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

[John R Ellis]

@maumilu, note that the feature added in LR 11 only applies to publishing photos to Adobe Stock and not other agencies:

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

[Juha5EA3]

Lrc 14.0.1 modifies xmp-sidecar keyword order if they are set in Bridge. 

Bridge xmp-file:

<dc:subject>
<rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li>wood</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>board</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>wooden</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>painted</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>stripes</rdf:li>
</rdf:Bag>
</dc:subject>

LrC modifies the XMP-sidecar file 
<dc:subject>
<rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li>board</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>painted</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>stripes</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>wood</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>wooden</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>~ATTRIBUTE</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>~Material</rdf:li>
</rdf:Bag>
</dc:subject>
<lr:weightedFlatSubject>
<rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li>painted</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>board</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>stripes</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>wooden</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>wood</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>~Material</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>~ATTRIBUTE</rdf:li>
</rdf:Bag>
</lr:weightedFlatSubject>
<lr:hierarchicalSubject>
<rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li>board</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>painted</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>stripes</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>wooden</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>~ATTRIBUTE|~Material|wood</rdf:li>
</rdf:Bag>
</lr:hierarchicalSubject>

[john beardsworth]

That is expected behaviour and has always been the same. Bridge happens to save keywords in a manual order, LR stores them alphabetically, and there is no IPTC standard which says which is the right approach.

[Juha5EA3]

Yes, this bug has been there years in LrC.  Time to get fix to this!

[john beardsworth]

It's inconsistency, not a LR bug (or a Bridge one). As no standard defines what is correct, neither Bridge nor Lightroom is doing anything wrong.

[Juha5EA3]

E.g Adobe stock "Keyword order is critical: Arrange keywords in order of importance..."

The Lrc changes them always in alphabetical order and user cannot not prevent that. Also when the keywords are order of importance in BR the LrC ruins that when LrC is used!!!

This is far from solved.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

From the 11.0 Release in 2021:

"

Adobe Stock Photographers Rejoice!

If you use the Adobe Stock plug-in to submit stock photos, you’ll be pleased to find that the keyword hierarchy and sort order are now sent to the stock website, rather than being sorted into alphabetical order."

[Juha5EA3]

E.g Adobe stock "Keyword order is critical: Arrange keywords in order of importance..."

The Lrc changes them always in alphabetical order and user cannot not prevent that. Also when the keywords are order of importance in BR the LrC ruins that when LrC is used!

[Juha5EA3]

This bug  is not just a Adobe stock problem. There several other cases where the keywords have to be in written order. This was just an example that keywords have be in written order " "Keyword order is critical: Arrange keywords in order of importance...""

Rick - when we see change/fix in this behaviour?

[john beardsworth]

There's also a 3rd party example, Alamy, which chose to feed keyword order into its own algorithms. I'm not sure there are many other use-cases out there, and on the other hand alphabetical keywords are much easier to review.

LR would need significant work to change its behaviour because it stores the keywords in a structured database and doesn't record the order for individual images (unlike Bridge which simply stores keywords as a text string). 

LR could of course be updated with manual keywording, if Adobe thinks it's a priority. But a LR plugin could certainly allow users to enter manually-ordered keywords in the Metadata panel, and these text strings could then be written into the files exported to the outside service. I've always been surprised that the author of the Alamy plugin never added this feature.

[Juha5EA3]

This is due to poor database implementation in the past. My guess is that the search words had to be arranged alphabetically in order for the search to work (faster). As performance increases in computers, indexing does not play such a big role here.

The user should have the option to choose whether he wants the keywords in alphabetical order or in written order

This is unfortunate that Rick blocks this fix proposal here.

[john beardsworth]

Yes, it's design. Without checking, I think that the reason is that keywords are in their own table, and what gets applied to each photo is only the ID of each keyword. The order in which they were applied is not recorded at all.

So the development cost of changing is not trivial, the use cases are limited, and in any case LR is not deviating from the IPTC standard. I wouldn't hold my breath for a "fix".

[Juha5EA3]

Just get rid of the automatic change of alphabetical order.

Everyone can manually put kyewords in alphabetical order if they want.

[john beardsworth]

Just get rid of the automatic change of alphabetical order.

Everyone can manually put kyewords in alphabetical order if they want.

By @Juha5EA3

I'm not against non-alphabetical order, but that's simplistic. There's no "just" here.

Any change would need to allow the Keywording panel to toggle between displaying keywords in a new as-entered (and recorded) order and the current alphabetical order which is better for most users. The change would also need non-trivial structural changes in the database. Hold your breath if you want.

[John R Ellis]

"From the 11.0 Release in 2021:... the keyword hierarchy and sort order are now sent to the [Adobe Stock] website, rather than being sorted into alphabetical order."

Note that this enhancement is quite limited, confusing, and difficult to use: 

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

[John R Ellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography: Please merge with this popular feature request:

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

[Juha5EA3]

Hopefully Adobe will finally do fix to this after 11 years. What they are waiting for?