P: Ability to sync Lightroom Classic keywords with the Lightroom Ecosystem

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Keywords do not sync correctly: When added on the mobile app (iOS), they do not appear in LR classic and not in LR Web (I deleted the new LR CC immediately, this version does not make sense to me).
Same problem into the other direction: Keywords from LR classic do not appear on the mobile app. 
Attention: At this stage the whole keywording within the iOS app should not be used!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

You would think so wouldn't you. Otherwise what is the point in having both versions syncing. But it seems that isn't how Adobe see people using the software...

[Antoine HLMN]

Indeed!
You know the software you pay monthly for? For the the « continuous improvements »? Well some basic features are not developed... not even a warning message. Too bad, isn’t it ?

[JohanElzenga]

I think Adobe is clear in how it looks at both. You and I may not like it, but their point of view is simple and clear. Lightroom Classic is the version for local use, not cloud synching. Yes, it does have a few synching options from the time that Lightroom CC was not yet around, and Adobe won't REMOVE those options now that Lightroom CC is available, but Lightroom Classic is not meant for cloud synching, period. If cloud synching is important to you, they want you to use Lightroom CC. As said, I don't like it either and I'm not defending it, just explaining why you can continue this thread forever without anything changing.

[Antoine HLMN]

Too bad LR Cc is does not respond to many photographers needs.
People will continue to request this feature because there is no reason for Adobe not to finish their work. It is clearly a marketing decision and not a technical limitation.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Have converted / filled my keywords to others fields which are synched, but the VERY BAD thing is that without an online connection I cannot search for pictures in LR CC mobile. Imagine you want to show pictures to friends and you cannot find , because Adobe are not allowing and offline search. Very disappointing. And I pay monthly for this software.

[ethani48380925]

I tried using the new LR CC on my desktop, together with LR Classic CC.  I found the latter to be similar to CC for Web, with some additions.  Syncing worked fine if, for instance, I added a star rating to one of my photos, removed it from an album, or stopped syncing a specific album.  Right away, the changes would propagate to LR CC and CC for Web.

However, the same could not be said for keywords (which, of course, are only relevant to LR CC, but not CC for Web).  First off, I discovered that LR CC was only picking up keywords that had been written as metadata to disk.  That means that before syncing a collection from LR Classic, I needed to save metadata to file.  If I had already synced the collection and then saved the metadata, the changes were not picked up by LR CC.  Even if I quit and restarted the program, the metadata was not reloaded.  And that's despite the fact that LR Classic would immediately sync the file anew whenever I saved the metadata to file.  

The only way I could get LR CC to re-read the metadata was to first stop syncing the collection from within LR Classic, then to delete all the individual photos from the "All Photos" view within LR CC, and then to sync the collection again.

(Incidentally, related to this is the issue of how to control which keywords are written to file.  I had indicated not to export certain keywords, yet those were still saved as metadata and picked up by LR CC.  And even this behavior was not consistent.  Certain higher-level keywords appear to have been applied to some photos but not others within the same album.)

Another issue is that there doesn't seem to be a way to edit keywords.  At some point, I had corrected the spelling for someone's name keyword on LR Classic.  The earlier spelling seems to have been saved to metadata, because when I synced a photo of the person, LR CC had a keyword for each spelling.  I could remove the incorrect keyword from the individual photo, but there didn't seem to be a way to do this across the whole system.

[ethani48380925]

John Ellis, or whoever merged this thread, would it be possible to also include all the original comments?  I think they add some useful information that is not present in this main thread.

[johnrellis]

Unfortunately, the forum software makes merging of the associated comments very painful. If you see particular comments you want visible here, I suggest copying them here under your own name (with attribution).

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

> I could remove the incorrect keyword from the individual photo, but there didn't seem to be a way to do this across the whole system.

There's a trick on the desktop LR CC app. Select All Photos, then the Refine button. Filter to show the photos with the "incorrect" keyword, then select all. Then in the Keywords panel, it'll show the incorrect keyword, and clicking on it will delete it from all of the selected photos.

