P: Flickr publish service incorrectly handles multi-word keywords in 2015.2.1

[John R Ellis]

The LR Flickr publish service in CC 2015.2.1 / OS X 10.10.5 is causing Flickr to handle improperly multi-word keywords.

For example, if you publish a photo with the keywords "Peter Ellis" and "Lake Powell", Flickr will show four keywords attached to the photo: "Peter Ellis", "Peter", "Ellis", "Lake Powell", "Lake", "Powell". This is incorrect.

However, these methods do not exhibit the incorrect behavior:

- Publishing to Flickr with CC 2015.1.1 and the LR Flickr publish service.
- Publishing to Flickr with CC 2015.2.1 and the Friedl Flickr publish service.
- Exporting to the desktop from CC 2015.2.1 and then uploading to Flickr via the Web browser.

All these methods result in Flickr showing just the keywords "Peter Ellis" and "Lake Powell". Thus, the bug is specific to the Flickr plugin in CC 2015.2.1.

In all cases the export settings were the default plus these: Include All Metadata, Remove Person info unchecked, Remove Location Info unchecked, Write Keywords As Lightroom Hierarchy checked.

At least three others have reported this problem:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1980380 (majbadger)
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1984212 (Bill Ingalls, NASA HG PHOTO)
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1986323 (SyrinxGC)

Screenshot of correct Flickr keywords:


Screenshot of incorrect Flickr keywords:

[majbadger]

I am experiencing this problem as well. I first noticed it when I went from using LR5 on a Win7 machine to LRCC on a Win10 machine. Behavior is exactly as described in the above post.

[Benjamin Warde]

Thanks, John.

-Ben

[majbadger]

Contrary to the original post, I still experience this bug in 2015.1.1 with a caveat (see below). I rolled back LR to 2015.1.1 to fix terrible memory problems that began a week or so ago as well as a new bug (for me) in which LR would only publish 3 photos at a time to Flickr which began happening 3 days ago.

My point, in this thread though, is that I republished (with 2015.1.1) some photos with the improperly separated keywords from being published with 2015.2.1 and they are still improperly separated after republishing. Photos that were NOT previously published with 2015.2.1 have the proper keywords when published for the first time with 2015.1.1. As an example, I had a photoset of 30+ photos. I published with 2015.2.1. Only 3 were uploaded. I quit LR, uninstalled, resttarted PC, installed 2015.0, and then 2015.1.1. I published the rest of the photoset - all of those keywords are correct. I republished the first 3 photos with no other changes - these keywords are not correct.

Is this something that would be fixed with a potential update? Or is there another way to properly parse the keywords? For all previously published photos with incorrectly parsed keywords, would I have to delete the photosets and reupload as new with 2015.1.1 or with a new update? I hope that is not the only option since I would lose all stats, comments, etc.

[John R Ellis]

What if you add a dummy keyword to the photos and then republish again? It may be that Flickr is being "smart" and noticing that the republished photo hasn't changed, so it doesn't reload the keywords.

[majbadger]

Actually, I just tried that. The dummy keyword is properly uploaded. All previously uploaded keywords remain incorrect.

[John R Ellis]

That suggests removing the keywords, republishing, adding the keywords, republishing. Painful, but you wouldn't lose stats and comments.

[majbadger]

Also tried, actually editing the photo and republishing. Still no luck. All previously uploaded keywords remain incorrect. Then I made a virtual copy (not sure what this is exactly) and published that, all keywords are properly uploaded. I suppose a virtual copy is essentially a new photo, so perhaps not surprising that its keywords were properly uploaded.

[John R Ellis]

"actually editing the photo and republishing." That's different than removing the keywords -- did you try that?

[John R Ellis]

"I suppose a virtual copy is essentially a new photo". Right.

[majbadger]

Yeah, sorry. I edited/republished before your previous comment.

Then I tried removing all tags and republished. Looked on Flickr and saw that all the correctly parsed tags were removed and the incorrectly parsed versions of the tags are still there (e.g., instead of "state", "park" and "state park", the keywords now show as only "state" and "park"). Then I readded the keywords and republished again. Both the correct and incorrect keywords are there.

I don't understand how after removing all tags in LR, Flickr still shows the incorrect tags.

