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.

[Akash Sharma]

Hi there,

Unfortunately, There is no such feature to achieve bulk editing of keywords, you'll have to edit each keyword changing and its option "Export Containing Keywords".

We are always welcome our users to send in feedback or feature requests that might help the larger audience. Please share it with us here  Photoshop Family Customer Community ​so that our Engineers can look into it.

Thanks,

Akash

[dj_paige]

You can export the keywords to a text file, then change the flag for which keywords should or should not be exported, then import the list back into LR. http://www.tipsquirrel.com/a-further-look-at-keywords-within-lightroom/

[dj_paige]

Also it sounds like you would like to export ZERO of your keywords? Is that correct? There is an option in the Export dialog box that lets you control what metadata is contained in the exported file. As I am at work right now, I cannot be more specific, but I'm sure you can find it.

[johnrellis]

You can export the keywords to a text file, then change the flag for which keywords should or should not be exported, then import the list back into LR.

Unfortunately, importing keywords from a text file always creates new keywords.  So you can't use this method to change existing keywords.

[Ian Lyons]

We are always welcome our users to send in feedback or feature requests that might help the larger audience. Please share it with us here  Photoshop Family Customer Community so that our Engineers can look into it.

I first asked for this and other global features in keywords panel 10 years back and I'm sure many times since. Likewise, others have done so over the years.

[johnrellis]

Here's the feature request from seven years ago (and last voted on two weeks ago): Lightroom: Better keyword management | Photoshop Family Customer Community. 209 votes, which makes it one of the most popular feature requests.

Going forward, Victoria Bampton (Lightroom Queen) wrote, "Future development of Lightroom Classic is being refocused on improving performance and enhancing the editing tools."  So the minimal focus on fixing bugs and improving features in Library over the past many years will be even more reduced.  Thus, it's important to provide feedback to Adobe, even though it usually seems like spitting in the wind.

[k64]

In my example of Places/Europe/UK/London/Greenwich  I want to export Greenwich.

[k64]

johnrellis  wrote

You can export the keywords to a text file, then change the flag for which keywords should or should not be exported, then import the list back into LR.

Unfortunately, importing keywords from a text file always creates new keywords.  So you can't use this method to change existing keywords.

That's VERY useful to know, John, I shall AVOID exporting and importing keywords.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

The new Lightroom CC and Lightroom Mobile app for Android are missing support for manual keywording.  Right now the search box produces a never-ending "Black Hole" error because Lightroom CC isn't smart enough to come up with any intelligent keywords for my images.

Also, keyword management needs to be completely revamped in Lightroom Classic CC.  Please see https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/better_keyword_management for an extended SEVEN YEAR discussion of how this should be improved.

Both Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC need to have a robust keyword management module that allows sorting, replacing, merging, deleting, stacking, and layering of keywords and bidirectional synonyms.  We need to be able to sync keywords across catalogs as desired, including into the cloud (or not at our choice).

[PatrickInSeattle]

So, eight years later I'm searching yet again for a better way to merge keywords and came across my post from 2010. https://forums.adobe.com/message/10423855#10423855 Still no good way to merge them that I can find, just one at a time selecting, adding keywords to the images of the same key and combining them in a terribly slow and laborious way only to have them all duplicated again the next time I import images from a keywording service. Wow, Aperture was capable of this in 2006 but Lightroom still can't do it in 2018. I suppose it's safe to assume the LR will never be able to do this and keywording will remain a huge spaghetti bowl.

To whom replied that didn't port over to this thread: Yes, my comparison to Aperture was unjust, outside of that one, single feature LR pretty much beat it in every other aspect. To fix the above once and for all I'm abandoning the hierarchy and will just have a super long list of words.

[Arcterex]

Same here, 6 year old comments on this threat.  Funny that on Twitter @m_mulligan says they really look here and take things into consideration, so I'm guess this just is never going to happen, which will make it really hard for me to clean up keywords without spending a TON of time on it.

I'll also add to the original idea that some way to deal with a keyword that's a person or not, and how to even tell in the current keyword editor without double clicking on each one.

[johnrellis]

"and how to even tell in the current keyword editor without double clicking on each one."

There's a hidden feature -- click here in the Keyword List panel:



then select People to filter by just those keywords marked as Person keywords:



Are there other things you want to do with Person keywords?

[Arcterex]

Ah, didn't know that.

