Hierarchical tags

I am not sure I understand the hierarchical tag system options. I think it is something that can come back to bite us if we don't pay attention. It may already have bitten me...
When you create a hierarchy you have export options: whether they are included on export, whether the parents are exported, and whether synonyms are exported.
Since I have this mess between Elements and Lightroom, I'm not sure who has done what but I have some tags that look like this: Aurora > Illinois
This is not what I want.
Here is a worrisome quote from the help file:
"When applying a parent keyword tag to photos, the child keyword tags are also applied."
Let's Say I have Illinois as the parent of Chicago and Aurora and goodness knows how many other places in Illinois. If I tag with "Illinois" I get all children? So if I want generic Illlinois, I have to create Illinois under Illinois? That is allowed.
However, from the display there is no evidence that the child keyword tags are all applied. It makes no sense to do so to me anyway. Or does it mean the opposite and it's incorrectly written? That when a child keyword tag is applied the parent is also applied (if the option says to do so)?
It seems the default is to export the parent. I made a hierarchy for my convenience and ease of tagging not because I wanted it exported. It looks like this is going to be laborious because I have to change that tag by tag. Am I missing something?
I take it that when you make a tag set Lightroom knows where those tags go in the hierarachy? Or not? No, because these multiple tags, in and out of their hierarchy, that came in from Elements are living happily side by side. I saw a tag on one picture like this: Aurora > Places, Aurora > Illinois.
I seem to have an absolute mess here from this Elements import. Nor can I get consistent behavior with tagging in Lightroom. Does the display on the right really show what will be written out? Why do I sometimes have the format Aurora > Illinois and sometimes not even if I have not yet changed the "export parent" option?
I guess we who imported from something else are more likely to be blissfully ignorant than those who started tagging inside Lightroom because when you create one it asks you what options you want. Still would be nice to have a choice of default!
Now I see I have two huge messes from this import. The date problem I knew about. Tags I knew about but didn't know it was so serious. I believe I should have started over and not tried to import from Elements. I would have finished redoing the work by now instead of trying to figure out what kind of mess I have.

First of all, I think you came across a typo. If you add a child, then the parent(s) can be included not the other way around (thank goodness).
If you want to control the export of keywords and their parents, you can right click on a keyword, select Edit Keyword Tag from the contextual menu and a dialog will be displayed which gives you the options to export the keyword, export parent keywords and export synonyms.
Jim

Similar Messages

Hierarchical tags in Lightroom like PSE5?

Working in PSE5, I've invested much effort over some years in tagging several thousand photos with multiple tags in a hierarchicy with Categories, Subcategories, and Tags. The Tags panel in PSE5 is nicely laid out in Outline fashion and easily reorganized.
I've installed the trial version of LR3 but it looks to me as if it's a much simpler tagging system that allows Categories and a single layer of Tags under the Categories.
Q1: Can LR be set up to mimic the tag panel in PSE5?
Q2: If LR3 will be able to import my PSE5 tag system, will it retain the same hierarchical structure?
Thanks for any light shed on these dark issues.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/2.0/WSD522D2E9-97FF-4bed-8599-3FB1C07D3504.html
Yes to both. The metadata is in the right hand panel of the Library module and the Sync Metadata command can be used to synchronize metadata from on to multiple others. The above is a link to LR2's help files. LR3 beta is similiar.

Searchable hierarchical tag structure for content

I have a large number of PDF documents, the content of which I need to analyze and categorize according to an established taxonomy. I would like to be able to do the following:
Establish a hierarchical taxonomy tagging schema.
Highlight text and images and apply tags (multiple).
Search within and across documents for tagged content. (Even a search that returns just the location of the tagged content would be helpful)
Is this possi\ble? I have Acrobat Pro X.

Thanks for the reply.
I have the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" disabled. So my song collection is not re-shuffled (or duplicated) by iTunes.
By having a directory structure:
Genre\Artist\Album\songs.mp3
I am able to locate and select songs (for playback in Winamp etc) in a manner convenient to me. The question is: How will I do this on the iPhone device? Will I have to create playlists of all sorts? Will be able to maintain this hierarchy on the devices?
Someone has already answered in the negative .. as nested sorting is not possible in iTunes and on the iPhone

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.

