Why choose Tropy? Tropy is useful for researchers looking to manage large quantities of photographs taken in archives and the field. It is especially helpful for dissertation and thesis writers looking to add personalized notes to specific images.
The Tropy client is downloaded and installed on a local machine, and is best used for very large image collections. Using a system of folders to organize files, descriptive metadata can be input for each image. Notes and annotations can be added to files, allowing for customized searches through the collection.
For an excellent introduction to Tropy, we recommend this recording of Tropy’s October 2020 webinar, “Tropy for Graduate Students.”
Features:
- Must be downloaded and installed on local machines—does not yet support cloud, collaborative collections, although you can collaborate asynchronously by storing the Tropy project on cloud storage services like Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
- Upload .tif, .png, .jpeg, .gif, and .pdf file formats. Tropy does not support audio or video files.
- Metadata entry can be done via different templates for different needs, discussed in depth below.
- Each item allows for multiple searchable notes. Great for transcribing archival documents or taking extensive notes. You can also create photo selections or details and add notes specifically to those sections.
- Select multiple images to bulk add metadata to all of them at once. (Tropy does not support importing batch metadata via a spreadsheet.)
- Search across tags, metadata, and notes. (If you upload PDFs, Tropy does not preserve OCR or annotations.)
- Photo viewer allows for zoom, and non-destructive image editing. (For example, increase the contrast to transcribe a document, or rotate a photo. Does not alter the original image file on your computer.)
- Manage large quantities of archival images; they can be grouped together under one file.
- Doesn’t allow for side by side comparison of images
- Support forums available on Tropy website https://forums.tropy.org/
Metadata
Tropy comes with three built-in metadata panels:
- Tropy Generic: a metadata template that captures information based on standard archival organization (box, folder, identifier) and basic features of research material (author, date, type of source)
- Tropy Correspondence: this template is great for cataloging archival correspondence and provides more in-depth fields than Tropy Generic
- Dublin Core: a basic digital collections template
However, for art history research projects, it can be hard to shoehorn all the rich, art historical metadata about individual works of art into the basic Dublin Core metadata template. In order to make Tropy more useful for working with images of art and architecture, VRC staff created a Tropy template based on the VRA Core metadata standard. VRA Core was designed to effectively describe works of visual culture as well as the images that document them. Tropy structures the metadata around items and their photos, which tracks nicely onto the Core 4 concept of work and image. As such, there are two templates that need to be installed:
- VRA Core Item.ttp is the item (or work) template, which will be used to describe individual artworks
- VRA Core Photo.ttp is the photo (or image) template, which will be used to capture image specific information, including title, date, and photo rights
Download the two templates from Box. To install, go to Tropy > Preferences > Templates > Template > Upload the .ttp file by clicking on the downward facing arrow. Repeat for the remaining file.
Next, go to Tropy > Preferences > Settings and change the default item template to Tropy VRA Core and the default photo template to VRA Tropy Photo.
Under Import file name as, make sure the item and photo options are both set to Identifier. (A screenshot below demonstrates how to enter the settings.)
Each template is further customizable once you’ve installed it on your local machine. For example, VRA Core Item contains several location types: Repository, Creation, Exhibition, Discovery, Installation, Performance, Site, and Former/Other. If there are any categories you know you will not need for managing your personal research archive, you can delete the fields in Tropy > Templates by clicking on the minus sign to the right of that field. Similarly, if there is a field that is significant to your research but not represented here, you can add it in by clicking the + sign. You can also edit the label for the name of the field to be more meaningful to your project.
Any questions? Reach out to visualresources@uchicago.edu. For more information, refer Tropy’s excellent documentation on how to import and edit a template.