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Inspiring
August 18, 2021
Question

Lightroom Keyword hierarchy and display

  • August 18, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 872 views

PC, Windows 10 Pro, Lightroom Classic 10.3

 

I have a set of hierarchical keywords in Lightroom. And I don’t quite understand how Lightroom displays them. They’re organized the way my brain thinks, which I’m sure everybody has their own system, so I don’t want to recreate the world in some totally different configuration.

FWIW, as far as I know, EVERY keyword in the system has “include on export”, “export containing keywords” and “export synonyms” checked.

 

The hierarchies in this case:

LOCATION>usa>minnesota>minneapolis

FLORA>garden>iris>white flag

 

If I look at the keyword panel for “Enter Keywords” it looks like

minneapolis<minnesota, white flag

which is minimal but sort-of ok. But, WHY is minneapolis attached to minnesota but white flag is NOT attached to iris? What is making them display differently? The only ones I selected for adding are minneapolis and white flag. I didn’t add minnesota. I didn’t add iris. Why does one show and the other not? And if it’s going to show Minnesota, why DOESN’T it show usa and LOCATION?

minneapolis<minnesota<usa<LOCATION

Is there something I need to do differently to have the information shown in the Keyword panel be consistent?


For Keywords and containing keywords, I get a jumble that looks like

FLORA, LOCATION, garden, iris<garden, minnesota<usa, minneapolis<minnesota, usa<LOCATION, white flag

Same question… All the pieces are in here, but they’re so disjointed that they’re not very useful.  Is there something I need to set or configure?  Or some reasonably simple change that will make the Keyword panel more consistent?

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1 reply

dj_paige
Legend
August 19, 2021

You have Minneapolis in your keywords in at least two different locations. That's why you have Minneapolis<Minnesota instead of just Minneapolis. Similarly for the other keywords that show <.

 

Here's a screen capture from one of my photos:

 

 

Note that I have York<Livington County because the town of York appears (intentionally) in two different places in my Keyword hierarchy: this one is for York, NY and I also have photos from York, PA. Two keywords with the identical name York in two different places, will always show the < to indicate which keyword this is.

 

So you need to find your two different Minneapolis in your keywords and consolidate into one keyword, and then the < will go away. You need to find your two different Minnesota and consolidate. And so on.

Inspiring
August 20, 2021

If I understand what you're saying correctly, you're wrong.  I have 1 location hierarchy.  Within that there's exactly 1 usa, 1 minnesota and 1 minneapolis.  Are you saying there's more than one instance of "minneapolis" - one subordinate to minnesota and one not?  If so, no, there isn't.

Presuming I haven't done something like having the same keyword in different hierarchies (which I don't believe I do in this case), what does explain the inconsistencies in how keywords are presented?

dj_paige
Legend
August 20, 2021

Are you saying you only have 1 Minneapolis because you actually used the Keyword List panel Filter Keywords tool to do the search? Or are you saying you only have 1 Minneapolis because you just know, or you searched visually?

 

The first is the only thing I will accept to prove you have only one Minneapolis. Show us a screen capture of this Filter Keywords search.