Better keywords/tagging

I love Bridge, I use it every day. But it's major weakness for me is the tagging system and filtering by keyword. Right now I'm using Bridge/ACR for my importing, sorting and viewing. But I actually open Windows Live Photo for tagging and filtering by tag.I would rather not use two separate programs for my cataloging workflow. I hope you harvest ideas from the competition for CS6. These are the ways I think Windows Live does it better:
Windows Live
Bridge CS4
One simple, elegant panel for adding keywords, tagging, filtering
2 confusing panels, have to go back and forth
Drag and drop
Annoying checkboxes
Nested tags
Bridge has nested tags as well, but it doesn't do a good job of reading the nested tags I made in Windows Live. It formats them as "places/canada/toronto" rather than a proper checkbox hierarchy. And vice versa, windows live doesn't recognize the Bridge hierarchy. I wish there was consistency.
face recognition, geo tagging
right now it can't even recognize the existing people tags and geo tags, let alone add new ones. Picasa had no problem seeing the ones added in windows live, so it can't just be a proprietary thing

Not an expert on this subject, but before you comit a lot of time on this project in Bridge, explore other options as well, such as digital access management programs.
Bridge is not really set up for Network use although some use it that way. Also, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements stores the keywords in a database, while Bridge stores it on the image. Although I have never used the other programs, it seems lke it would be easier to search.

Similar Messages

Make a keyword tag a child after it is created as an orphan tag

I created the keyword tag "butterflys" and applied it to some photos.
Later I created a keyword tag of "bees" and applied it to some other photos.
At this point I realized I should have a keyword of "insects".
I created the "insects" keyword but could not find a direct way to make "butterflys" and "bees" child tags of "insects.
I was able to do it by creating keywords of "BU" and "BE" as children of "insects"
Then I selected all the "bee" photos and added the keyword "BE" to them and similiarly selected "butterflys" and added the keyword "BU".
Then I deleted the keywords "butterflys" and "bees".
Finally, I renamed the keyword "BE" to "bees" and "BU" to "butterflys"
There must be a better way!
Lightroom 1.0 on Windows XP on a Compaq Computer.

There is a better way!
First, create the parent keyword, "Insects". Then, in the "Keyword Tags" pane, drag the child-to-be (no pun intended...) keyword (i.e. "Butterflys" or "Bees") and drop it on the parent-to-be keyword (i.e. "Insects").
hope that helps!

Photoshop 7 to 11 Upgrade Adds Wrong Keyword Tags

I recently upgraded from Photoshop 7 to 11 and now I'd finding that my photos have been automatically assigned additional and incorrect keyword tags. Most prevalent seems to be place and event mistagging. I'm now going back through all my photos to verify the correct tags and remove the incorrect.

Please follow the link I posted; they'll be able to help you better over there.
This is the forum for the full version of Photoshop, and it works differently.
Adobe has made the product naming confusing.
-Noel

How to transfer keyword tags

I have a seperate PC PSE8 organizer that I would like export just the keyword tags file to my new Mac PSE10 to use with a seperate new database. Is this possible?
Thanks in advance.

A better way to do this would be to install PSE 10 on your windows computer (if you have the boxed version you have both platforms) and update your catalog to PSE 10, then do a full backup using the organizer's backup command to a removable drive, then restore the catalog to the mac.
EDIT That's unless you just want a list of keyword tags to save time when working with a whole different set of images. But transferring a catalog will also preserve albums, version sets, etc.

How to use keyword tags effectively in pse 8

No matter what I try, have not been able to make keyword tags work effectively. Have followed all directions from books and others. Even customer support was not able to help.
The problem is that tagged photos will not show up by themselves. All other photos in the catalog open at the same time. The tagged photos sometimes show a blue circle with a white check mark through it. All the other photos show a red circle with a slash accross it in the upper left hand corner of the photos.
Customer support says that that is how the program works. I don't believe it!
Wold uninstalling and reinstalling pse 8 work?
Any other suggestions?

Would you consider suggesting a work-flow for someone who is just starting out with Organizer? (As an aside, if you are familiar with Picasa, would you give your opinion about the relative merits of Picasa and PSE Organizer?)
In all honesty, I can longer recommend the Organizer -- it's buggy, slow, hard to use, and Adobe shows little inclination for fixing bugs that have been around since PSE 6 or earlier. (I use it because I have large catalogs dating back to Photoshop Album 1.) See my review:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R332BXA5A70OL9/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
As for alternatives: At the low end, many people are satisfied with the free or almost-free programs: iPhoto, Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery (which in my opinion is better than iPhoto). These are fast and easier to use than PSE and can handle thousands of photos. For more sophisticated users with larger catalogs, many people like Lightroom, Aperture, Imatch, Idimager, and ACDsee Pro.

