P: Custom sort order of keywords (instead of alphabetic).

[leighm26990353]

Lightroom needs to stop re-ordering our keywords into an alphabetical order. People who are keywording for stock agencies and other purposes need to order their keywords most important and relevant first. Lightroom ruins this for us. I can't believe it's version 5 and Lightroom hasn't figured this out. Lightroom is single-handedly ruining our sales based on keyword searches. Thanks Adobe

[WhitcombeRD]

The standard doesn't care about keyword order - it doesnt specify alphabetical, it doesn't specify ordering at all.

Therefore, ordered keywords are completely within specification.

Many places DO read and write ordered keywords, some use them in that order.  Its completely compliant.

Its also forgetting the important part that Adobe Bridge *DOES* support and write ordered keywords to files.  Its only Lightroom that doesn't.

So even Adobe's own products can do this.

[Lumigraphics]

@richard_whitcombe 

This is not true. Please do not post incorrect information.

If you look at the Keyword panel and the Filter panel, in both places your keywords are sorted into alphabetical order.

Also, Bridge has some significant bugs. For example, dc:subject and lr:hierarchicalSubject can be out of sync and not even have the same keywords saved or in the same order. This can be a huge problem if you are using Bridge and Lightroom Classic together as each app will mangle the other app's keywords.

And yes these bugs have been reported. Nobody seems to care.

[WhitcombeRD]

Again rubbish - you really dont know what you're on about here...

Load Bridge.  Find whatever images you want.  Right click, "File Info...".

Then paste your keywords in.  Click OK.  Keywords remain in pasted order for uploading.

Its the only way most of us submitting to Adobe Stock can do it - export from lightroom (the plugin is useless for this reason) then in Bridge select and paste in the keywords from your spreadsheet or database in priority order.

Upload there, order is preserved and you can submit immediately.

It adds a lot of time to the workflow.  So its clear (i) there is no break of standards (ii) Adobe software CAN support it and (iii) the problem is Lightroom does not.

We've had to use this workaround for many many years when in reality its about 2 lines of code changes in LR to offer it as an option.

(You can also do it directly via Windows Explorer, C1 and pretty much every other library based app.)

LR is the outlier here in not supporting it.

[Lumigraphics]

@richard_whitcombe

Speaking of rubbish... Bridge sorts keywords differently in different places at the same time. Hello.

WHAT YOU WANT IS NOT IN THE STANDARD.

[WhitcombeRD]

@lumigraphics

You seem to lack any knowledge or understanding.

The standards do not specify an order.

The standards do not specify keywords must be in alphabetical orders.  By your own arguments, LR is breaking those standards by sorting into an order that isn't required.  So exporting in the order they were entered is no different to that.

There is absolutely nothing in any of the applicable formats and standards that says any order of keywords is wrong.

And again, Bridge DOES do this.  Its only LR that doesn't.

[Lumigraphics]

No, Bridge DOESN'T do this. So I'd say we are done here, we can't have a discussion if we can't even agree on what's out in plain sight.

[WhitcombeRD]

"Bridge doesnt do this" other than me highlighting exact steps to get Bridge to do it with 100% repeatability?

Ultimately there is no standard that says keywords SHOULD be alphabetical, no standard for keyword sorting.

Various places want keywords in priority order (Adobe Stock, Alamy and others for starters) and its 1 or 2 lines of codes to change to give the option.
Theres no standard OR technical reason why this change couldn't be made.

[johnrellis]

In my test of Bridge, I manually ordered the keywords in File > File Info:

And Exiftool shows that Bridge wrote those keywords to XMP:Subject and IPTC:Keywords in the same order:

[johnrellis]

"its 1 or 2 lines of codes to change to give the option."

It would be quite a bit more code than that. LR stores keywords in a table with columns <photo id, keyword id>.  It would need to add an additional column "position".  Then everywhere in the application that modifies a photo's keywords, the code would need to update the positions.

But I agree with your higher level point -- it's very straightforward to implement.

[Lumigraphics]

@John_R_Ellis

now look at the Keyword panel. Are they in alphabetical order? Add some other keywords that way.

[johnrellis]

The Keywords panel always displays the keywords alphabetically. When I add keywords using the Keywords panel, they appear at the end of the manually ordered keywords in the File Info > Keywords field. When I delete keywords using the Keywords panel, the manual order in File Info > Keywords is preserved.

Continuing the previous example, here's the effect of deleting Matthew and adding Paris via the Keywords panel:

The File Info > Keywords field maintains the manual order 

[Lumigraphics]

Yeah, Bridge shows keywords differently in different places. I never use File Info, only the Keywords panel. A metadata preset writes them alphabetically. Note that Keywords panel and File Info handle lr:hierarchicalKeywords differently depending on preference settings for keywords, too.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Greetings,

The Max 2021 Photography products updates have been released and include remedies for this topic.  The updates will be rolling out worldwide, October 26 and 27, 2021. If you do not see the updates in your Creative Cloud Desktop app, you can refresh the apps to see if the updates are available in your region.  The keyboard shortcut to refresh is [Cmd/Ctrl] + [Opt/Alt] + [ R ]. 

