Best Tag Implementations - How Do you tag?

[blast87]

I want to start a conversation for how people are planning on tagging things and what kind of organizing and naming systems people are going to use.

Maybe we can share some great ideas

So how are you tagging? (Or planning on tagging if you don't have the dev preview yet haha)

 

[Bear]

Of all the new finder features, tags is the one I don't really care about. I will probably not be using tags. I can see where for other people it will be a good thing.

 

[KScottMyers]

I've been thinking about this as well. I like the idea, but seems it would get crazy and out of hand very quick. If you tried using it to organize files - such as folders, it would be insane with the amount of tags you'd create.

Not sure how to implement this for a realistic process.

 

[notrack]

I'm also excited but curious how well it will work. I've tried tagging with third party apps but it didn't work because it required too much additional attention and maintainance.

The integration in Finder looks easy to use, that's what Apple is really good at.

My challenge is to organise a contacts structure and backoffice documents like presentations, invoices, tax, legal, webpage etc.

Now I have a list of about 300 folders named after contacts from whom I have recieved or sent documents to. Classic project structure mess. I use a green colour label to keep the current active ones on top, also for docs inside the folder.

My plan is to tag folders with the contact name and a keyword like "top" to get this kind of functionality.

No idea whether this works well. Any other ideas here?

 

[mrapplegate]

I just plan to tag family photos. I know you can do this in other programs like Adobe Bridge, but I never have. I figured I'd start now since it is integrated with the Finder.

 

[HoosPhotog]

For me it will depend on how tags are implemented. I have thousands of photos and would be thrilled if I could use keywords applied in xmp fields as tags (I sort photos into folders for date/shoot). I started a thread asking about this but haven't gotten any responses- anybody here know? My only concern with this usage is having too many tags and the system becoming unmanageable in regular usage.

My other thought, for non-photo use, is to tag documents with a category (ie, invoice, estimate, etc.) so I can easily find all of a certain kind (my folder structure for these is by client) since they are all the same file format.

Interested to hear what others have in mind/are already using.

 

[portishead]

I was just wondering this same thing myself. So I looked for the most recent "tag" thread instead of creating my own.

I can't think of any use for tags. At least, not being stuck with only 12 that Apple has allowed.

I'll keep thinking about it, but I'm hoping someone else comes up with a good suggestion. It seems like a good idea, I just haven't figured out a good way to implement it yet.

 

[Ddyracer]

Is anyone currently using tags? And if so do you find it better than labels because you can see it in the sidebar and it's system wide.

 

[petsounds]

The power of tags (which is, behind Mavericks' new compressed memory feature, the best feature of 10.9) is in being able to pull up file searches for complex concepts, without requiring complex file naming schemes. For instance, say I'm working in Logic Pro on a new song. I remember that I did a really great guitar riff a while back, but never used it and have no idea where it is on my drives. Fortunately I had tagged the recording with the tags 'guitar' and 'riff', and so searching with those tags brings it up immediately.

Keep in mind it's also something that developers can incorporate into their apps, so for instance you might be able to configure writing software Scrivener to tag all files created with a certain template as 'novel' or 'screenplay', or tax software might tag all your forms with 'taxes' and '2013'. I really hope that the next version of iTunes starts supporting tags for music, so I can quickly make playlists by specifying tags like 'moody', 'quiet', 'female'.

I think for customers using their Macs for basic iLife kinda stuff, tagging will be helpful, but I think professional uses is where tagging will really be invaluable, especially in asset-heavy industries like video editing, 3D rendering, and music recording.

 

[w0lf]

To me tags seems like a way to let you be sloppy and leave your drive messy but still keep your stuff easily accessible. It doesn't make much sense to tag something that you already have organized and named properly.

 

[petsounds]

To me tags seems like a way to let you be sloppy and leave your drive messy but still keep your stuff easily accessible. It doesn't make much sense to tag something that you already have organized and named properly.

It's not just about leaving your filenames messy. The power of tagging comes from creating a search request by building up multiple tags. For instance, if you've got a lot of photos and you do 'black-and-white' and 'snow', then you'll get appropriate photos no matter if the filename was santaclaus.jpg or montana_vacation2013-001.jpg or whatever. This kind of conceptual filtering can be used with all kinds of files.

 

[w0lf]

It's not just about leaving your filenames messy. The power of tagging comes from creating a search request by building up multiple tags. For instance, if you've got a lot of photos and you do 'black-and-white' and 'snow', then you'll get appropriate photos no matter if the filename was santaclaus.jpg or montana_vacation2013-001.jpg or whatever. This kind of conceptual filtering can be used with all kinds of files.

Hmm good point, I didn't think of using tags like that. Although that's certainly possible to do now, I feel like tags need some refinement before I would use them in that way.

 

[notrack]

Let's not forget that tags have to be applied before one can search for it. That's the difficult part and needs discipline. As I mentioned, I tried tagging before with third party apps and it didn't work out. Applying tags was cumbersome and in the end too many files were poorly tagged or even not at all.

Applying tags in the save dialog is a huge help. Plus drag & drop... sweet. Auto tagging would also be really helpful, e.g. If an app can auto-tag its name or filetype, you wouldn't need to add the filetype criteria when searching.

...

Keep in mind it's also something that developers can incorporate into their apps, so for instance you might be able to configure writing software Scrivener to tag all files created with a certain template as 'novel' or 'screenplay', or tax software might tag all your forms with 'taxes' and '2013'. I really hope that the next version of iTunes starts supporting tags for music, so I can quickly make playlists by specifying tags like 'moody', 'quiet', 'female'. ...

This is cool

I'd also, like to add Mail tags to link emails to projects.