Inspiring

Question

Stream Deck for keywording?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 10, 2020
2 replies
4838 views

Has anyone used Stream Deck to keyword or sort in Windows 10 Lightroom?

Anyone know if LR will accept, and can Stream Deck do actions- can I use it to eliminate the need to use three keystrokes to delete an image from my drive? Now it takes Delete+Left Arrow+Enter. I do that thousands of times as I winnow out images. Getting to one key would be a dream come true.

I've got 20,000 images to sort and keyword.

And having multiple sets of 15 preloaded keywords would be so much faster than the tiny handful Adobe lets me preload.

I watched their tutorials and a few third party "Hey You Guys" YouTube pieces, none of them were worth a bucket of warm spit. It's mostly used by gamers I guess.

Thanks

Conrad_C

Adobe Expert

BartonGarrett256 said:

“And having multiple sets of 15 preloaded keywords would be so much faster than the tiny handful Adobe lets me preload.”

I don’t have a Stream Deck, but because Lightroom Classic has keyboard shortcuts for the keyword sets, that’s probably possible by programming keystrokes into the Stream Deck. You might know these already, but in case you don’t, I’m listing them because they’re not well documented:

To use keys to apply a keyword from the current keyword set, hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key and press the number that appears next to the keyword you want to apply. The numbers appear next to the keywords only when Option/Alt is pressed.
To cycle to the next keyword set, press Option/Alt + 0 (zero).
To cycle to the previous keyword set, press Option/Alt + Shift + 0.

If you don’t see the buttons I’m talking about, they might be hidden. If so, reveal them by clicking the triangle next to the Keyword Set menu.

In the Keywording panel, the Keyword Set menu lets you create more of your own named keyword sets. I'm not aware of a limit to how many keyword sets you can create. If there isn’t a limit, then the practical limit is the maximum number of keyword sets you are willing to cycle through with keys.

The Lightroom Classic keyword set buttons are laid out like a 10-key number pad, so keyword entry can be very fast and efficient using an extended keyboard’s numeric keypad, which is what I do. To take advantage of the button layout with the Stream Deck, you would assign keystrokes Option/Alt + 1–9 to any 3 x 3 button area of the Stream Deck, and pick two more unused button for the previous set/next set shortcuts. This obviously means you don’t want to use a Stream Deck Mini, because the Mini doesn’t have enough buttons or rows.

By using arrow keys to select images, and the Command+K/Ctrl+K shortcut to enter keywords that are not in a set, you can get a lot of keywording done fast without touching a mouse.

BartonGarrett256Author

Inspiring

Thanks Conrad,

I was not aware of the Alt+ number trick, that is very helpful.
Ideally some day Adobe will let us configure the keywording panel, like they do with other toolbars.

I bought a Stream Deck, doing more digging I found it can be programmed to do multiple keystrokes with one button. My first project will be one button deleting, then I'll move on see what I can do to keywords. This month I've got to triage and keyword 19,000 images, in 130 folders/shoots, one image at a time, shot last year for a pelican survey/book project.

My current workflow is to set up a folder based on the date of shoot, with a two or three word name identifying the customer and the project, it is a sub-folder of a year-month folder which is a sub-folder of a year folder.

I transfer all images from the card to that folder using Breeze Browser, then do coarse deleting in Breeze Browser. (deletions on CF or SD cards corrupted them, I now use QXD cards and won't risk damaging them testing that) Breeze Browser has one click deleting. I don't clear the card until my next shoot, so I've got a backup, and a little more insurance with the 'doesn't really reformat' protocol in cards.
Then I import the folder into LR and develop as well as keyword at a batch level. From there I do more image specific developing and deleting. Now in LR deleting takes three clicks, and the common error is the image is just removed from LR which is a hassle to fix. From there depending on how busy I am and specific client or project needs I keyword each image as required. LR is woefully inadequate in terms of enabling me to customize and speed up the whole process.

Conrad_C

Adobe Expert

How would you want to configure the keywording panel beyond the customization that’s already available (being able to set up your own multiple keyword sets (button grids))? Do you wish there were more buttons in the grid, for example?

Rob_Cullen

Adobe Expert

I cannot answer to "Stream Deck", but I might have suggestions that could be useful-

three keystrokes to delete an image from my drive?

A better method might be to use the "Reject" Flag- it only takes one keypress [X] then at any time later [Ctrl+Backspace] will delete ALL the Rejected files from disk. (Having a Filter active can also 'hide' the rejects as you flag them)

15 preloaded keywords...

Yes Adobe limit us to nine in the Keyword Set panel. I think the reason for this is that when you hold down the [Alt] key you get to use a numeric keyboard (9 keys) to add the keywords (eg. [Alt+1] = 'Bride' in the Wedding set )

My son uses a Stream Deck (but not a frequent Lr user) I will pose the question to him.

Edit: (Do not ask me to explain!)

How to use Stream Deck? My son's responses-

You can prgram a key to insert a word or phrase when pressed.

You could set up a button as a folder, and when you press it, it shows each of your commonly used keywords.

A button can type in a common copyright message.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .

BartonGarrett256Author

Inspiring

Thanks!

I am not a big fan of flagging and deleting en masse, not enough visibility for me, too many things could go wrong. I want to delete one image with one keystroke, only the single image I am looking at. The downside of deleting the wrong image is too big. One at a time, but quickly, is what I want.

Keywording in LR is very clunky, it should be easier to customize the menus. I'd rather see that developed as opposed to iPad apps, I will often work with one PS file larger than the RAM in my iPad, why anyone is keeping a catalog of 100K images in the cloud baffles me.

I'm hoping to do that customization with Stream Deck. It looks to be pretty straightforward to do in PS, Pr and AE, but I'm not sure about LR. I've got to see if custom shortcuts can be done in LR, or if I can combine keystrokes in Stream Deck.

Thanks again

J

janner17004274

New Participant

I am using Lr with stream deck. It is very easy to program shortcuts with hotkeys.

But it doesnt work perfectly.

For example, when I am using shortcut remove and trash photo (cmd opt shift delete), I need still accept removing.

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