Catalog sets

  • Article

Catalog sets are groups of images in your catalog that you can organize according to any criteria. You can use catalog sets to organize playlists, photo albums, and work assignments, or to create a complex system of categorization. You can also create capture sets, which display a group of images or bracketed exposures, which are photos that display graduated time intervals of a particular subject with each successive shot. The catalog sets that you create are listed in the Organize panel in the Catalog Fields section.

You can use catalog sets to quickly display subgroups of items in a catalog, and to maintain their order, even after items in the catalog sets have been moved or sorted. You can use these catalog subgroups in such features as slide show presentations, quick searches, classifications, printing, and web pages.

Any media item can belong to more than one catalog set, which enables you to logically organize catalogs into catalog sets for different projects, clients, or themes without confusing the overall annotation or classification of files in the catalog. You can reorder catalog sets to change the hierarchy of an individual catalog set within the group of catalog sets. Media items retain their catalog set associations when you copy them from one catalog to another, or when you merge catalogs. Also, when you are synchronizing annotations, Microsoft Expression Media adds the catalog set affiliation of a file to the metadata in a custom XMP annotation field. For more information about synchronizing annotations, see Modifying digital camera metadata.

To view catalog sets

  • Open the Organize panel by clicking the Organize toolbar button. Catalog sets are located in the Catalog Fields index.

To create a catalog set

  1. Click the Organize button.

  2. Click the plus sign at the top of the Catalog Fields index.

  3. Make sure that the Field menu reads Catalog Sets selected before pressing OK. In the Add Term dialog box, type the name of the catalog set.

To add media items to a catalog set

  • There are two ways to add items to a catalog set. Do one of the following:

    • Drag one or more media items from the catalog's active window to the catalog set you want.

    • Select an item, and select Add Term to Selected Media Items from the catalog set's shortcut menu.

When you add media items to or remove them from a catalog set, the counter to the right of the catalog set's name updates automatically.

To remove items from catalog sets

  1. Click the dot next to the catalog set's name to show only associated catalog set items in the active view.

  2. Select the items that you want to remove from the catalog set, and then press DELETE. A dialog box will prompt you to choose whether you want to remove the item from the catalog set or the catalog. If you remove the item from the catalog set, it will still remain in the catalog.

    Note

    You can also remove items from catalog sets by selecting Remove Term fromSelected Media Items from each catalog set's shortcut menu.

To display a catalog set in a view

  1. In the Organize panel, click the dot next to the name of the catalog set. Clicking the dot once displays only the files in the catalog set; clicking it again displays all the files in the main catalog.

  2. On the Find menu, click Show All to reverse this feature, revealing all hidden files.

  3. You can also use the Show All Items toolbar icon to display hidden files.

    Once you have displayed a catalog set in the active view, you can perform batch commands or export tasks without affecting the rest of the catalog.

To display a group of catalog sets

  • Click the higher-level catalog set in a hierarchy of catalog sets. This will display all items associated with all subsets. You can also display a group of catalog sets by clicking the dot next to each catalog set's name and holding down the Cc507797.82129f4e-af63-4dcd-9a10-417a9c3800be(en-us,Expression.10).png key).

To select catalog set items

  • To select all media items associated with a catalog set, click Select Media Items from a catalog set's shortcut menu. This is useful for selecting items without having to first display the catalog set.

To restore the catalog

  • After you sort a catalog with catalog sets, click Show All on the Find menu. This will display all the items in the catalog. You can also click the Show All Items icon on the toolbar to show all items.

To create capture sets

  1. On the Make menu, click Create Capture Sets.

  2. In the Options box, define the interval by entering the number of seconds between shots, and then click OK.

    Expression Media creates your capture sets in the Catalog Sets section of the Organize panel's Catalog Fields index. To create a new capture set, click the plus-sign icon at the top of the Catalog Fields index. To add files to the capture set, select a file or a group of files and drag them from the catalog's active window to the capture set you want. You can also reorder capture sets by dragging them inside the window.