Import From Elements - where did it go

I noticed that the Michael Tapes 'Import' video showed an 'Import From Elements' menu item on the file menu. I have the 4.1 beta installed and this item does not appear in the file menu. Where did it go or is there another way to import a PSE catalog straight into LR.
Here is the video site:
http://pictureflow.fileburst.com/_Tutorials/Photoshop_LR/01/index.html

I'm hoping that this whole process is unnecessary. By seeing the "Import from Elements" option, I am currently hoping/assuming that this means it will import the actual PSE Organizer catalog into LR. PSE Organizer uses .psa files for each catalog. I am hoping that by selecting the "Import from Elements" options, LR will take your .psa file (Photoshop Elements Organizer Catalog) and convert it into a .aglib file (Lightroom Library). The tags, categories and subcategories should be converted to the Lightroom equivalent of keywords, parent keywords, and child keywords (or whatever they're called in LR). In doing this, there should be no preparation of anything in PSE Organizer. If I'm understanding what Susan just said she did, it seems that the actions you just took Susan by making everything a category just took away all hierarchical tags (or parent/child information), for their is no heirarchy in the IPTC keywords fields, unless I'm mistaken.
Once again, I'm assuming this is how it will work and I hope I'm right . . . any other way just doesn't seem to make any sense. The "Import from Elements" option would not be needed if you've already embedded all of your tags into the files (or made all of your tags into categories and embedded that). If that information is already embedded in the file, then just import the files through the typical import dialog and it will find that information. There is no need to worry about the catalog or the "Import from Elements" command at all. My hope is that I don't need to do this and I can just convert the catalog on the fly (much like when you upgrade from say PSE Organizer version 3 to PSE Organizer version 5). Regardless, I will wait until LR is released before I take any steps to start the conversion process. I don't want to compomise something that I've spent years creating and works great already because I'm guessing or assuming how something may or may not work. I guess we shall all know soon enough (or even sooner if a final release tester can confirm this in any way).

Migrating from Windows Photoshop Elements to iPhoto '08

I recently got a Mac and I'm looking into migrating from Windows Photoshop Elements 6.0 to iPhoto 7 ('08).
I've seached this forum, but I didn't find any detailed tips, tricks and recommendations on how to do the migration. I know about the PE (Photoshop Elements) command to write keyword information into the files (something like File->write tags to file). Someone (IIRC Barbara B.) also mentioned something about scripts to make the transition smoother, although I haven't seen any detailed information on what and where these scripts are. Basically, I'd like to hear from users who have migrated from Windows Photoshop Elements. I have thousands of pictures and prior planning can save me lots of time.
Some questions:
1. Photoshop Elements has a tagging feature, which is similar to iPhoto's keyword feature. Not sure how iPhoto will process the keywords. Do I just import the pictures into iPhoto and iPhoto will recognize the keywords? Should I create the keywords in iPhoto ahead of time prior to import (using names that exactly match Photoshop tag names) ?
2. In PE, I've assigned captions to pictures. Can iPhoto read the captions and treat them as titles or descriptions?
3. In PE, I've assigned ratings to pictures. Can iPhoto read them, or do I need to manually redo the ratings in iPhoto?
4. One PE feature that I will really miss is hierarchical tags (e.g. Family->Kid's name). (Aside: everyone, please put in a request to Apple to support this feature!!) While I would prefer a native iPhoto feature to support hierarchical tags, I saw that there are 3rd party plugins available. What's the best one in terms of features and long term support/viability? Is it Keyword Manager?
5. Any easy way to translate my PE Album definitions when migrating to iPhoto? I assume I would need to recreate them from scratch based on keywords and optionally ratings?
6. I'm afraid to ask this next question (and I'm sure this is worthy of many separate threads). I'm still grappling with the concept of Events. In my mind, an event is something "monumental", and I've used Albums in PE for these "monumenal" events. A large percentage of my pictures don't really fit into a "monumental event" categary. Instead, they are pictures that were taken in a random/candid manner. Or, I might have pictures that are truly events, but maybe only 1 or 2 pictures would fit into an event. If I started using iPhoto from the very beginning, it may be easier to deal with the concept of events. However, I already have thousands of pictures. I'm wary of importing all my pictures in one shot (rather than on a per "event" basis), since it may result in hundreds of events, which, IMO, wouldn't provide much organizational value. Anyone have any tips/philosophical opinions on how to deal with events when thousands of pictures need to be imported? Someone (T.D.?) mentioned they organize by year for older pictures. Any suggestions?
Thanks!

