Tips for cleaning up keywords in large catalogues?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
September 21, 2022
2 replies
869 views

I've been building up a large database of photos over the years. The keyword structure is sloppy so I've been trying to clean it up. The biggest issue I come across is that duplicate keywords at different parts within the hierarchy can't be easily merged. For example, Who > People > Students and Who > Students. (There's a workaround that involves selecting everything, but it's pretty time-consuming.)

Does anyone have recommendations for a plug-in or standalone app to make it easier to organize large amounts of keywords? I'm ideally looking for something that will let me move keywords around as easily as a file organizer.

I appreciate your input!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

You have given up on answers from here, but I post for others who may be reading this thread.

My method is this- (as suggested by @dj_paige )

Using the example- Who > People > Students and Who > Students.

1) In the Keyword List panel- Search for "Students". (Now shows all instances of "Students".)

2) Click the white arrow to view photos with KW Who > Students. Press [Ctrl+A] to select all.

3) Tick (check) the box next to Who > People > Students (This ADDS the photos to this KW)

4) Click the box (uncheck) next to Who > Students (This REMOVES the photos from this KW)

5) FIlter for another duplicated KW and repeat.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .

dj_paige

Legend

For example, Who > People > Students and Who > Students. (There's a workaround that involves selecting everything, but it's pretty time-consuming.)

I don't know what the workaround is that you say is time consuming, but to me the solution is simple. You select the keyword you don't want, then Ctrl-A to select all the photos with that keyword; then assign the keyword you do want to those photos and remove the keyword you don't want from those photos. Wouldn't even take a whole minute to do this for a given pair of keywords.

Does anyone have recommendations for a plug-in or standalone app to make it easier to organize large amounts of keywords? I'm ideally looking for something that will let me move keywords around as easily as a file organizer.

You can move keywords around in the Lightroom Classic Keyword List panel. Just drag and drop. No need for a plug-in. As far as there being a large amount of them ... as far as I know, there is no substitute for human effort to get this done.

TschenniAuthor

Participant

Thanks for your reply. That works for keywords that don't have duplicates, but my issue is when there are duplicate keywords in multiple parts of the file structure and those requite the workaround. This is for a database of 160,000 photos (and many, many keywords) so Lightroom takes a while to do anything, even select files and move keywords.

It's possible to do it in Lightroom, but I'm looking for a more efficient way to do it.

dj_paige

Legend

So are you saying that even the approach I explained above, selecting all photos with a keyword that you don't want and so on, even that takes a very long time?

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