I guess in terms of people vs not-people, I have a bunch of photos tagged with "John Doe" from before LR had people keywords, and when looking at the main list I see 2 different occurrences of John Doe in the keyword list, but I can't put them at the same level.  IE:

People -> Friends -> John Doe (general tag)
People -> John Doe (people tag)

I don't seem to be able to put them both at the same level (ie: under friends), and even if I could when looking at the full list I'd just see two John Doe keywords and I don't know which to drag the images into (it seems odd to drag a photo into a people keyword as you still need to go in and tag them.
Looking at my own library I see:
Names -> Friends -> John Doe
John Doe
Johnn Doe
(I typo'd the name at some point)
For me, trying to fix a decade of bad keywording practices, there doesn't seem to be a quick way to see which of those three is a tag and which is a person, no way to put them all on the same level (under friends) and no way to rename the typo'd one or merge them together.
I know there *are* ways to do this, but a proper pop-out editor would make this *much* easier to deal with. 

[johnrellis]

"a proper pop-out editor would make this *much* easier to deal with"

Very much agreed.  Even an updated Metadata > Export Keywords command that included all the attributes of a keyword would be a big help, as would trivial enhancements to the plugin API to allow plugins to solve these issues:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/sdk_small_enhancement_to_lrkeyword_to_relieve...

But as you've observed, Adobe clearly doesn't think better keywording deserves any effort at all.

[johnrellis]

" know there *are* ways to do this"

If you want tips on these things, just let us know.

[Arcterex]

Sure, if there are work arounds that'd be awesome. 

In terms of  knowing there are ways to do this, for example to merge person/normal tags, I assume I can just add the person keyword to the ones with a normal tag and then remove the normal tag, but tagging all the photos with a face can be a pain in the ass (especially if you're trying to tag an entire shoot where faces might not be visible, and having to go and tag the back of a head or something).  Or I guess just naming the person tag as "John Doe (person)"...

Anyway, help appreciated 🙂

[johnrellis]

As I think you've learned, to merge keyword A into keyword B:

1. In the Keyword List panel hover the mouse over keyword A and then click the arrow on the right that appears.  That will filter all photos assigned A.

2. Select all those photos and drag keyword B onto one of them, to assign B to all of them.

3. Delete keyword A.

If you want to merge a non-person keyword with a person keyword, make sure you merge into the person keyword, otherwise you'll lose all the face tagging of the person keyword.  

There's no good way to merge two person keywords and retain the face tagging of the source (A) keyword, though.  The photos will get keyword B, but the face tagging of keyword A will be lost.

[Califdan2]

If I could expand on John's comment.....In John's step 1, you will only see images that are not buried in collapsed stacks so step 2 may leave some images still with KW A and not KW B.  There are two solutions to this wrinkle.

a)  Expand all stacks in your entire catalog before you do step 1.  (Could be quite time consuming)

b)  Create a smart collection with a name something like "all photos".  The only rule for the smart collection is Rating >= 0 stars which is every image there is  Now, after you do John's step 1 (which changes the source to the All Photographs in the Catalog panel), Close the lock on the filter bar (lock icon at right end of filter bar), and then click on the smart collection you just created.  This will put all images with KW A in the grid no mater stack position.

Dan

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[Arcterex]

I think I get what you're saying, I'll play with that tonight.  I still maintain that letting the user have both a John Doe (non-person) and a John Doe (person) keyword would be nice for some use cases, and a visual differentiation in the keyword list (and the entry box as well) would be a nice addition.
But I appreciate the tips, I'll have a go with that to play around tonight when I'm home.

[johnrellis]

"letting the user have both a John Doe (non-person) and a John Doe (person) keyword would be nice"

You can have two John Doe keywords with different containing keywords in the keyword hierarchy. Is there something about the current LR behavior that's making that difficult for your workflow?

[johnrellis]

"a visual differentiation in the keyword list (and the entry box as well) would be a nice addition."

I agree.

[ssprengel]

I see lens profiles on disk under the LR resources folder that could be for each of those two lenses:

[JohanElzenga]

Check what kind of image you have selected. Most lens profiles are for raw files only, so when you select a jpeg or tiff, they won't show.

[rogsonl]

Why can't you:

1. filter using the keyword you want to delete.

2. Select all pictures having the keyword

3. Delete the key word from all these pictures

I tried this on 500 pictures I keyworded with Kuki. Then deleted the keyword and it worked like a charm.

Leon

[rogsonl]

1. Select by keyword

2. Click on the common keyword to delete it from all the pictures

3. Add whatever keyword you want to change it to (if editing was your aim and not just deleting).

Leon