randman
Can't answer all your questions, but I'll have a go at a couple.
1. Photoshop Elements has a tagging feature, which is similar to iPhoto's keyword feature. Not sure how iPhoto will process the keywords. Do I just import the pictures into iPhoto and iPhoto will recognize the keywords? Should I create the keywords in iPhoto ahead of time prior to import (using names that exactly match Photoshop tag names) ?
If you write the tags to the file then iPhoto will recognise them as part of the IPTC data. There is no way to create tags in advance.
2. In PE, I've assigned captions to pictures. Can iPhoto read the captions and treat them as titles or descriptions?
Can Elements write these to the IPTC data? If so, iPhoto should read them. A little trial will confirm.
3. In PE, I've assigned ratings to pictures. Can iPhoto read them, or do I need to manually redo the ratings in iPhoto?
No, the IPTC data does not recognise ratings.
4. One PE feature that I will really miss is hierarchical tags (e.g. Family->Kid's name). (Aside: everyone, please put in a request to Apple to support this feature!!) While I would prefer a native iPhoto feature to support hierarchical tags, I saw that there are 3rd party plugins available. What's the best one in terms of features and long term support/viability? Is it Keyword Manager?
Keyword Manager is the way to do this.
5. Any easy way to translate my PE Album definitions when migrating to iPhoto? I assume I would need to recreate them from scratch based on keywords and optionally ratings?
What do you mean by "album definitions"?
About Events:
Don't get hung up on a word. They could have as easily called them 'trousers' and it would make almost as much sense
An 'Event' is an import that is automatically divided into folders depending on the criteria you set in the iPhoto Preferences.
Events in the iPhoto Window correspond exactly with the Folders in the Originals Folder in the iPhoto Library package file (Right click on it in the Pictures Folder -> Show Package Contents).
You can move photos between Events, you can rename Events, edit them, create them, as long as you do it via the iPhoto Window. Check out the Info Pane (wee 'i', lower left) the name and date fields are editable. Edit a Event Name using the Info Pane, the Event Folder in iPhoto Library/Originals will also have the new name.
So, really an Event is a Folder.
For my money, Events are a very limited way of organising photos. They are strictly date and time based. As time goes by I consolidate them - Spring 06, Summer 07, America 08 (I do this as we have three cameras feeding the Library).
I organise using Albums, Smart Albums and Keywords.
Albums (Smart or otherwise) are virtual entities. Unlike Events, they reference files on the HD, so a pic can be in 1,10 or 100 Albums with no extra disk space used. (To have a pic in two events requires two copies of the files.) They are infinitely flexible and offer a much richer set of possibilities.
How have you your photos organised currently? In folders? On what basis? If you can explain how that works we may be able to help you recreate this system in iPhoto.
Regards
TD

Lightroom 4 Keywords

I've been experimenting with LR4, but can't figure out how to reset all keywords and restart from scratch.
I've deleted every catalog I can find (they were all under a Lightroom folder under Pictures).
I start Lightroom and create a new catalog. I exit, delete the default catalog and restart.
I import a folder with about 6 images, each with a few non-hierarchical keywords.
Lightroom gets inventive and puts them into hierarchies that it remembered from earlier in the day when I had imported keywords from Bridge and then tried to fix the mess Lightroom made of them. Where is it getting these old hierarchies from??
How do I stop this nonsense and start clean?

