Skip to main content
ralphlouzon
Inspiring
December 10, 2022
Question

Two parents for the same keyword?

  • December 10, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 720 views

Hi everyone,

I wonder if it is possible to assign two parents to the same keyword.

Example: A parent keyword STUDIO for various studio things (still life for instance) and portraits. A parent keyword PORTRAIT for general portrait stuff, studio or not.
And a child keyword XXX for a person shot in portrait and in the studio.

Any option to have this XXX kw in both STUDIO and PORTRAIT? Any trick?

How do you manage this kind of situation?

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Legend
December 12, 2022

Yes, remember that keywords are WRITTEN as plain text into a file. The graphics viewer is what interprets them as nested/hierarchical or not.

And determining how to organize keywords is purely logical, based on your needs. There is no right or wrong, just what works to help find your files.

 

ralphlouzon
Inspiring
December 14, 2022

Ok, I understand. Not sure that I don't need nested person names keywords though...

Unless it is possible to exclude some keywords in a metadata search, but I didn't find how. For example typing "John Doe" and excluding "Studio" to find out outdoor or casual portraits of John Doe and not the studio ones. Do you think there is a way to do that?

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 14, 2022
quote

Ok, I understand. Not sure that I don't need nested person names keywords though...


By @ralphlouzon

 

Nested person keywords sounds logical. After all, they are often called 'parent' and 'child' keywords. In practise it is ill advised to really nest parent and child person keywords, for the following reason. If Jane Doe is the daughter of John Doe and so you make Jane Doe a child keyword of John Doe, then Lightroom will assume that every picture of Jane Doe is also a picture of John Doe. Just like every picture of Death Valley is a picture taken in California. In reality this is of course nonsense, however. You will have pictures of Jane Doe without her father in the picture, so you do not want to find these photos when you search for John Doe.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Inspiring
December 10, 2022

Yes you can for sure. You can't have a same keyword with the same name on the same level. But you can have the same keyword with the same name as long as they are each under a different parent.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 10, 2022

You can do this, but why would you? It makes more sense not to use a parent/child hierarchy in this example.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
ralphlouzon
Inspiring
December 12, 2022

I probably wasn't clear... The purpose is to avoid to double assigning the same keyword to the same set of pictures: "JohnDoe < Studio" and "JohnDoe < Portrait" in my example.
Anyway, it seems to be impossible.

Thank you