Default templates

am going in circles wrestling with templates & am pretty sure I’m just missing a step somewhere - I work with archives and with artworks and so need templates for both types of items. I created templates for each & listed them as my default templates in preferences. BUT, when I look at the metadata pane, they appear stacked rather than as 2 options. So - at the top of hte metadata panel where you choose the template for the “item,” archives is one of the choices, and then, half way down, I see another drop-down of templates for the “photo” and artworks is one of the choices. this is NOT what I was going for - wanted to just choose either one of these template options - archive or artwork - to apply to my images. how do I make that happen?

wondering if my mistake was in adapting the Tropy Photo template, rather than the Tropy Generic - but it still seems weird, right? any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!
thx!

By duplicating the Tropy Photo template you created a photo-level template (you can create templates at each of the item, photo or selection levels). Unfortunately you can’t currently change the template type in template editor: I actually can’t think of any reason why it would be harmful to do that, so we’ll change this in the upcoming release.

Meanwhile, you have two options to make change: either you create a new item-level template for artworks and just delete the other one, or you export the artwork template, delete the template, then edit the exported template file and import it again. This second option sounds like a lot of work, but it should be very quick: the template file is a JSON file, so you can open it in a text editor and all you need to do is change the part that says "type":"https://tropy.org/v1/tropy/#Photo" to "type":"https://tropy.org/v1/tropy/#Item".

thanks for the super speedy response! actually, as soon as I posted, what you describe above finally dawned on me. In the end, I duplicated the Photo Level template “artworks” and was able to change it to and item level template. one question remains - is there anyway to remove the built-in templates from the drop-down menu in the metadata panel? just feels like there are a lot there now.
thx

It’s not possible to remove the built-in templates, no. But you can set one of your templates to be the default item template (in the preferences window) and then new items will automatically use that template.

If you add more templates, the template select will also allow you to search by name to speed up the selection.