Upload images to particular category, edit button on image pages

I just happened to notice there is an “edit media” button up at the top of the page in the wordpress admin bar that goes right to the media edit page.

So I can get to the edit screen for gallery images, but if you have the time, I would still be interested in hearing how to get an edit button to show up down on the area with the image showing in it.

Thanks for your interest in the plugin and for these questions.

1. There is no specific feature to assign a category during the upload process, but there are a few ways to more easily add a category to your images.

• You can use an image editing tool such as Adobe Photoshop to embed categories in your images as an IPTC or EXIF value. MLA can extract this information and map it to the taxonomy of your choice during the upload process. If this works for you, let me know and I can be more specific.
• You can click the “Edit” link at the right of each image on the “Upload New Media” screen, then assign a category to the image.
• You can sort the Media/Assistant submenu table by Date in descending order to collect all the most recently uploaded images at the top of the table listing. Check the box to the left of each entry for the images that will share a category, select “Edit” in the Bulk Actions dropdown and click “Apply”. You can add the category you want and click “Update” to add the category to all of the images in one stroke.

2. As you’ve found out, the WordPress answer to your edit button question is up in the Admin bar at the top of the screen. The Admin bar only appears when you’re logged in and have permission to edit the Media item. The best way to replicate this down in the body of the page would be to modify the PHP code for the template that displays the Attachment page; it might be specific to your theme. Let me know if you are comfortable with modifying the PHP code and if so, I will give you more detailed help.

I hope this gives you the information you need. I’ll leave this topic open for now in case you want more help with your second question. Thanks again for your interest in the plugin.

(1) – I looked into the EXIF method and it seems like it would work if I understood how to use it. The documentation needs some simple examples with actual values. Especially with all of those warning signs about “cannot undo changes if this button is pressed”.

I found a program that allowed adding tags to images. I then used a different program for verification purposes and clicked on it’s “EXIF” tab. The EXIF tab says “XPKeywords Category1;Category2”, which are the tags I added in the first program.

How would the Assistant be set up to read that EXIF data and set the categories for the images?

(2) – Going the “latest uploaded images” route through the assistant is laborious because after uploading it is necessary to click assistant, choose the latest month, click the filter button, click the last button that takes you to the most recent uploaded images for the month, and then clicks on the back one page button depending on how many items per page the interface is set to.

(3) – Is there a setting somewhere to make the categories show up in the image listings?

(4) – Showing an edit button along with the categories and tags on the image page seems like it would be useful to many people. I could probably understand instructions on how to do that.

Thanks for this update and for the additional details. With regards to the four points in your latest post:

1) To map EXIF data to taxonomy terms (and other fields), open the Settings/Media Library Assistant screen and then click on the IPTC/EXIF tab. Scroll down to the Taxonomy term mapping section; you will see all of the taxonomies in the Field Title column. In the EXIF Value column, enter the EXIF field you want to take the terms from (“XPKeywords” in your case) on the row for the taxonomy you want to update. Change the Priority value from IPTC to EXIF. You can probably leave the Existing Text field set to Keep; change it to Replace if you want to delete existing terms before adding the new EXIF terms. For hierarchical taxonomies such as Categories and Att. Categories you can specify an existing term as the parent for your EXIF values. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Save Changes to save your work. After the screen refreshes, you can click the “Map All Attachments, Taxonomy Terms Now” button to go through the images already in your Media Library and map their EXIF data to the taxonomy terms. Any images you add after setting the rule up will be automatically mapped when the images are uploaded.

2) You can make the “latest uploaded images” process easier in a couple of ways. On the Settings/Media Library Assistant screen General tab you can scroll down to Media/Assistant Table Defaults and set the Order By value to Date, set the Order to Descending and then scroll down and click Save Changes to update your settings. The latest uploads will appear at the top of the list by default. Another approach is to pull down the Screen Options at the upper right corner of the Media/Assistant screen and check the box next to “Date”; that will display the upload date as a table column. You can click (twice) on the column header to sort the table in descending order by upload date.

3) I’m not sure what you mean by “the image listings”, but if you mean the Media/Assistant submenu table you can pull down the Screen Options and check the box next to the taxonomy you want to display as a table column. If you want to display the categories as part of an [mla_gallery] shortcode, let me know and I will give you more information on how to do that.

4) As you’ve already discovered, there is an “Edit Media” button in the admin bar that appears for logged in users. This button takes you to the Edit Media screen where you can change taxonomy terms for the image. Displaying the categories and tags is a reasonable idea, but it is dependent on the theme you are using for your site. Modifying the “front end” (non-admin) pages of a site is beyond the scope of the MLA plugin.

I hope this give you the information you need to map EXIF data and more easily find your latest uploads. If you have any problems or further questions, let me know.

I hope the suggestions I gave in my last post gave you what you need to add categories to your Media Library items and to manage them. It has been four weeks since I last updated this topic and there have been no further questions or reports of any problems.

I am marking this topic resolved for now. Please let me know if I can be of any more help.