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Katrin Eismann
Participating Frequently
April 3, 2011
Open for Voting

P: Ability to NOT import image keywords

  • April 3, 2011
  • 40 replies
  • 2729 views

It would be very helpful to have the ability to NOT import keywords when importing images. For example, I was reworking my large LR catalogue with older images that I had keyworded before I really know how to do keywords and all the mistakes (all caps, no heirachy, etc) came into my LR keyword list and made my keyword list unusable. As mentioned in a previous post managing keywords in LR is an exercise in frustration and dealing with all these mistakes in a 100,000+ image Library is untenable.

    40 replies

    L
    lazmag1
    Participating Frequently
    August 10, 2022

    I finally gave up trying to easily delete keywords in Lightroom. I first import the photos into Bridge where they can easily be removed and them input into Lightroom. It's two steps but a lot easier than trying to fix the keyword mess in Lightroom. Hopefully Adobe will address this some day.

    nixpixie
    nixpixie
    Participant
    August 10, 2022

    Isn't that truly ridiculous? We all pay a LOT of money to use Adobe products and this is a very straightforward catalog management issue. Sigh...

     

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    August 10, 2022

    "Is Adobe going to address this problem that has been around for over 10 years?"

     

    Seems unlikely. I had thought in a previous post that keywords added by Import would obey the setting Put New Keywords Inside This Keyword, but they don't.  Just now, I tested this with LR 11.4.1, 10.4, 9.1, and 6.14, and they all behaved the same.

     

    So if keywords added by Import used to get added to the keyword marked with Put New Keywords Inside This Keyword, it must have been prior to LR 6.14 (five years ago).  Posting a bug report, rather than an Idea, would be pointless in this case, since the Adobe product team will just declare the behavior "as designed" and move it here (in the Ideas section).

    nixpixie
    nixpixie
    Participant
    August 9, 2022

    It's August 2022 and I still haven't seen a way to do this in Lightroom. Is Adobe going to address this problem that has been around for over 10 years? It's awful to import Adobe Stock images and flood my Keywords list with 100s of useless keywords. If there is a working Lightroom solution (not using other apps) that I haven't read about, I'd love to hear it! 

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      lazmag1
      Participating Frequently
      February 13, 2022

      The same thing happened to me. I'm on Mac 12.1

      johnrellis
      johnrellis
      Legend
      February 13, 2022

      Got it. I'll figure out which version broke this and post a bug report.

      john beardsworth
      Community Expert
      john beardsworthCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 13, 2022

      "That's right -- with that method, the keywords added by Import are added to the hierarchy but segregated under a distinguished top-level keyword, e.g. "Imported".  So it's easy to periodically remove those keywords."

       

      Not in my tests on Windows and Mac. The imported hierarchy is being added as a separate top-level keyword.

      johnrellis
      johnrellis
      Legend
      February 13, 2022

      "keywords aren't applied to the photo but they are being imported into the hierarchy."

       

      That's right -- with that method, the keywords added by Import are added to the hierarchy but segregated under a distinguished top-level keyword, e.g. "Imported".  So it's easy to periodically remove those keywords.

      F
      FeedbackCommunityMember
      Inspiring
      September 20, 2017
      John, thanks so much for returning to an old(!) issue and answering thoughtfully yet again. This is such a frustration for users; it's tragic that Adobe has neglected this for so long.
      johnrellis
      johnrellis
      Legend
      September 20, 2017
      "What is this Top Secret fix that prevents keywords from being added to the Keyword list?"

      When you import photos containing keywords in their metadata, there is no way to prevent them from being added to the catalog's keyword list.  You can stop them from being assigned to the imported photos, and you can have them placed under a distinguished root keyword to make them easier to find (see above for details on each method), but you can't stop them from being added to the keyword list.
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