Edward Boatman • Jun 23rd, 2022
If you have a large library of digital images, you probably understand the headache of trying to manually sort and organize images. Creating endless folders in cloud-based storage systems creates clutter and can make it difficult to find the right image when you need it. If you need to share your digital images, complicated storage structures put a strain on your team members or users.
The solution? Image tagging can help you quickly and easily categorize, find and share your images, even if you have a large library. By associating keywords with your images, image tagging helps make your visual assets searchable.
Learn more about how this automation can make your life easier.
While image tagging can sometimes refer to HTML code used to insert images into web copy, it’s more often used to mean one of the following:
While manually and automatically tagging images can both get you to the same place, those with large databases of images will benefit from investing in an automatic tagging software. This can save you hours of time when trying to make an organized, searchable image database. It also makes sharing assets easier.
Let’s say you have an image of a woman enjoying her time at the beach. Without any associated image tags, the photo would lie in your database unable to be searched for in any way other than the name. Or worse, you’d simply have to know where the file is stored and navigate to it manually.
By associating tagged keywords with the image, however, the image becomes searchable. Automatic software can tag large collections of images so your entire image database becomes organized and searchable.
Image tagging is used to make collections of images organized and searchable. This is often seen in the following applications:
In the practical sense, companies use image tagging to save time and money and to improve user experience.
For example, if team members cannot find company digital assets, these assets become unusable. Company time and money may also be wasted as members manually try to search for where the file is stored.
If your assets face users, like a stock photography website, not being able to find the right images can frustrate users with a poor web experience. It can even cause users to navigate away from your site in favor of a different one.
Image tagging software works by analyzing the pixel composition of a photo and identifying objects of interest. The software does this by comparing pixels against objects trained into its memory.
Some software can have additional objects trained into memory. This can help companies with uniquely shaped brand products — like Scrub Daddy’s smiley sponge.
Some popular automatic image tagging software on the market include:
The main difference between image tagging and metadata is what they tell you. Metadata stores information about the photo — like when and where it was taken. Metadata can also tell you details about the photo’s height, width or camera settings. On the other hand, image tagging tells you what’s in the photo — like dogs, people or beaches.
Metadata is automatically generated and stored each time you take a photograph, like a digital fingerprint. Image tagging requires outside software to generate and store data. Your phone or camera will not identify associated image tags on its own.
Image tagging can help you categorize your photos to make sharing and finding files easier. Make your images searchable with Lingo’s image tagging capabilities, and never lose another file again. Our digital asset management system can help you avoid clutter and create a visual language that can maintain your brand consistency at scale.