Tropy

Organize and describe your research photographs

What is Tropy?

Tropy is a free, open-source desktop application designed to help researchers organize, describe, and annotate photographs taken during archival research.

It was developed by the Digital Scholar foundation — the same organization behind Zotero and Omeka — and is primarily used in the humanities and social sciences, though it is also popular among amateur genealogists and archive users.

Tropy allows you to:

  • Organize photos into projects, lists, and tagged collections
  • Describe items with rich, linked metadata (Dublin Core, CIDOC-CRM, or custom schemas)
  • Annotate photos and crop selections (regions of interest)
  • Export data as JSON-LD (Linked Data), CSV, PDF, or push directly to Omeka S or Zotero
NoteTropy is not:
  • A photo editor (Photoshop, Lightroom…)
  • A bibliographic reference manager (Zotero handles that)
  • A writing platform
  • An online publishing platform (Omeka does that)

It is the missing link between your camera roll and your structured research data.

Creating a Project

Go to File → New → Project (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P).

You will be asked to:

  1. Give the project a name
  2. Choose a project type
  3. Choose a location on your computer

Project Types

Type Behaviour Best for
Standard Copies photos into the project folder on import Archival fieldwork — portable, self-contained
Advanced Stores a thumbnail and links to the original file location Large collections already organized on disk
Tip

For most research use cases, Standard is the safer choice. If you move or rename your files, an Advanced project will lose track of them.

Suggested folder structure:
Images / Tropy / ProjectName /

The Three Levels of Description

Tropy structures your work in three nested levels, each with its own metadata:

📁 Item

The primary unit of description. An item groups one or more photos that belong together logically.

Example: A two-page archival document photographed as recto and verso = 1 item, 2 photos.

Typical metadata: title, date, archive name, box/folder reference, shelfmark.

🖼️ Photo

One image file. Metadata at this level covers technical properties: filename, dimensions, date taken.

You rarely need to describe photos individually — description happens at the item level.

🔍 Selection

A cropped region within a photo. Selections are useful for isolating details: a seal, a signature, an inscription, a decorative motif, a face.

Each selection can have its own title, notes, and tags, and is linked to pixel coordinates in the parent image.

Metadata Templates

A template defines which metadata fields appear in the description panel for an item, photo, or selection. Each field corresponds to a property from a vocabulary (Dublin Core, CIDOC-CRM, etc.).

Built-in Templates

Template Type Based on
Tropy Generic Item Dublin Core
Tropy Correspondence Item Dublin Core (event-oriented)
Dublin Core Item Dublin Core
Tropy Photo Photo EXIF + Dublin Core
Tropy Selection Selection Dublin Core

Built-in templates cannot be deleted or overwritten.

Creating or Customizing a Template

Go to Edit → Preferences → Templates:

  1. Clear the Template field and enter a Name
  2. Choose the Type (Item, Photo, or Selection)
  3. Fill in Creator and Description
  4. Click Create
  5. Add, remove, or reorder properties using the property editor

To modify an existing template without altering the original, click the Duplicate icon first.

Importing External Vocabularies

Tropy can import any RDF/OWL vocabulary published as JSON-LD or Turtle, making its properties available in your templates:

Edit → Preferences → Vocabularies → Import

Pre-packaged schemas are available on the Tropy GitHub, including CIDOC-CRM, Schema.org, and others.

Tip

Once you have imported the CIDOC-CRM vocabulary, you can build event-oriented templates using properties like P138_represents, P7_took_place_at, or P14_carried_out_by.

Importing Photos

Supported Formats

JPG/JPEG · PNG · SVG · TIFF · GIF · PDF · JPEG 2000 · WebP · HEIC · AVIF

Methods

File menu: File → Import → Photos or File → Import → Folder

Drag and drop: from your file manager directly into the Tropy project view

Watch folder: Edit → Preferences → Project → Watch folder… — Tropy will automatically import any new files added to a monitored folder

Tip

Before importing, set your default template in Edit → Preferences → Settings. All imported items will use that template automatically.

Caution

Standard project: files are copied into the project folder on import — this may double your disk usage.
Advanced project: only a thumbnail is stored; the project links to the original file. Moving or deleting the original will break the link.

Importing from a IIIF Manifest

With the IIIF plugin installed:

  1. Download a manifest.json file from a IIIF-compatible source (Europeana, Gallica, Nakala, Omeka S, Biblissima…)
  2. In Tropy: File → Import → [IIIF profile name] → select the manifest file
  3. Tropy maps the manifest metadata to your template properties automatically

A curated list of IIIF-compatible collections is maintained at iiif.io/guides/finding_resources/.

Importing from a CSV Spreadsheet

With the CSV plugin:

  1. Define an import profile in Edit → Preferences → Plugins
  2. File → Import → [CSV profile name] → select your .csv file

Exporting

Built-in Export

File → Export:

  • JSON-LD — Linked Data, the richest and most interoperable format
  • PDF — for printing or archiving a selection of items

Export Plugins

Plugin Function
Omeka S Push items (metadata + photos) to an Omeka S instance
CSV Export metadata as a spreadsheet
CSL / Zotero Export items to Zotero as CSL/JSON
Archive Export as a .zip (metadata + photo files)

Full Plugins Reference

All official plugins are listed at tropy.org/plugins.

Plugin Description
tropy-plugin-iiif Import photos from a IIIF Manifest
tropy-plugin-omeka Import from / export to Omeka S
tropy-plugin-csv Import from / export to CSV
tropy-plugin-csl Export to Zotero (CSL/JSON)
tropy-plugin-archive Export as ZIP archive

To install: download the .zip from GitHub → Edit → Preferences → Plugins → Install plugin.

Depositing Images in Nakala

If you cite your research photos in publications, or want to share and preserve them long-term, consider depositing them in a research data repository.

Nakala is the data repository operated by Huma-Num (CNRS). It provides:

  • Stable DOIs for your datasets
  • Automatic IIIF image serving for all deposited images
  • API access to metadata and files
  • Public and private deposit modes
TipTropy → Nakala → Arvest workflow
  1. Describe your photos in Tropy with a template aligned with Nakala’s metadata schema
  2. Export as JSON-LD or push via the Omeka S plugin
  3. Deposit images in Nakala → receive a DOI and a IIIF Manifest URL
  4. Import the Manifest into Arvest for collaborative annotation and exposure

→ A complete, FAIR-compliant pipeline for image corpora.

Huma-Num provides a detailed Guide for describing data in Nakala and a printable deposit checklist (PDF, March 2024).

Official Channels

Resource Link
Website tropy.org
Documentation docs.tropy.org
Community forum community.tropy.org
GitHub github.com/tropy
YouTube youtube.com/@tropy
Vimeo vimeo.com/user73164761

Tutorials & Further Reading

Video Tutorials

Written Tutorials

Author Resource Language
B. Lailler Tutoriel Tropy 🇫🇷 French
Stretching numérique Gérer ses photos d’archives avec Tropy 🇫🇷 French
BULAC Gérer ses ressources iconographiques avec Tropy 🇫🇷 French

Selected Blog Posts

Previous Workshop (French)

This page draws on the 2024–2025 ED 481 SSH Tropy workshop delivered in French at UPPA. The full companion guide (Quarto book) is available at:

🔗 uju.quarto.pub/tropy/