site link to find all the images and display them, without changing any of your existing metadata. Flexibility is the goal.

Aside from category management, another common usage of local_scenario is to add a “publication” date to a day’s worth of images. By default, Fotobroker uses the “creation date” of files to sort them, since there is no inherent way to determine when an image was published.

Create a “local_scenario.txt” file

• Log into the ftp server for your site and navigate to the /incoming_images directory.
• Inside your incoming_images directory, create a folder to use with your local_scenario setup.
  Remember, this can’t be a subfolder of an existing import folder. All import folders — even custom ones — must sit inside the incoming_images directory. In other words, your custom folders should sit right next to the default “images” and “pdfs” import folders.
• Using any text editor, create a plain text file called ‘local_scenario.txt’ — and add the metadata info you’d like to be associated with the images and place it in the same folder as the images.
  The folder, images and local_scenario.txt file can all be created locally on your hard drive and then uploaded together if your ftp program supports uploading whole folders.

For example, to add a “category” of “SPT” to every image from our new folder, all we need to do is to edit the “local_scenario.txt” file to read:

[category] value=SPT

The list below includes samples of the fields most commonly used in local_scenario files. You can include multiple entries in a single local_scenario file by separating each entry with a carriage return. If you need access to a specific field not listed here, or if you have questions about using local_scenario files or metadata in general, please contact us.

[caption]
value=

[category]
value=

[suppcat]
value=

[by_line]
value=

[credit]
value=

[headline]
value=
[keywords]
value=

[copyright]
value=

[city]
value=

[special_instructions]
value=

[date_created]
value=

This tutorial is also included in our downloadable Fotobroker Admin Guide.
Fotobroker Admin Guide