Hierarchal keyword tags

I hate being lazy by asking a question when I should be able to find the answer myself, but I promise I have tried. I have read martin Evening's and Scott Kelby's books inside out and back to front (they are great!) and I have also played around with keywords myself but am getting more and more confused about hierarchies. Perhaps if I give the following hypothetical illustration, someone might be kind enough to help me and perhaps some other forum members? I have 25,000 pics to keyword so I want to get the structure right before I start the job!
I take tennis shots at Wimbledon. Thus I need a hierarchy:-
Tennis>
Wimbledon>
2005>
Nadal
Federer
Sharapova
2006>
2007>
The trouble is I do not want to have to put Nadal, Federer etc in a hierarchy for every year - I am figuring these guys will be around for a few years yet! I want to be able call up all my tennis shots, find every Federer shot then find filter these down to just 2006 for instance.
Am I best to have a main keyword "people" at the same level as "tennis" and populate this with players' names or is there a smarter way of going about this? I have hundreds of half-heartedly applied keyword that I played around with in Bridge but now that LR is here I feel the need to be a real nerd and actually do it properly!
Incidentally, if anyone wants to see some of my (award winning!) tennis pics, please go to www.duncangrove.com . I know you will criticize my web site - the home page looks fine on my 20" monitor but does not re-size for smaller screens. It also currently links to Picasa galleries - crazy when LR can do such great galleries. I have only just got a copy of Dreamweaver CS3 so need to figure out how to structure a home page which can link to all my LR galleries. If anyone has some easy solutions I would be pleased to hear them!
Thanks
Duncan Grove

[email protected] schrieb:
> Am I best to have a main keyword "people" at the same level as
> "tennis" and populate this with players' names
A distinct player tree is probably a good idea... Good thing about LR is
that you can revise decisions about hierarchy at any time. ;-)
> I have hundreds of half-heartedly applied
> keyword that I played around with in Bridge but now that LR is here I
> feel the need to be a real nerd and actually do it properly!
That's what I started with, too, and thought this bunch of
non-structured tags on my photos was a big and unpleasant mess. I then
noticed that while my tags had been mostly unsystematic, they still
helped. It's so convenient and effective in LR to re-organize, unify and
clean-up tags and to extend your hierarchy just at the time you feel it
might be useful.
Herb

Similar Messages

Option To Insert "/" Between Hierarchical Keywords

"Treat "/" as a keyword separator" works for me when importing on Vista. I would like to see it added as an option for export. For example, I have keyword hierarchies of Places/National Parks/Yellowstone and Wildlife/Bears/Grizzly in both LR and my Vista Photo Gallery. Having LR automatically insert "/" when I export would automatically add them to their proper place in Photo Gallery. I would expect that "Places/National Parks/Yellowstone,Wildlife/Bears/Grizzly" would pop up in Keyword Tags and that when exported the images would be added to their proper hierarchies. Of course, this should be optional.

So to sum up, I should be spending time devising a sensible keyword structure for the entire library, and then per project/import, select which keywords I'm likely going to use for this particular set of photos
Yes, find keyword sets for typical workflows - the ones you will need for family shots, for vacation trips, for specific projects you are working on.
That seems to make sense, however what happens if I have forgotten to add an already existing keyword to my button sets and add it later (using the textfield above the button set selector), will that duplicate the keyword (ie adding it again to the toplevel), or will it select the keyword from deep down in the already existing hierarchy (the preferred approach!)?
if you add an already existing keyword in the searchfield, the search will show all already defined versions of this keyword. You may have used it more than once - for example "Flower"
There are predefined keywords that may be using the same term. Click the one you want to use.
Then the existing keyword will be used.
You can add new keywords to the button set any time from the "Edit" panel:

Hierarchical keywords and vista compatability

Any chance Lightroom could export/write Hierarchical Keywords that are compatible with Vista?
http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2007/02/01/hierarchical-tags-and-xmp.aspx
I expored a photo with hierarchical keywords in Lightroom and they did not appear in Windows Photo Gallery.
Looking at the jpg in notepad it appears that the parent/child relationship is not written in the XMP block. The keywords are instead flattened.

As far as I know there needs to be better standards on how hierarchical keywords are stored in XMP. It would be ideal if there was a standard to store hierarchical keywords in legacy ICPT fields, even though they were not designed for a hierarchy. Just getting everyone to agree on the delimiter would be a great help. I'd like to be able to store my hierarchical keywords on my jpg ICPT fields as a backup that is independent of side car files and ideally independent of any software, right now users have to jump through a lot of hoops to make keywords written in one application, perfectly compatible with another one.