Keyword Tags list Incomplete

I've finally got round to importing my old scans into Lightroom. They all have comprehensive keywording. I don't use LR's hierarchical system, so all of my keywords are at the top level of the Keyword Tags list.
But when I scroll through the list in the Keyword Tags pane on the LHS, it is truncated, only displaying the list as far as "Cesar". When I export the keywords as a .txt file, they're all there.
Also, if I add new keywords by writing them in the Keyword Tags box on the RHS, it can take several minutes (yes, I do mean minutes, not seconds) of waiting before LR completes the action. I've tried Optimising the catalog, but it doesn't seem to make any difference, and 'backup' doesn't find any corruption in the catalog.
Any Ideas? Or do I have to reorganise my keywords into a hierarchical structure?
Patrick Cunningham

Possman, Yes, I fully understand what you mean. I think if I were you I would want the same.
In a hierarchical system as you have it is much easier to handle and remember) a large number of keywords as many of them are implied ones (NH, NH7, NH76 eg). In a truly flat system (one without any structure at all) 10000 must be a nightmare.
There are millions and millions of people taking pictures and there may be as much systems for keywording; everyone invents his or her own system. May be my background (ICT) forced me to think in a very structured and organized way. May be that's why I choose a hierarchical list from the beginning. I feel my keyword approach helped me in keeping the effort of tagging everything in LR as small as possible. Although, let's be honest, on the road to success I have said some things I won't repeat here....
I wonder if importing an existing tagging system would make one happy. It sounds attractive but a conversion/migration is sometimes even worse than starting from scratch: garbage in, garbage out. My brother in law tried to convert his system from old to new; it was a disaster. I took so much time that starting from scratch would have been wiser (and better for his marriage :-)).
But I agree with you that LR should at least have an option to import what one has, no matter the number of keywords. From a commercial point of view that would be a very sound approach as well. Let the customer choose!
However I still do not think one could demand from Adobe that LR should be so open and so flexible that no matter which system will be imported it will fit into LR without any problem. That is simply not possible I am afraid. So there will always be disappointed users.
But as Adobe is advertising LR as a DAM system their keywording solution should be more mature than it is right now.

Reinstalled PSE7 - how to retrieve albums and keyword tags? [Was: Question]

Hiya
Using Photoshop Elem’7- I have had a major problem with my pc and I have gone back to factory settings, I have reloaded the Photoshop software – I can see all my photo’s back on my hard drive and also on Photoshop but I cannot retrieve my albums and keyword tags
Can anybody help me on this topic?

Hi
This is actually the Photoshop forum, and you would do better in the Elements forum.
http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop_elements
But it seems that Elements creates a catalog file where I suspect it keeps the info you are looking for.
This is one link, but you could try Google with Adobe Photoshop Elements catalog location, ot just go ask in the other forum.
http://don26812.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/photoshop-elements-catalog-file-the-critical-link /

Keyword tag sequence

Is it possible to reverse the sequence of a Keyword Tag set?
I have a keyword tag set "Year" and under this sub-tags; 2000, 2001, 2002... 2010. I'd like the 2010 tag to be at the top but it's at the bottom. Can I change the sequence? I've poked around and can't see any way of doing it.
I'm using PSE8.0
Thanks,
John

If you use the Timeline feature of the PSE Organizer, this tag problem doesn't matter. I am not a fan of years as tags, precisely because the Timeline handles dates much better than keywords can, and because I think the purpose of tags is to describe the content of the photo, not the year the photo was taken.

Copy File From One Drive to Another & Missing Keyword Tags

Hi,
I use LR 2.7. I want to copy one file from one drive to another drive with the same file name. I thought you could drag the file, but it doesn't copy over the file in the other drive, can you explain what I have to do?
Also, I tried to import the folder into another drive, but it doesn't copy the keyword tags. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks
Barb

