Changing a keyword in the hierarchy without having to re-tag everything?

Question

I tag pictures as part of my job. So my hierarchy has to change frequently as new pictures are added to the server and I have to incorporate them into the archive or just if I learn something that makes the system work better.

For example I recently learned that words cannot be searched separately. What I mean is, I had a tag 'pool table' that, when searched brought up: pools, tables, and pool tables (billiard tables).

Understandably this was a bit of a hassle to someone that is only searching for a specific item or person so, the solution is to combine the words together with an underscore. But that meant I had to rename and delete every, single, keyword I had made until that point. And then re-tag every picture under the new tags. It's been a long process.

So what I was wondering is why doesn't bridge recognize that the tag has been changed or 'renamed'. And thus change the existing tags to the new version? Instead of creating an entirely duplicated version with the updated text?

Is there an option to do this that I don't know about? Is there a patch for this? I would love to know!

Lumigraphics · Accepted Answer

This sounds unworkable. You should consider going to a different image browser that works correctly with keywords. Bridge and Lightroom free (without Camera Raw/develop features), or another viewer might be a better choice.

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Stephen Marsh · Answer

It very much depends on the metadata searching tools on what results are returned vs. the source keywords embedded in the file.

Understandably this was a bit of a hassle to someone that is only searching for a specific item or person so, the solution is to combine the words together with an underscore. But that meant I had to rename and delete every, single, keyword I had made until that point. And then re-tag every picture under the new tags. It's been a long process.

If using a search criteria of “keywords contains = pool”, then it would not matter whether you constructed the keyword as Pool Table or Pool_Table, both would be returned. So in an of itself, simply adding an underscore separator is not a silver bullet solution.

A search criteria of “keywords equals = pool table” would be more specific and only return pool tables and not swimming pools.

Another method is to use multiple criteria, such as “keywords contains = pool” and also “keywords does not contain = swimming”.

So what I was wondering is why doesn't bridge recognize that the tag has been changed or 'renamed'. And thus change the existing tags to the new version? Instead of creating an entirely duplicated version with the updated text?
Is there an option to do this that I don't know about? Is there a patch for this? I would love to know!

Once a keyword is embedded into a file, there is no live link or “back reference” into Bridge. Bridge does not contain a database of images that contain a specific keyword, nor does it automatically update such images.

There may be Bridge scripts that can help with finding/renaming specific keywords in selected images that may contain multiple keywords that are not readily batch edited using the standard features.

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