Note: iOS and Android updates may take up to a week to appear in your App Store.

Thank you for your patience.

[johnrellis]

LR 11 added a very limited ability to order the keywords for export to Adobe Stock but not other stock agencies. 

In the Keywording panel, if there are existing keywords, delete them and hit return twice (very important). Then re-enter the keywords in the desired order. If you select another photo and then come back to this photo, the keywords will appear alphabetical, but LR has remembered your ordering internally. When you export the photo, the ordered keywords will appear in the newly introduced metadata field, XMP:WeightedFlatSubject.  Evidently, Adobe Stock will read the keyword order from there, but I don't know about other stock agencies.

The implementation of this new feature is extremely limited:

- If you try to reorder the keywords in the Keywording panel without first clearing them and hitting return twice, the new order won't be accepted by LR. 

- LR always displays the keywords in alphabetic order, regardless of the order you entered them.

- LR's Metadata > Read Metadata From File won't read the order saved in the file or its .xmp sidecar, either from the industry-standard fields IPTC:Keywords, XMP:Subject, XMP:HiearchicalSubject or from the new field XMP:WeightedFlatSubject. So even if Bridge wrote that field (it doesn't), LR won't read it.

- Keywords in the existing metadata fields IPTC:Keywords, XMP:Subject, and XMP:HierarchicalSubject are always written in alphabetic order, regardless of the order you entered in LR.  So other stock agencies that don't know about this new field XMP:WeightedFlatSubject won't see your keyword order.

[johnrellis]

It occurred to me that you can export the ordered keywords in the industry standard fields (that other apps and services see) by writing a Mac shell script with these lines:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/local/bin/exiftool '-xmp:subject<xmp:weightedflatsubject' '-iptc:keywords<xmp:weightedflatsubject' "$1"

Make the script executable by doing "chmod +x <script>".

In the Export settings Post-Processing, set After Export: Open In Other Applications, and choose the shell script.

You should be able to do the equivalent on Windows with .bat files -- it's left as an exercise for the reader.

[nicg20694740]

I have just gone through a pile of photos and used the face recognition feature.  All went fine, however when I look at the keyword tags in Lightroom Classic, or export a file and look at the properties, the order of the keywords looks to be sorted alphabetically. However one of the main reasons I wanted to tag the photos was so that I can share the photos and the names of the people in them with others.

After I export the photos people will know who's in the photo, but not where they are in the photo.  Is there an option to store the keyword list in an order that would relate to the face recognition that's been marked in the photo, for example from left to right across the photo?

Even if I manually change the order of the keywords to match the photo, it goes back to the original order once I come back to it.  Very annoying.

I look forward to discovering a solution.

[Rob_Cullen]

I do not know that that is possible.

I can only think to supply an accompanying screen-clip for each photo that illustrates names-

[johnrellis]

There isn't a solution, unfortunately.  LR stores keywords in alphabetic order and exports them in industry-standard fields in alphabetic order.

LR 11 added an extremely limited ability to export keywords to Adobe Stock in the order that they were entered, but it's so limited as to be almost useless, even for those exporting to Adobe Stock:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-custom-sort-order-of-keywords-instead-of-al...

[johnrellis]

I just remember this plugin for exporting photos with labeled face rectangles:

https://github.com/colin0brass/FaceLabellingExportLrPlugin/ 

I haven't heard anything about the plugin since it was first released.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with the existing Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-custom-sort-order-of-keywords-instead-of-al... 

[Juha5EA3]

When LRc will have fix metadata handling for keywords? LRc is sorting the metadata keywords alphabetically even if there is a need to keep it in order as written. E.G Adobe stock requires that the most relevant keywords are the first one in the list.  

[Al_W_PhotoVideo]

I am just considering entering the Stock Photo-Video market as a contributor.  As a long-time user of LR I want to use it whenever possible.  Based on previous discussions it appears to me that the biggest need is for a TWO TIERED approach to keywords rather than a pure ordering of all keywords.  What I mean is:  I would be happy to have an area for entering PRIMARY keywords (top ten) and SECONDARY keywords (the rest) with the combination of the two also stored behind the scenes together with the PRIMARY keywords listed first.  This may not be practical, but another way for LR programmers to consider how to meet the stock contributors needs.  The challenge is that EACH image needs to be able to have this differentiation.  It would not be sufficient to RANK or WEIGHT the keyword library list (though that could help) because the ranking is based on perceived USE.  As I begin uploading stock images and footage I will have to see which work arounds work best for me.  Thanks for all who have tried to get Adobe to address this important need.

[johnrellis]

@Al_W_PhotoVideo, you might consider another workaround: Create a virtual copy of each photo you upload to an agency, and keyword the virtual copy just for that agency.

[maumilu]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography Unfortunately I am not able to find any related updated in den Creative cloud Desktop app when searching for "Max 2021 Photography products". Which term should be entered in order to find the required update to allow Lightroom to export images with keywords in non-alphabetical (original) order? 

My region is btw Germany.

Thanks in advance.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@maumilu  Install Lightroom Classic 11.0 or later.  Current is 12.1