The answer seems to be that Lightroom doesn't play nice with other programs that keyword tag files, even the JPG files which I started with.
In addition to tags that other programs can see, Lightroom seems to put its own hidden tagging information in JPGs (and who knows what it does with other files). Went one removes the tags with another program, Lightroom still finds its own hidden information.
Can someone point me to a detailed explanation from Adobe of what really happens with different file types?
Only solution seemed to be to use Lightroom to remove ALL tags from the files I previously tagged in Bridge and start over (in Bridge).
One thing I really don't like about tagging with Lightroom:
Assume you have a hierarchical tag like: Birds > Ducks > Mallard
If you apply just the Mallard and the Ducks tags with Bridge, that's all that put in the file and all other programs see.
If you apply just the Mallard and Ducks tags with Lightroom, it seems to know that you've just added those tags, not the Birds tags. But if you look at the file with another program (Bridge, Windows Explorer, etc.) all three tags have been applied.
What's even worse, if after tagging in LR I go back to Bridge and remove the "Birds" tag, and then come back to Lightroom and try to change the tags again or remove them all I get a "metadata write error" from LR4 which I have no idea how to resolve.
The only reason I bought Lightroom was for cataloging, and I'm experimenting with LR4 to try out the new ACR features. I've had so much trouble with the tags that I haven't even had a chance to look at the new ACR features.

Viewing all pics in an album group

Hi there. I am using Photoshop Elements 6.0. I have created album groups and then sub albums. For instance, I have an album group called "Digital Pictures 2007" and then have 12 albums in that album group, one for each month. What I am now trying to do is find a way to easily view all the 2007 pictures. I thought in previous versions of Photoshop Elements that I could just click on "Digital Pictures 2007" and it would show everything in the sub-albums, but I can't seem to do that in version 6.0. Am I missing something or is there a way to easily view all the pictures in the album group of 2007.
Thanks!

No, theres no way to search by album group in PSE 6 or 7. Find > By Details > Albums lets you specify the name of an album group, but it returns no results.
It may be that using hierarchical tags would be a better match for what you want. In PSE 6, the only reason to prefer an album over a tag is when you want to specify an ordering of your photos thats different than time taken or filename. Otherwise, tags are more flexible.

Importing Lightroom 2 keywords into Aperture

Hi.
I just got Aperture but am currently using Lightroom 2 and am trying to switch over. I'm trying to find a way to export my photos from Lightroom and them import them into Aperture but still have the keywords attached to the photos so that I do not have to go through all of the photos and re-keyword them.
Thanks for any help!

I've got similar issue, but for me it's importing my photos from Digikam (Linux).
Digikam supports hierarchal tags (keywords) and stores them as ITPC keywords and, as noted by the OP, Aperture picks these up which is great. The problem/limitation is that ITPC keywords are flat so, in order to maintain the hierarchy, DK writes them to ITPC as '/' delimited.
For example, I have the following tag hierarchy in DK:
People
...Family
......Me
......Mo
......Tanya
......Tamzyn
A photo tagged in DK with Me and Tanya results in the following ITPC keywords:
People, People/Family, People/Family/Me, People/Family/Tanya
Aperture adds each of those as a discrete keyword which is OK as it means the metadata is retained, but is there anyway, scripting perhaps, to have Aperture recognize the '/' delimited keywords as a hierarchy (I've created the same hierarchy in Aperture)?
Message was edited by: parish_chap
Message was edited by: parish_chap

Another PSE 8 Changing Date Problem

I'm a long-time PSE5 user who has just downloaded the PSE8 trial.
Whenever, I select a photo in the organizer and then go into either full or quick edit, the file properties' date created and date modified are changed to the current date - even if I have not edited or resaved the file. Moreover, if the date of the "unedited" photo had previously been set as unknown ("????"), the date that appears in the organizer is changed to this "revised" (i.e., current) date created/modified.
I can't seem to find a preference that would cause this unwanted change. Is this a (critical) bug in PSE8 or is there a way of avoiding the problem?

