P: Better handling of exporting and reimporting keyword synonyms

I agree this needs to be addressed by Adobe. If you do any kind of exporting to a different Lightroom catalog the current situation of creating new top level keywords out of any synonyms renders the use of synonyms useless. Manually correcting this would be prohibitively time consuming. It would be faster to just create new keywords, instead of synonyms, and put them in their preferred place in the hierarchy and just assign them to each photo accordingly.

Sorry, John, you are probably quite frustrated with my answers, but I'm still pretty sure that what I suggested will solve your problem. As for batch processing in Photoshop, that is another can of worms, and needlessly complicated in my mind, but it can be done. Signing off.

I concur heartily, since Export has the feature of add back to catalog it should do so without trashing your keyword hierarchy.  This is a valid use case and I cannot for the life of me figure out why Adobe won't simply add that as an option. 

-louie

Thanks Alan I think you're failing to understand what I want to do. The point is that I want to process a batch of files which sometimes could be in the hundreds. From Lightroom I can only do one at a time in Photoshop. I can run a batch of files in Photoshop via Bridge but then I have to import them to Lightroom which brings us back to the screwed up Keyword List Panel.

In reality I don't want to export the JPEGs. I just want to create them in a batch and the "Add to Catalog" feature achieves exactly what I want apart from the Keyword List Panel problem. I can't see why Adobe created the "Add to Catalog" feature if it's not for this purpose.

John, perhaps I am confused. (If I am, just let me know and I'll delete this post).

You said

In order to create a batch of JPEG files for off line archive whilst still keeping the thumbnails visible in the Lightroom catalog the best way to do this is to use the export facility in the Library Module. To achieve this, along with the relevant settings for the JPEG files, the “add to catalog” box is checked. If the “Write Keywords as Lightroom Hierarchy” box is also checked the process results in the keyword list entries remaining the same as for the original file except in the problem areas below.

I am suggesting that you go into Photoshop, open your psd file and save it as a jpg. If you are writing keywords to the metadata in Lightroom (an assumption I failed to mention earlier), then Photoshop should save the jpg with the same keywords as the psd. You then can import the image in Lightroom, and after that, take the image off-line. If you have a bunch of files you need to do this with, and if they are organized in folders, then it is straightforward to batch this process in PS.

Export in Lightroom is not designed to achieve your goals. You might agree with Louis that it should be designed this way, but it currently is not.

I hope that this helps.

A

I'd be happy with any solution that allows me to round trip a file with my Keyword List Panel structure intact.

Ah, well I use Lightroom differently. When I export a photo for posting on the web, I want to get rid of my private keywords, add synonyms, etc., and add a watermark. Then I add that photo back to my catalog and use a plugin to publish the photo to Flickr. So, most of the time when I export a photo, I want to change the keywords and re-import to the catalog.

Again, and addressing Louis' comment below, the way I think about it is: if I want to duplicate a photo in Lightroom, I make a virtual copy. I use Photoshop to duplicate and make derivative files. In my opinion, Lightroom and Photoshop use different models, and I am perfectly happy with them as they are. And my recommendation to both of you is to use Photoshop to achieve your goals rather than hoping Adobe will change Lightroom's behavior. But then, I am a CC subscriber and Photoshop is free once I am paying for Lightroom.

And, just to circle back, we have gone a long way from John Ellis' original comment that synonyms should be exported in the hierarchy next to their parent keyword.

There is a simpler way to handle this that I suggested quite a long time ago. Lightroom: Add an option to always export complete keyword hierarchy  I think this would pretty much solve the problem. If Export were allowed to include the complete  hierarchy when you want to round trip the derivative files back into the catalog then the whole problem goes away.

Adobe in their infinite wisdom continues to ignore this simple and useful fix.

This is one of many things that could be done to make keyword management easier.

-louie

Thanks for your comments. I accept that Lightroom may be operating as designed but I can't see any reason that anyone would want their Keyword List Panel changed if the "Add to Catalog Box" is checked when using the export feature to create a new file from one already in the catalog. In practice anyone using this feature isn't really exporting the file as they still want it to remain in the catalog.

I never import keyworded photos so I don't have any problems with genuine imports and am happy with the way export works when I'm really exporting files.

As far as I am aware there is no way of using "Edit in" to perform a batch operation in Photoshop (in the way you can in Bridge) so this would be more time consuming than my current solution which is to delete the new top level keywords created as a result of my synonyms.

Once again, thanks for your comments but I still feel my suggested change is necessary.
  

One other thought. The keywords you use in your Lightroom catalog are the keywords you want to use to find the photo, while the keywords in an exported image are keywords for other people to find the photo. These may be the same or different, and the various options in Lightroom are supposed to help you make this distinction.