P: Better keyword management

I really didn't want this post buried 3 pages into a 7-year-old topic.  So not particularly happy that my thread has been merged into here.

In another attempt to get Adobe's eyes on this issue, I've converted my post into a blog post and open letter to Adobe - you can find it here:  https://www.ians-studio.co.uk/2017/10/an-open-letter-to-adobe-lightroom-keywording-ten-years-of-negl...

I'm trying to get as many people as possible to tweet or share the link on social media to try to get Adobe to pay attention.  If anyone feels they can share it or tweet it - please do so and tag Adobe, or Lightroom or any of the Lightroom Influencers/evangelists that you know.  Let's make some noise.... I'm not giving up on keywording in LR without a fight!

Karl,
If I need to do those kinds of boolean searches - I use a smart collection.  If you haven't found it yet try holding down the ALT key when clicking "+" button when adding a rule while editing a smart collection.!  😉  It allows you to create some very complex rules.  If it's a one-off search I prefix the smart collection name with "tmp" so I know I can just delete it later on.

20,000 images.... I wish that was my concern.  237,000 images in my catalog.  

The responses have been very interesting.  my needs were much simpler. I'd like Boolean searches. Plus, default "and" for a list of keywords, i.e. if i have a list k1,k2,...,kn, then, a search is formed for k1^k2^...^kn. This means order is irrelevant and, one doesn't need to know what filed the ki are in. Works extremely well.
I'd also like wild character searches and regular expressions.
The funny thing about all the searches i use, is that NONE of them behave intelligently! I taught file design and database at a uni for a few years, and, it seems none of this has made it into the modern real world!
My main concern with loosing LR on a disc is that I have some 20,000 images which have some kind of LR processing. I don't want to spend the rest of my life reprocessing what I have already done!
Not good!

That would be very helpful!!!

Erik,

I agree with you, as a stock photographer who has a particular interest in photographing ancient sites, when the AI system can correctly identify which Egyptian Pharoah is depicted in the statues I have photographed and tag them with the all the different spellings of the names and correct dynasty they belong to, then and only then will I start to take it seriously.  Until that time we NEED the tools to do it ourselves.  ARE YOU LISTENING ADOBE??

Ian.

I have an extensive keyword list and I'm worried that Adobe may be putting its hopes in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) system they are developing for the new Lightroom CC. While I think that will be a helpful tool for finding many of our photos an AI system will never be able to apply all the very specific keywords that I need to track all of my photos. Will the AI be able to keyword the specific name of a little visited country bridge, will it be able to identify a particular trail in the forest, will it know that this photo is of my cousin or that this picture is a good metaphor for confusion?

AI can identify a lot of things, but it will always have limitations and so I really hope that Adobe will commit to improving the keywording system in LR Classic while also developing their AI cloud keyword solution.

One of my biggest gripes about the LR Classic keywording, apart from the overall clumsiness of applying specific keywords to each image, is the way that they get messed up, or rather orphans appear when you edit a photo in another application like PS and then bring it back into LR. In the next few weeks, I need to commit quite a bit of time to try and do my yearly cleanup of the LR Classic keywords. I'm not looking forward to it.  

Please give keywords some further attention Adobe! There are many of us here who rely on them! 

I fully support all requests regarding optimizing keywording and keyword-management. There are a lot of usefull and smart requests and suggestions. Ian M Butterfield last one is very good.
A DAM is for me as an enthusiastic amateur with only 25000 pics nevertheless essential. A lot of (good) competitors are lacking of a good DAM or are to expensive. Or if they have a good DAM are lacking of other features or a convenient handling compared to LR.
I always come back to LR because I CAN FIND AND ORGANIZE MY IMAGES - still there is potential for improvement.

I gave up waiting and over a year ago I switched to Daminion for my Digital Asset Management and I haven't looked back.  I never use LR now.  Anything I can't do in Daminion I do in Photoshop Elements.  Adobe have done sweet f*** all in 10 years despite repeated request - the idea that they are going to listen now is frankly delusional. You can download a free copy of Daminion here and the paid for consumer versions here

Daminion's handling of keywords is superb, although they don't have mobile apps.  I use Daminion for metadata management and Synology Photo Station for photo display (Synology does have mobile apps.

Hear, hear!!

I know this has been raised many times before, but Lightroom needs better keywording support.  As a professional photographer here's what we need.  There's TEN of them - one for each year we have been waiting for improvements.

1. We need an easy way to combe/merge keywords - yes it is possible at the moment but it is convoluted. 
   
2. We need to be able to cut and paste keywords in the keyword list hierarchy, dragging them around doesn't really work when you have 10,000+ keywords in your list (as I have)
3. For stock photographers, we need the ability to change the order of the keywords to put the most relevant keywords first on export.
4. We need the ability to prevent 'third party' images or images which haven't been exported with keywords in a hierarchy from creating new keywords in the wrong places on import.
5. We need the ability to filter on synonyms as well as master keywords.  Many a time, I have needlessly created a new keyword because I had forgotten the one I wanted was a synonym for a different keyword
6. Autocomplete should autocomplete on synonyms and then replace with the keyword it is a synonym for.  Again we can't always remember which is the 'master' and which is the synonym.
7. We need to be able to filter for keywords with spaces in the name if I want to filter for "Tower Bridge" I want to see just the "Tower Bridge" keyword not the keyword for every bridge and every tower that I have created.
8. Keyword sets should not be limited to 9 keywords each.  It makes no sense. Allowing those sets to be of variable length would make a huge improvement to speed in which we can keyword. 
9. We need the ability to work in a larger panel with larger fonts.  Managing keywords and metadata in a small side panel with tiny fonts is difficult on the eyes.  Many of us actually spend more time doing keywording and metadata than we do developing our images.
10. We need to be able to do keywording in on our mobile devices AND have it sync back to LR Classic.  It's just crazy that it's now available there but doesn't sync.  We should have our LR keyword list available to us on the mobile devices.  Some of us have spent years building up custom taxonomies to support our business.

Getting any one of these fixed would make a real difference to professional photographers round the world.  LR is 10 years old - some of us, myself included, were raising many of these keywording issues when we were beta testing LR version 1 and TEN YEARS later there has been no improvement.

I had really hoped that we could have seen at least some progress by this stage.  I am truely disappointed in Adobe on this one.