P: Better keyword management

[joopsnijder]

How about some better support for keyword management. It's very basic now. I would like to do the following tasks:- Delete multiple keywords at once. Not all plugins do handle hierarchy keywords well and add all the keywords to the root level. It's a tedious task to delete them one by one.- Search for duplicates.- Merge keywords. With lots of tricks, it can be done, but it's so inefficient.- Import keywords from within any level in the keyword hierarchy. Now you can only import keywords to the root level.- And for now last but most important: Real external editing of the keyword list. Moving keywords around and doing real heavy reorganization is difficult in LR. I would like to have an editing option like exporting and when reimported all changes are reflected in LR.

[areohbee]

Lightroom already does this. It will only show you "Golden Gate Bridge" in the 'Keywording' box, but if you export it, then the parent keywords will be included, provided they are also enabled for export. You can see the whole hierarchy in the 'Keyword List'.

Just be aware, if you try to search for Golden Gate Bridge, you'll get everything with Golden, Gate, or Bridge in it (Lightroom treats spaces as search separator, instead of part of the search term). To find 'Golden Gate Bridge', you'll need a plugin like AnyFilter or SpaceUrchin.

Rob

[Guest]

Hmmm. I've had no problem with using commas separating multiple word keywords. I use 'contains all' when using collections to avoid keywords that are just 'golden'

"It will only show you "Golden Gate Bridge" in the 'Keywording' box, but if you export it, then the parent keywords will be included, provided they are also enabled for export"

That's useful to know, Thanks 🙂 - but I wasn't talking about exporting them, but rather for use within Lightroom itself. I use keywording to make use of the excellent smart collections in LR which allow me to search across a collection of over 150,000 pics

So to clarify my suggestion is to have user defined keyword hierarchy within LR itself. Unless I'm continuing to miss something. I'll have another play in a minute 🙂

[areohbee]

Smart collections will catch parental keywords. Lib filter only shows child keyword (unless parent needed to resolve ambiguity - just like in the 'Keywording' box).

And yes, 'Contains All' helps when looking for multi-word metadata items, but its not a panacea.

e.g. 'contains all' 'black hair' will match 'hairy black ape' too.

[KarlReed.OZ]

In the year 2012, any serious keyword system should support searches using boolean expressions! Please add this!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

We have a superb map feature for LR4, we have a book feature that will blow away the competition when other suppliers add their templates to it - which they most definitely will do.
I'm hoping that there will be a fully re-thought and up to date powerful and intelligent key-wording section that makes key-wording viable and simple, that allows moving of 100's of keywords to hierarchies, and picks up similarly spelt / misspelt keywords.
There is such a need for some good keywording and the current iteration - even when opened up as people have indicated is not sufficient, the drag and drop is poor and clumsy.

I'm sure / hoping / wishing that LR4 beta 2 has the keyword section in it.
that would be most wonderful!

[Babar_e]

I would also love to have keywords that can belong to 2 hierarchy branch:
for example you may have a hierarchy like that :

People
-----Friends
---------School friends
----------------First grade
--------------------John
--------------------Tom
--------------------Jerry
---------Second grade
--------------------John
--------------------Mickey
--------------------Mini

Here John was both your classmate in first and second grade, so you have him in these 2 branches of the hierarchical tree.

Currently if you assign the first tag
People->Friends->School friends->First grade->John
the second tag
People->Friends->School friends->Second grade->John
is not assigned, I would like an option to specify that these 2 tags are the same and should be synchronised.

This is just an example with name but there are plenty of other cases where I have the problem.

I could change the organisation of the keywords but I would loose a lot of flexibility.

This could also work for keyword that are different:

example (with one way synchronisation - I find this one very useful)

domestic animal
-------my cat Tom

Nature
-------Animal world
-----------mammals
----------------cat

or other example

---sunset photo

---natural light photo

this should be an option, when you create the keyword, you should be able to select among the exisitng one, wich keyword you want to link and which way the synchro should be done (one way or both way or reverse way)

regards

[Jeremy 2]

I have a collection of photos from the local drama group. one of the keywords I apply is the name of the play which could have a number of words. (it is in a hierarchical category as an alphabetical list of the play names under "Play")

I would want to be able to do a keyword filter for just the "play" category. (without having to scroll through every other keyword )

Likewise, I want to be able to display the assigned keyword in the "play" Category underneath prints or in the new books module without any other keywords showing.
- this is in addition to the caption field which I use to list the names of the people showing in the photo from left to right.

[Guest]

another couple of things for keywords :

1] can we have a 'Previous' Button please? Often I have to enter ten keywords to an image, when I've just recently added the same ten keywords to a previous image

2] Keyword Sets: Can we have them of unlimited size please? - a limit of nine is very limiting and annoying to have to keep loading seperate sets up

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I would like to see an improvement to the keyword box on image import as well: I can add keywords on importing images, but there is no way to select keywords from my established hierarchy of keywords. This makes the box useless to most advanced users! I don't see any improvements to keywording in LR4b, which is disappointing.

[johnrellis]

Agreed that the Keywords box in the Import module isn't that useful.

But immediately after import, all the imported photos will appear as the special source Catalog > Previous Import, and from there you'll have full access to the Library's keyword functionality. Does this not work reasonably well for your workflow?

[dearnold]

I also don't see any improvements to keywording in LR4b - very disappointing in a major version upgrade.
At the very least, larger keyword sets and the ability to put them in a user-defined order (something other than straight alpha like now) should be implemented.