Hey Barb,
Well, if you use the Year/Month/Day/pictures_here format, none of the folders contains a massive amount of folders. It's not the number of folders that generates problems, it's having them all in _one_ folder that creates slow-down issues. Imagine if you had a deck of cards; look for one card... you have to go through all 52 cards to find it. But, if you broke it down into the 4 groups, you only have to go through 13, which is lots faster. Now imagine going through 15000 instead of 52...
Look at the way lightroom can automatically import by date; it has several preset formats. If you pick one of those, then when you import new photos, it will automatically create any missing ones, and you have lots less to do.
Depending on how much work you have already done, you might consider making a new catalog and just importing all of your photos again, and let it create everything quickly for you.
You could save all of your "edit" changes by writing out all of the xmp files first. But with 15000 files in one directory, this will double it to 30000 (one per image!), but will preserve all of your edits if you choose to make a new catalog approach.
As for combing catalogs, once you have one catalog the way you want it, you can select "import from catalog" and it will suck it into a new one, thus combining the catalogs. The only problem I can see is that it will import it in the format you already have it, so you have to organize it manually before you import it. Otherwise, you'll get your old format and your new format in the one catalog (but can then move pictures around if you need to).
Personally, I'd go the 'write xmp files, create new catalog' approach. Then just recreate my collections, etc.
But either way you do it, it will take some time processing, as that's a lot of files to start with!
Ciao!
Jason

Feature request: better keyword management tool

I'm re-organizing my keywords and I think that LR needs some work in keyword management and DAM features.
I miss something like separate keyword management tool which would have two keyword lists, which would work a bit like spatial file management in Os X finder.
Easily manage keyword hierarchy. For example: browse list and and be able to easily select keywords (now it's OK) and drag and drop them to under a new keyword (almost ok, but sometimes cumbersome, if one wants to move keyword which is/are at the bottom of the long keyword list to keyword which is at the top of the list).

KKuja wrote:
...if one wants to move keyword which is/are at the bottom of the long keyword list to keyword which is at the top of the list.
Dang near impossible once you have a lot of keywords. A work-around for me has been to filter keywords first to reduce the number of keywords in the list, then do the drag 'n drop. At a minimum, a change to scroll the list when you're searching for a drop target at a variable rate that depends on mouse position, or even something simple like slowing it down when the alt key is pressed.
+1 vote - better keyword management.
Something else that may help you in the mean time: KeywordConsolidator.
Rob

Keyword tags text box poorly designed, crashes PSE 8

I was very interested to see that PSE 8 allows you to enter keyword tags using a text box, as other programs do, promising much faster tagging with large sets of tags. But the feature has serious bugs rendering it unusable.
After trying the keyword-tags text box for less than a minute on my large catalog with 426 tags, PSE 8 crashed.    Even with a fresh catalog and the default tag categories, it will crash after using the text box about 40 times.   (See below for a recipe.)
Another bug concerns tags with commas in them, e.g. "Truckee, CA" (I have a couple hundred such Place tags). If you type "Tru" in the text box, select the tag with the mouse, and hit enter, PSE 8 will create two new tags, Truckee and CA, in the Other category, and apply them to the photo.
A design misfeature: After you select and apply a tag with the text box, it loses the keyboard focus. So to select another tag for the same photo, you have to move your hand to the mouse and click in the text box again. Partially defeats the whole purpose.
Recipe for reproducing the bug:
1. Create a new catalog.
2. Import 50 photos.
3. Select the next photo.
4. In the keyword tag text box, type "p" and then enter.
5. Go to step 3.
On the 40th or 41st photo, my PSE 8 reliably crashes (Vista 32, 4 GB of memory).   If after step 1 you use the Keyword Tags > + > From File command to load a tag heirarchy of 210 tags (see the attached file), it will crash after just 9 photos.   And with 426 tags, it crashes after 5 photos.
Interestingly, on my Vista 64 system (unsupported by Adobe, 8 core x 2.7 GHz), PSE 8 doesn't crash, but the text box gets unusably slow very quickly. WIth 210 keyword tags in the catalog, it soon takes about 12 seconds to find a tag after you type a unique prefix.   That time gradually gets longer the more you use the text box. With 426 tags, it takes almost 20 seconds to apply a tag using the text box.
On both systems, it's clear what the nature of the bug is: Each time you use the text box, the process's memory grows by many megabytes. I believe my Vista 64 system doesn't crash (at least not immediately) because it provides 3.5 GB of memory for use by PSE 8, while Vista 32 only provides about 1.5 GB.
I'm getting a sinking feelilng...