Hierarchical keywords

Now that with LR 1.1 the db/library became finally usable, I wonder how consistent the keyword functionality in LR really is. On the left side we have the 'hierarchical keyword' panel which works great! However all the other keywording tools in the library module seem to deal always with single keywords. For example, if I have duplicate keywords at different hierarchy levels like in the following case:
things.vehicles.cars
events.2007.motorshow.cars
How do I deal with such cases when I use the keywording tool on the right panel? I think that the present mechanisms also enhances the probability for inconsistencies in the keyword tree because of typing errors. My feeling is that a single instance to define keywords in the hierarchical keyword tree and other tools to assign them to the pics would be the best, but maybe I simple don't fully understand the keyword concept in LR...

I have been taking a new look at some of my hierarchical keywords now that LR1.1 is out and am even more puzzled. I have a group of old images that had never been in LR, but had been re-organized in Vista Photo Gallery. When I tried importing some of them into LR1.1 they came in with the hierarchical tree intact in the Keyword Tags panel as pretty as you please with only the lowest level of the keyword chain displayed in Keywording. Then I copied a RAW file to my desktop, imported it into LR with no keywords, added the hierarchical keywords I had previously imported and exported the file to a new jpeg. Photo gallery added each keyword as a top-level keyword instead of adding them to the proper hierarchy. Those keywords are separated by commas in the picture/properties/details/tags field. What really puzzles me is that if I import a jpeg that I had previously exported from LR with a top level keyword and added to a keyword hierarchy in Photo Gallery it comes in with all the keywords in the hierarchy separated by a "/" even though I do have the "Treat "/" as a keyword separator" box checked in preferences. For my personal needs, it still more convenient to use only top level keywords in LR and to use the drag and drop method in Photo Gallery to organize them into hierarchies- at least until Adobe and Microsoft sort this out or someone shows me what I am doing wrong. Edit: I should say that I re-imported the just-exported jpeg file. It came in with the keywords separated by commas.

Keyword tags disappeared

Hello.
I am using Photoshop Elements Organizer 8. For some unknown reason, the keyword tags disappeared from my Organize tab and were replaced by a drop-down text box with all my tags. I can't figure out how to get my hierarchical display of tags with icons back. Can anytone out there explain this to me, please?

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

How do i import keyword tags from PSE12?

I have just downloaded PS and LR5 from Adobe CC. I was using Photoshop Elements 12. How can I import my keyword tags from the PSE Organizer. I saved them as .txt files but they will not import because they contain "special characters." What do I do? Please do not tell me I have to start over... ~

is there a way to import tags from PSE 12
The PSE 12 Organizer and LR 5 use different file formats for exporting and importing keyword hierarchies. PSE uses XML format, while LR 5 uses a tab-separated format. If you're a programmer or technically minded, you could convert from one to the other using your favorite scripting language.
But the approach suggested by dj_paige can be modified to accomplish what you want without scripting, by copying the keyword hierarchy from the "upgraded" LR catalog that was created from your PSE catalog to your "good" LR catalog:
1. Make a manual backup of your "good" LR catalog: Lightroom Help | Back up a catalog.
2. In LR, open the catalog that you created previously by upgrading (converting) the PSE catalog -- you can usually get to that catalog by doing File > Open Recent.
3. Go to grid view in the Library by doing Window > Library followed by View > Grid (usually you're already in Library grid view, but just in case...)
4. Make sure the Keyword List panel is showing on the right by doing Window > Panels > Keyword List.
5. You should see the keyword hierarchy from your PSE catalog. If you don't, stop and post a screen shot of the entire LR screen.
6. Do Metadata > Export Keywords to export those keywords as a LR-format text file.
7. Open your "good" LR catalog by doing File > Open Recent.
8. Do Metadata > Import Keywords and select the file you exported in step 6.
9. All the keywords that were exported in step 6 will be added to the current catalog, and there will be duplicate keywords if there were already keywords of the same name in the catalog. Those new keywords will not be attached to any existing photos in the current catalog.

Global Preferences For Keyword Tag Options

Instead of a script that converts the LR2 Keywords back to the LR 1.4.1 way how about an update that adds a setting in say preferences that allows us to set them globally as we choose. Unless Adobe gives us Vista users the option of exporting hierarchical keywords with "/" as the separator, then I am going to have to start unchecking the "Export Containing Keywords" box for each of my existing keywords.

I second this. Even an "apply these options to all child tags" gesture would be helpful.

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.

Problem dragging keyword tags in LR 3

Hi, I am helping a user who has many keywords in Lightroom (hundreds). He usually tags images with keywords by dragging a keyword tag from the Keyword Tags panel onto an image in the grid. But the last 32 tags are not working. When he clicks on one of the problem keywords in the Keyword Tags panel, it is not selected. Instead, a vertical line appears at the mouse pointer and he can't select or drag that keyword. (see image) The many keywords above the problem ones work as expected. The problem keywords used to work, they just started not working in the last couple days. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Message was edited by: Pris Sears (formatting)

Thanks for the info! I wonder what the maximum for keywords is? I am not sure that's the problem here since they did work until this week, but I will suggest the hierarchical option to the user.
Is it possible that they keyword list got corrupted somehow? Is there a way to repair it?
thanks again

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

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

Hierarchal keyword tags

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