[GregVaughn]

I also am extremely disappointed that Lightroom continues to force keywords to alphabetical order. This is really sub-optimal and forces stock photographers to bring images into Bridge or Photoshop for keywording.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

yes, it is something, but it would be easier to add at least some keywords right when I am importing photos. Right now, they might as well delete that keyword box on the import screen...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Well, Bridge also orders keywords alphabetically without your consent if you use a hierarchy. You have to fool it if you don't want the keywords to retain your order.

Add my name to the growing list of disappointed...

[john beardsworth]

Is retaining the alphabetical order of keywords an IPTC standard - I don't think so - or is this need peculiar to how Alamy rank images? If it is only an Alamy thing, there is a plugin which may help - see http://www.lightroom-plugins.com/Alam...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

What's particularly disappointing is the fact that fixing the forced alphabetical sort of keywords has been asked for in every version.

What's the point of participating in these forums if key workflow features keep getting ignored, often in favor of one more bullet point for the features list.

[GregVaughn]

John Beardsworth: I don't believe alpha ordering of keywords is an IPTC standard, and yes, in my case I'm largely interested in making the workflow faster/easier with Alamy (especially since they require keywords to be divided in essential, main, etc.). The plugin looks promising - I'll give it a try.

Still, I don't see why Lightroom can't give us the option of alpha or user-determined priorty ordering of keywords. Especially annoying is if you keyword in Bridge/Photoshop and then import the image to LR, the keyword order is changed.

[john beardsworth]

It would be interesting to know if this resolves the problem for you, Greg. If so, would it be right for Lightroom to bypass non-alphabetical sorting as an exceptional workflow for Alamy and instead put any development effort into other aspects of key wording?

[johnrellis]

I too would prefer to see better keywording facilities built-in to LR. But given that Adobe's resources are finite, a cheaper way for Adobe to ameliorate users' needs might be to enhance the SDK to provide a complete set of fast keyword operations. Then plugins could meet the various needs of many users, such as batch reorganizing, changing keyword attributes such as Include On Export, finding orphan keywords, tagging optimized for particular workflows, and such.

Currently, the SDK's support for keywords is missing the following:

- The ability to change the name, attributes (Include on Export, Export Containing Keywords, Export Synonyms), and synonyms of existing keywords.

- Get the count of the number of photos to which the keyword is assigned.

- Get the exact list of photos to which a keyword is assigned (smart collections only provide an approximate list, in general).

- Delete a keyword.

- Change the parent of a keyword.

- Fast access to keywords. Currently the SDK lets plugins access about 100 keywords per second on Windows, which is impracticably slow for large hierarchies. (It's about 6 times faster on Mac.) A cheap improvement would be to provide batch access to the keywords, similar to the batch access to metadata, avoiding the likely culprit, the LR task scheduler on Windows.

Plug-ins are almost never as good as having the functionality built-in, but they're often much better than nothing.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Paul Wasserman write "What's the point of participating in these forums if key workflow features keep getting ignored, often in favor of one more bullet point for the features list.".

That's a very good question. I don't see any of the LR4 highlights anywhere near the top of the feature request list. Are participants of this forum regarded as geeks who do not represent the majority of (future) Lightroom users?

[John Doogan]

Is there still time to include some of these marvelous suggestions in LR4?!?
It seems a shame that the Lightroom team has not taken the opportunity to overhaul keywording and take the lead as an asset management software. I hear many complaints about Lightroom 3s keywording facility but it appears nothing is changing as a new version is rolled out.

[Louie Sherwin]

Another year, another release and zero keyword enhancements. :-(

-louie

[areohbee]

And zero keyword bug fixes, or did I miss something?

[Jeremy 2]

I am currently seriously considering buying Canto single user to do my keywording in Canto and not bother purchasing an upgrade to Lightroom 5 as I think the keywording in Canto will be more flexible to my needs than can be done in Lightroom. I would prefere to do everything in the same programme though but if no keywording upgrades come to LR soon then Canto it is ( I have an old Mediadex licence that I used before switching the catalogue to LR so can get Canto for 50% discount)

[nahcr]

UNDESIRABLE JUMPING OF KEYWORDS
I have a long list of keywords that need to be rearranged/sorted. for example I might have some specific names such as anthrenus or podisus that are currently standalone keywords and that I want to drop and drag into the hierarchy animal-insect. If the list of keywords (filtered or unfiltered) is longer than the height of the window, then when i click to select the first keyword to move, then the cursor immediately jumps to the top.

For example, if anthrenus and podisus are both near the bottom of the list and i want to drag them to the top, this means that i first click on anthrenus, INVOLUNTARY JUMPING to top of keyword list, scroll back down, Ctrl-click on podisus, INVOLUNTARY JUMPING to top of keyword list, scroll back down, then drag and drop both into the animal-insect hierarchy.
A partial but tedious work around is to filter sufficiently to reduce the number of visible keywords to less than the height of the window. But this means that when i am going thru a list of keywords to decide where to put them, i have to keep re-filtering to reduce the size. for example, in this case, i could filter on "insect anthrenus podisus" to get all three keywords visible. but if there happened to be another insect such as oncopeltus hidden in the list that i overlooked, i have now hidden this name, so I wont see it until i clear the filter, at which point i will need to re-filter for "insect oncopeltus", and so on. This is a real time-waster.