Is the white triangle to the left of "Keyword Tags" pointing down or pointing to the right? See this screen shot:
Click on the white triangle -- does that make a difference?
If not, try deleting the Organizer's preferences:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#Delete_the_Organizers_prefe rences

Keyword Tags Won't Delete

I am using Lightroom 1.4.1 on a Vista platform. When I delete keyword tags they disappear temporarily, only to reappear later. I have tried the Purge Unused Keywords function and I have tried to right click the keyword and select Delete. In all cases they seem to be deleted, but reappear later. I have removed the keywords in question from any photos they were applied to, so all the keywords that I'm trying to delete show 0 images. Here is a sample of the keywords: <component; <place; <worklist. Could the "<" sign in the keyword name be the problem? I have tried to rename the keywords, thus removing the "<" from the name, but they still keep coming back. Some more info which may be important in resolving this. These keyword names appear to have been created by Lightroom itself of Photoshop CS3 (V10.0). I originally had keywords enclosed in brackets, eg <place>. When I edited the images with the Develop module and Photoshop, once I returned to the Library module the edited image would have the system created keyword, eg <place (without the closing bracket). In other words I now had two keywords for the same thing: <place> and <place.

Tried the throw away top level key word idea as you suggested, but it didn't resolve the problem. I also deleted the 'dud' keywords from Bridge and Windows Photo Gallery and then went back to Lr and tried the suggestion again. It still didn't work. There are 3 dud keywords that keep reappearing in Windows Photo Gallery, despite having been deleted. It's amazing how all but three seem to have gone for good from Windows Photo Gallery. What makes the three persistent ones special, I have no idea.
What's puzzling is that once I've deleted the dud keywords and then export my keywords to a text file, the text file is 'clean'; like they've gone from Lr. However, when they reappear and I export my keywords again to a text file, they show up in the text file.
It like they're hiding away in the image files or some database in such a way that I can't access them and when I edit or rename a 'good' keyword it causes Lr to re-read the image file or database and import the keywords. This, despite that fact that none of the dud keywords show up in the metadata for any of my images as displayed by Lr; eg in the Keywording panel on the right. They also no longer show up in Bridge or Windows Photo Gallery (except for 3). Furthermore, all the dud keywords show '0' for the number of images they're assigned to.
By the way, I've also tried the Purge Unused Keywords function to no avail.

A question about keyword tags

Is it possible in settings... or somewhere, to set it so that when you open (PrE9's) organizer instead of starting with keyword hierarchy list - it could open on keyword cloud view? I am not so keen on the hierrarchy method...
Thanks.
brush

I did some experimenting in the Elements 9 Organizer.
1-- yes, when you close the Organizer then it does always seem to come up next time with the Thumbnail grid AND the Tags panel on the right is set to Hierarchy view. Then you must click on the icon for Cloud view.
2-- my conclusion is that if I click on the Cloud icon after starting the Organizer, then it was staying as Cloud in the Keyword Tags panel to the right of the Thumbnails for the duration that the Organizer is open.
3-- Note that if you use Full Screen for viewing your photos, then for the "Quick Organize" panel that drags out from the left side of the screen near the bottom, the default for Keyword Tags is Cloud. This is a different method of working which you may or may not like: however since it does set Cloud I decided to mention it.
FYI - to get to Full Screen you can use the pull down menu for the Display icon (that is next to the House icon on the top bar of the main Organizer screen). Choose the option "View, Edit, Organize in Full Screen". FYI - I usually select the thumbnails of the photos which I want to Organize before I go in to Full Screen.

Currently have 30K pics on PC Win. 7 laptop using PSE 8, corrected issues and did full backup on portable hard drive plus saved (Extensive) Keyword tags to file. Installed PSE 13 on PC Win 8.1 laptop. Will attach same portable Hard drive to new laptop.

Currently have 30K pics on PC Win. 7 laptop using PSE 8, corrected issues and did full backup on portable hard drive plus saved (Extensive) Keyword tags to file. Installed PSE 13 on PC Win 8.1 laptop. Will attach same portable Hard drive to new laptop. How do I import prev Keyword Tags from file and Restore catalog from port. HD to new PC and in what order? I have not opened PSE 13 on new PC yet. Would like to do it right the first time!

No importing needed.
See these instructions: Use Backup, Restore to move catalog | Organizer | Elements 6 or later

Use of Keyword tags in shared photo files

Let's suppose, first off, that I have assigned person keyword tags to most of the photos in my catalog. Let us also suppose that I have explicitly written those tags to the photo files. Now, I would like to be able to share both the files and the keyword tags with family and friends so that they too can easily access files taken in a specific location or including a specific person. Short of buying a copy of PSE 9 for each (an act of generosity I can not afford), how do I share the information about these photos in a way that is accessible to someone not dedicated to, say, writing XSL code or something equally elaborately mind boggling?
I am running Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 on an iMac running OS X 10.65

OK, I'm a certified idot! I found the tag button, and all of the tags are there, Admittedly without spaces, but they work nicely.
Again, Thanks

Better keywords/tagging

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