P: Custom sort order of keywords (instead of alphabetic).

I agree that disabling alphabetization of keywords would be very useful to those working with stock agencies -- 75 people have voted for it now, which puts it into the middle bucket of popularity of feature requests.

The necessary engineering is hardly rocket science but more involved than adding a preference: The underlying catalog database schema would need to be modified to store the keyword position within the list of keywords for an image, and all the different places in the code that update, display, and export the keywords of an image need to be modified appropriately. On the order of a man-week or two or three, involving a product manager to specify all the edge behaviors of what happens when you modify image keywords, a software engineer, a QA engineer, and a tech writer.

All the smart people at Adobe, and no one can come up with a way to add a small preference button that says "Disable Keyword Alphabetization" 

I agree with all the frustration, sometimes I think there are to many gears working at Adobe, all with different departments that just like to do things their own way and ignore some common practicalities.

They push Adobe Stock, and specify they give weight to keyword order, but it is impossible for them to implement a function to disable keyword alphabetization.

Joining all other requests for custom keywords ordering!

This really needs to be addressed. Especially since the main reason I want this corrected is due to Adobe stock images website, that ranks the first keywords higher than subsequent keywords.

Just FYI, Jeff's out of the office this week and next. But for when he gets back, what kind of input are you looking for?

@JeffreyTranberry

Would it be possible to get your input on this?

There are some bugs in keyword writing and handling between Lightroom, Bridge, and Photoshop. Keywords are actually written two different places in the XMP (dc:subject and lr:hierarchicalSubject) and they don't match between programs. I have written a Bridge script to fix the problem but it doesn't preserve keyword order. Remember, keywords are text that is written to the file. A program reads that text and can process it however the programmers decide (including using parent keywords.) Just because a program shows keywords in alphabetical order does NOT mean that they are written that way in the actual file.

Keywords entered in the Basic tab of Bridge and Photoshop File Info are written to dc:subject but not lr:hierarchicalSubject, while keywords added in the Keyword panel of Bridge are written to both. If some keywords are added in Photoshop or Bridge via File Info and then others added via Bridge Keywords panel, the lr:hierarchicalSubject is not updated. So you have different sets of keywords in the two namespaces. Additionally, if keywords are assigned via Bridge Keywords panel then deleted, an empty lr:hierarchicalSubject tag is left behind. If keywords are added back in File Info->Basic, that empty tag is deleted.

And yes I have filed a bug on the problem.

Hi Graham, in a typical application, if reordering is required along with searching and with a sorted display of keywords, the typical way to do it is:

Save the keywords in two formats (a) a blob of text or as a “linked list” with the keyword-IDs separated by a delimiter to use during display and export and (b) add a new sort order column in the linkage table, to allow for filtering

Reordering would entail these parts:
- UI/UX for reordering (especially when dealing with multiple image selection and some keywords present only on some images)
- each time a reordering occurred for one keyword, the the sort order column for all keywords occurring after its old position or new position (whichever is smaller) have to be revised image by image when multiple images are selected
- Revising the linked list / blob of text for each image

In both cases, supporting reordering is more effort than plain “save it as I typed it”, but then we are talking about a team that has built tools like de-haze so it’s not rocket science for them.

I think reordering wont be logically possible if multiple images are selected because one image could have Tag A before Tag B and another in the selection could have the opposite.

It’s up to us users to tell Adobe if we’d be happy with a save-it-as-I-type it approach, or whether we want nothing unless there’s reordering as well.

Is it not possible to implement a drag and drop re-ordering of keywords before export which will be maintained and allow the order to be viewable? You can do that in Photomechanic.

Users often re-order keywords after typing (or using sync metadata, metadata presets, reading from xmp), so it's insufficient to sort simply on the order in which entries get added - it's an extra column There are complications in most of the areas where keywords are recorded, displayed or output in LR, and obviously for the majority of users LR would need to retain alphabetical keyword sorting as its default. While anything can be done, one shouldn't imagine it's simple.