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Inspiring
October 19, 2017
Released

P: Ability to sync Lightroom Classic keywords with the Lightroom Ecosystem

  • October 19, 2017
  • 375 replies
  • 17478 views

Keywords do not sync correctly: When added on the mobile app (iOS), they do not appear in LR classic and not in LR Web (I deleted the new LR CC immediately, this version does not make sense to me).
Same problem into the other direction: Keywords from LR classic do not appear on the mobile app. 
Attention: At this stage the whole keywording within the iOS app should not be used!

375 replies

Antoine HLMN
Inspiring
January 11, 2021

Officially it's for technical reasons: in Classic, keywords are hierarchical, in cloud they are flat. But I let you judge if that's a real technical limitation or not. The other argument is: be happy with the limited cloud features classic has because it was not designed as such, if you want sync features, go with cloudy. Understand: the sync features of classic are kind a "goodie".

My personal take on this is the following: Adobe has understood the potential of cloud features linked to selling storage in addittion to a way broader market market (compared to enthusiast photographers): cell phone users and casual shooters. Maintaingin both versions of LR must also be expensive, so they have all to win to 'encourage' the migration to cloudy.

But you'll obviously never officially hear anything other than "Both version are equally important to Adobe and the dev teams are working on both versions." Up to us, users, to use our sceptical mind 😉

Participating Frequently
January 10, 2021

I have given up. I am moving from a desktop at home/laptop for the road, to a laptop for everything. It is going to be compromised for both tasks, and more expensive, but at least I will be able to keyword on the road.

Patrice Morel
Participating Frequently
January 10, 2021

it's a shame, I don't really understand what they expect to gain  with that decision. This is THE feature that I miss the most.

Antoine HLMN
Inspiring
January 10, 2021

Forget about it, it’s a political decision, not technical. And unless they have a very good reason to do it, it won’t happen.

Jerry Syder
Inspiring
January 10, 2021

Highly unlikely I'm afraid. 

 

Participating Frequently
January 10, 2021

Is there any hope for keyword sync ever being implemented?

Victoria Bampton LR Queen
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 3, 2021

Just for clarity's sake, keyword syncing between Classic and the cloud has never been available. 

I'll merge this thread into the existing feature request, you may want to go vote on that thread.

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
Inspiring
January 3, 2021

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back keyword syncing between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom.

Participant
October 31, 2020

I use Lightroom Mobile and Classic. I would love to be able to save time by keyword tagging photos in Mobile. To do that effectively I would like to have access to my Classic keyword list within Mobile. Also, since Adobe Stock has a 50 keyword limit, with the first 10 keywords having greater importance, it would be nice to be able to organize my keywords in both Mobile and Classic to accommodate that limit.

Inspiring
October 9, 2020

@lumigraphics I do agree with you (and @11600604_hlmn) it's just them not doing it, but I do suspect that the keywords in online and CC aren't done the same as with CC or other apps that use whatever the keywording standard is.

 

I'd guess that the keywords are stored separately from the images as part of the image library in some other format that's possibly more appropriate for an "online only" world as well as dynamic keywords. 

 

That said, regardless of if they're stored "normally" or not, there's no reason (other than not wanting to put the effort into it) they can't add keyword syncing as part of the CC <-> Classic sync.

 

One thing though - to do this they'd have to change the keywording in CC and mobile to match the heirarchy set up and features in classic.  In CC you have a flat list of keywords, plus whatever hidden keywords that are used for their AI searching (possibly - no idea how they do that part of it).  In Classic you have keywords that contain other keywords as synonyms, a keyword hierarchy, keywords that are "people" keywords or not, keywords from the hierarchy that export with the image or not, etc.

 

To match this up you'd have to duplicate that entire set up and functionality inside CC and LR Mobile and web.  Not impossible of course, but a fair chunk of work, and my guess is that it would also go against the "simplicity" that they seem to want for the CC ecosystem, which could be a reason they're choosing not to do it.

 

An alternative would be to do some sort of mangling of the keywords (flatten the entire hierarchy when going from Classic -> CC, and then sync the flattened keywords back to Classic) and as someone with some fairly in depth keywords, I sure as hell don't want that.

 

Another alternative would be to display all the keywords as just a list when it syncs to CC (ie: go from people -> clients -> weddings -> Bob Jones, Events -> Wedding, Places -> Weddings -> Blah Golf Course which would just turn into "Bob Jones, Wedding, Blah Golf Course"), and then I guess any additional keywords get added back as a root keywords (so you tag "Mary Jones" and that goes into just a single keywords in Classic).  But what if you delete "Bob Jones".  When it syncs back to Classic would people -> clients -> weddings stay or would / should it remove the entire hierarchy because you removed the "end" keyword?

 

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that there are a lot of edge cases which could turn into doing a ton of changes in the CC version.  Oh, and don't forget that since CC, Mobile and Web are pretty much the same, all the theoretical new keywording hierarchy and synonyms and person vs not person (and the person tagging would probably mean you'd need to implement face tagging and recognition in CC as well) and export or not would have to show up in web and ios and ipad os.

 

I want to see it as much as anyone else, but I think it's more complicated than "it's not a technical decision but rather one to piss off customers".