[andromedis]

this is all our logic, unfortunately the logic of Adobe works along some marketing decissions and not their customer needs, disappointing really.

[JohanElzenga]

It's probably both technical and marketing. Lightroom CC only knows 'flat' keywords, Lightroom Classic has hierarchical keywords (meaning you could have two identical keywords in different hierarchies). That means that you can't simply sync them right now. Of course it should be possible to find a solution, so it's probably a marketing decision not to spend time and money on that.

[ethani48380925]

John, if the original thread with comments will not be deleted, I suppose it's enough to inform latecomers that it would be worth checking out the prior discussion at the thread. 

[ethani48380925]

Thanks, Victoria.  You had pointed this out in the original thread from 7 months ago, but my original post has now been transplanted to here.

[johnrellis]

All the merged threads are preserved, and though it’s not at all obvious, you can get to them by clicking the link at the top of the merged post.

[joachimg66566570]

I just feel in the same way.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Update: In the meanwhile there seems to start some kind of caption sync between LR classic and LR mobile, although I did not check that with hierarchical keywords.
But I am happy that captions which I added "on the road" are no longer lost but show up in LR classic

[Tyrven]

This is certainly a disappointing limitation. But what's especially disappointing is that it's entirely unexpected (since all other fields are synchronized), and there's no communication in the product that this field won't be synchronized.

At minimum, I'd recommend adding a warning to the user the first time they try to edit keywords on a collection synchronized with Lightroom Classic; that would avoid a lot of frustration and confusion as users attempt to troubleshoot why keywords aren't synchronizing (even though everything else is). 

In my case, I spent an hour troubleshooting this before looking online—and realizing that it was "by design".

[Ole Plannthin]

John Beardsworth wrote: Adobe has chosen not to integrate keywording in LRCC with Classic's keywording.

It's a bad choice

I wish that keywords are transferred from LR Classic to LRCC when using collections.

[Charlyw64]

For me one of the most valuable cloud integrations would be synchronized keywords between the Lightroom Classic CC infrastructure and Lightroom CC - because I like to use my tablet at home on the garden deck or sofa to surf the web and then, when I feel like it, I would like to use it to add keywords to images that still didn't get any. So I am forced to sit in a stuffy edge of my workspace which I have set up to have little outside light (so that I get the benefit of correct image display on my main screen) and work on those tags. It really should have been there years ago.

Oh, and I would like to be able to search through my synchronized collections in Lightroom CC - I sometimes do in promptu presentations of some of my images, I would really like to be able to get all my images of say a specific butterfly to show the best of them to someone who asked - currently I have to remember in which collection and approximately where in that collection I may have one of these images.

The lack of these keyword functions currently is one of the biggest omissions in the whole of the Adobe Cloud...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hallo Karl Günter, the missing keyword sync from LR Classic to LR Mobile is one issue, but a much bigger issue is that you cannot search existing keywords when there is no internet connection. Imagine you sit in a beer garden and want to show pictures and it is not possible. Or sitting in the airplane and want to search a picture, again, not possible. OK, the new advanced autodetect scenes need internet, but there are still normal keywords and descriptions. In addition of that, the preview of pictures has issues in offline mode as well. You see only a black preview for many pictures. As son the internet connection is back all these black previews appear immediately. LR Mobile is no longer usable in such situations. OK, Adobe is adding more an more features and I love to see that, but I need the offline functionality as well.
Let us hope the best
Peter

[Tyrven]

@Peter Chater: It may be worth creating a new feature request for offline search to cover that scenario. There is another post regarding search capabilities, but it doesn't seem specific to the offline scenario.

[Tyrven]

For what it's worth, I've added a feature suggestion to at least warn users that keyword syncing isn't supported. I'd much rather see full keyword syncing, but if that's not realistic then users need to be aware of the limitation 

[Antoine HLMN]

Nah, Adobe needs to tackle this HUGE omission! It’s syncing goddamn strings, not rocket science!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Thank Jeremy,
do you see this offline search issue as well? You just need to switch on Airplane mode and try a search.

[Tyrven]

@Peter Chater: I do, yes.