[John R Ellis]

"I don't understand how after removing all tags in LR, Flickr still shows the incorrect tags."

If you delete the bogus keywords on Flickr proper and then republish from LR 6.1.1 / CC 2015.1.1, do the bogus keywords stay away? That would be really painful to do for all the bogus keywords.

I believe the LR publish service and the Flickr API use a unique identifier that persists for a published and republished photo. Perhaps because of the bug in LR 6.2 / CC 2015.2, Flickr is not clearing the bogus keywords associated with the photo associated with the unique identifier.

[majbadger]

Well, I tried that and now I really have no idea what is going on.

To recap, I have a photo originally uploaded with 2015.2.1 and subsequently was republished with 2015.1.1 with no keywords in LR but still bogus keywords on Flickr. I deleted the keywords on the Flickr photo page using the 'x' next to each tag (a pain by the way since the 'x' moves when you hover over a tag). Back in LR, I added the proper keywords and republished. Now, there are NO keywords on the photo on Flickr! This is bananas...

[majbadger]

I just tried adding a new keyword to the same photo in 2015.1.1, republished, and....nothing. This is odd, since I previously successfully added a keyword to a 2015.2.1 photo via 2015.1.1. In the course of removing all keywords via 2015.1.1 and then the bogus keywords via Flickr, now I can't do anything with keywords in 2015.1.1 that translates to Flickr.

There has to be a way to fix photos previously published with 2015.2.1. I uploaded somewhere around 1500 photos with 2015.2.1...argh.

[John R Ellis]

Unfortunately, this might be a nasty side effect of the bug, with the current photos left in a bad state from which you can't recover. That is often the nature of bugs.

[majbadger]

I suppose so. I guess I will pass the time editing and publishing the rest of my backlog and hope that when the next version/fix is out, it addresses this issue too. Thanks for the helpful suggestions. Maybe it will lead to a better fix down the road.

[majbadger]

One additional note, photos keyworded and added to albums in 2015.2.1 are properly keyworded on Flickr after publishing with 2015.1.1, not surprising I would assume.

[J453]

This issue should be corrected by the Lightroom CC 2015.3/6.3 which is available today.

Details here: http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjourn...

[majbadger]

Will this update fix the memory issues too? Will this update somehow allow me to correct the previously uploaded keywords? Since I went back to 2015.1.1, LR is approximately 1 million times faster than 2015.2.1. I don't want to update if I am just going to have to go revert again. Thank you.

[J453]

It should fix a number of issues due to the roll-back.

[majbadger]

Here is an issue that the update does not fix. Any improperly parsed keywords for photos published to Flickr with 2105.2.1 cannot be fixed by republishing with 2015.3 (or 2015.1.1, for that matter). Will there be a fix for this? I uploaded 1500 photos to Flickr with 2015.2.1 and as it stands now, my options are to manually edit the keywords on Flickr (I don't think you could pay me enough to do this) or add the photos to new photosets in LR and publish as new (and of course, delete the already uploaded, incorrectly keyworded photosets and lose all comments, stats, etc). Is there any way for LR to correct this without doing either of those options?

[J453]

Good question. Let me ask the eng that worked on this issue if he has any guidance.

[majbadger]

Thank you for following up. An additional oddity has occurred. I just keyworded, edited, and published 39 photos with 2015.3. The photoset already existed in LR, but only had 1 photo in it. As publishing progressed, photos were arbitrarily grouped into 'published' and 'modified photos to republish', such that when all 39 were published, 20 were marked as published and 19 were marked as 'modified photos to republish' despite nothing being done to the photos by me once I initially clicked 'publish'.

[majbadger]

Well, published another photoset and they all uploaded just fine. Not sure what that first upload was all about. Anyway, if you get an answer on how to fix keywords of photos published originally with 2015.2.1, please let me know. Thanks!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Also, even if you do delete the keywords on Flickr, when Lightroom 6.3 republishes the photo it will add back the proper keywords but skip the location keywords. I don't want to completely delete the photos from Flickr and republish because that would break links and album memberships, lose comments and favorites, etc. I hope there will be an easy way to fix photos that were incorrectly uploaded by 6.2.

[J453]

Hi Joshua, unfortunately, there isn't a great workaround other than republishing and/or manually adding the keywords.