Thanks for the response, Barb. My preferences box "Use modified date if EXIF data is not found" was unchecked, so that doesn't solve my problem.
Based on the link you referred me to, it looks as if Adobe introduced this unknown date bug in PSE 6 and still has not (and probably never will) corrected it. Assuming there's no fix, I guess my choices are to convert all my scanned photos to a dummy date, stick with PSE 5 (my knee jerk reaction) until I get a new computer which has Windows 7 (which may or may not be compatible with PSE 5) or find another data management program.
It's too bad because I like the way Organizer handles hierarchical tags, collections and version sets - much better, IMO, than Bridge in Photoshop CS3 which I also have. FWIW, I generally start with the PSE Organizer and use CS3 as my external edititor.

Poor search functionality

I am just organizing my photos using hierarchical tags. And I really
miss decent means to express queries.
1) Exact keyword matches: I search for "car" and get matches about
"card". Not good.
2) I have these tags: "car", "Porsche > car", "Ferrari > car". I want to
query all items in "car" which do not have a sub-tag of car. Because I
assume these items have not been further classified before (and I want
to do it now).
3) I also want to search for photos taken with a particular metering
mode, exposure correction, range of focal length etc.
And of course I want to AND/OR combine criteria. There's so much need
for a decent query language/way of defining queries. I guess that LR
developers did not find a way to make this fool-proof. The current
search dialog is just so primitive and worth nothing.
Herb

>I still cannot figure out how to find pictures of John, only John.
Here's a solution I wrote about in an earlier thread a month ago...
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc4630d/6
Here's a solution that worked in some limited tests I've tried. It's not necessarily straightforward, or intuitive, and yes I agree that LR should make this easier, if possible. But the steps will address the OP's request.
1. Do a find for the keyword of interest, e.g., "+Ben+"
2. In the keyword tags panel, highlight all the keywords that are in the set. They are in bold face, and the easy way to select them all is to select the one at the top of the list, then shift-select the one at the bottom of the list. You could also Ctrl-Click each one.
3. Select all of the photos displayed in the grid.
4. Deselect the keyword of interest, e.g. "Ben" (use Ctrl-Click to do this).
5. Click on the folder you started from.
6. Invert the selection using the Edit menu.
7. The selected photos are those with only the keyword of interest and no others. You can then put the result in a collection for further processing.
There is one glitch I've found (maybe there's more)---this can include images with no keywords in the result depending on your starting point. That's why I suggested step 1.

Import ACDSee 6 Pro library to Lightroom 5

Dear ladies and gentlemen,
I have to import a ACDSee 6 Pro database into Lightroom 5. Is this somehow possible without losing categories and so on?
Thank you very much!

ACDSee Categories are stored in a custom XMP field unique to ACDSee. Other applications, such as Lightroom, store hierarchical keywords in their own custom XMP field. Using exiftool one can see the different fields and formats.
ACDSee:
[XMP]
Categories
: <Categories><Category Assigned="0">ACDSee<Category Assigned="0">Pro<Category Assigned="1">8</Category></Category></Category></Categories>
LightRoom:
[XMP]
HierarchicalSubject
: lr|hierarchical|tags
So you would need to find a script or a program that could convert ACDSee Categories into LR Hierarchical Subject.
DaBigFatTuok wrote:
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
I have to import a ACDSee 6 Pro database into Lightroom 5. Is this somehow possible without losing categories and so on?
Thank you very much!

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

Are photo tag hierarchies in Photoshop Elemets carried across to Express for use on iPads/iPhones?

Hi,
I'm looking for a software to use to reorganise my photos using a tag hierarchy, but need something that will be useable on pcs, iPads, iPhones.
I have read that Elements allows you to set this up, but can anyone tell me if this functionality is carried across to Express for use on iPads/iPhones?
Many thanks

Please post Photoshop Elements related queries over at
http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop_elements

Photo tag hierarchies in Photoshop Elemets and Express

Hi,
I'm looking for a software to use to reorganise my photos using a tag hierarchy, but need something that will be useable on pcs, iPads, iPhones.
I have read that Elements allows you to set this up, but can anyone tell me if this functionality is carried across to Express for use on iPads/iPhones?
Many thanks

Please post Photoshop Elements related queries over at
http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop_elements

Hierarchical tags

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