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jweed71
Participant
January 17, 2021
Answered

Keyword filtering error

  • January 17, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 1265 views

Hey guys I have been using Lightroom for quite a long time and I have recently discovered what I think is a bug in the keyword filtering.  I created a simple cata log to hopefully make this simple to explain. If you look at the image posted here:

I have 5 photos from my kids soccer practice. I have keyworded the files using a nested hierarchy of keywords ".PLACES>JPF2>Justin's Soccer"  You can see as an example, the selected photo only has 2 keywords on it, "Justin's Soccer" and "Kim". I have used the filtering option to select "JPF2", which should not reveal any photos, because no photo actually has that keyword set to it.  Why am I seeing any photos in the filtered view. They should all be hidden at this time.  I have noticed this error only has happened recently and only for new nested keyword groups I am creating.  For my old keyword groups in my calatlog, this behavior works as it should.  This issues is really making it hard to clean up my photo collections because the wrong photos are alsways being shown.

 

Hopefully someone else has seen this. My current version of LRC is 10.1.1  

Thanks, 

 

John 

 

 

 

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer johnrellis

"I have keyworded the files using a nested hierarchy of keywords ".PLACES>JPF2>Justin's Soccer"  You can see as an example, the selected photo only has 2 keywords on it, "Justin's Soccer" and "Kim". I have used the filtering option to select "JPF2", which should not reveal any photos, because no photo actually has that keyword set to it."

 

That's the expected behavior. When you assign a child keyword to a photo (e.g. "Justin's Soccer"), LR implicitly assigns all its ancestor keywords as well ("JPF2" and ".PLACES").   So when you search for "JPF2" or ".PLACES", you'll find photos that were explicitly assigned "Justin's Soccer".

 

Note that the counts shown in the Keyword List panel and in the Keyword column show the number of photos that were explicitly assigned that keyword.

 

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4 replies

johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
January 22, 2021

"a way to not have the containing keyword selection show the child photos?"

 

Without using a plugin, there's only one way: Click the menu in the upper-right of the Keyword column and select Flat (see the screenshot in a previous post).  Now, selecting a keyword shows only those photos to which the keyword was explicitly assigned.

 

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johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
January 21, 2021

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"While I do agree that this is the current behavior of LR, it is not how it used to perform.  ... I have "Automotive" selected in the filter, but none of my auto pics are being exposed to me. This is what I have always expected LR to do."

 

The behavior I described is how LR has always treated ancestor (containing) keywords.  For example, here's a subset of your hierarchy in LR 6.14, with "Automotive" selected in the Keyword column:

 

 

Note that the photos assigned child keywords of Automotive are displayed.  (I'm the author of the Any Filter and Any Tag plugins, available since LR 3, which among other things search for keywords.)

 

I don't know why your "Automotive" is behaving differently -- that looks like a bug to me. A couple of troubleshooting steps:

 

- Click the micro-menu in the upper-right of the Keyword column and change it from Hierarchical to Flat. Click Automotive in the Keyword column (which should show 0 photos). Then change it back to Hierarchical and click Automotive again. Do photos now show?

 

- Try resetting LR's preferences: 
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

LR sometimes soils its preferences file, and resetting it can fix all sorts of wonky behavior. That article explains how to restore the old preferences if resetting doesn't help.

 

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J
jweed71Author
Participant
January 21, 2021

Thanks again, John.

 

While I understand what you are saying about how LR is supposed to behave and that it seems totally backward to me, might I request if there is a way to not have the containing keyword selection show the child photos? Like holding a modifier (shift, or alt) when I select the containing keyword so it only show photos with that specific keyword and not the child keyworded photos.  I promise you this is how my LR has always behaved.  As of right now, I am going to seriously struggle with handling my 53000 photos and videos with this different behavior. So strange why my setup has always been like this.

 

I did also try both of your suggestions mentioned above and it did not change my existing contain keyword selection behavior.

 

Thanks, John

johnrellis
johnrellisCorrect answer
Legend
January 18, 2021

"I have keyworded the files using a nested hierarchy of keywords ".PLACES>JPF2>Justin's Soccer"  You can see as an example, the selected photo only has 2 keywords on it, "Justin's Soccer" and "Kim". I have used the filtering option to select "JPF2", which should not reveal any photos, because no photo actually has that keyword set to it."

 

That's the expected behavior. When you assign a child keyword to a photo (e.g. "Justin's Soccer"), LR implicitly assigns all its ancestor keywords as well ("JPF2" and ".PLACES").   So when you search for "JPF2" or ".PLACES", you'll find photos that were explicitly assigned "Justin's Soccer".

 

Note that the counts shown in the Keyword List panel and in the Keyword column show the number of photos that were explicitly assigned that keyword.

 

[Use the blue reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

J
jweed71Author
Participant
January 21, 2021

Hello John,

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my concerns. 

 

While I do agree that this is the current behavior of LR, it is not how it used to perform.  Here is a screenshot of a portion of my existing keyword hierarchy highlighting my "Automotive" pics.

 

As you can see, I have "Automotive" selected in the filter, but none of my auto pics are being exposed to me. This is what I have always expected LR to do.

 

Now, if I explicitly add the "Automotive" keyword tag to any of those photos, then they obviously show up, as shown in my second screenshot here.

  This is why I think it is a bug and should be corrected to act like it has in the past.  If I do not set the tag "Automotive" to a photo, then regardless of the tags underneath it, only those photos with Automotive should be shown.

 

Thanks, John

J
jweed71Author
Participant
January 17, 2021

I also want to add something new I just discovered about the error.  It seems to only occur for keywords that have been dragged into another keyword. For example, if I create a new keyword "Test" under "JPF2" and add this keyword to the phots and remove "Justin's Soccer" keyword, then when I select JPF2 for filtering, no photos show up.  So it appears there's a bug somewhere that dragged and dropped keywords are not being handled properly by the software. Hope that helps.

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