How do I find all pictures with no (empty) keyword ?

Question

I have decided to import all my pictures into LightRoom.
A lot of my older pictures are not registered with any keywords :(
- only with IPTC location information.
My plan is to systematic go through all my pictures and add relevant keywords to all pictures - so my old pictures become as searchable as my newest pictures.
Some of my old pictures has keywords some has not.
How do I in Lightroom - find all pictures with no keywords?
I have tried to use the Find tool - but don't see any options to search for "Empty/missing" keywords.
Also I would like to find all pictures with few keywords and in step II add additional keywords to these pictures.
Any ideas on how to make a find all pictures where number of keywords is less than X inside or outside LightRoom.
Henrik Bach
Denmark

Answer 1

> I also did think of the SQL idea.
> If I find a way of doing this I will repost my findings.
Well, being a tech geek, I found this challenge kind of irresistible,
and I'm happy to report I have a solution for you.
STEP 1
First, make a copy of your "Lightroom Database.lrdb" file (we'll work
off the copy to be safe)
STEP 2
Next, you need to be able to browse the database. The database is in
SQLite3 format. I tried installiing an SQLite3 ODBC driver and accessing
it through MS Access 2003. While Access was able to see all of the
tables in the database, every time I tried to link to one I got:
"Reserved error (-7748); there is no message for this error"
I found a few tips for this but wasn't able to work around it and get it
to work. Which is a shame, since Access would be the easiest way for
browsing and querying tables.
Instead I found an open source tool called SQLite Database Browser.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=87946&package_id=91778&release_id=41 4746
I used the Windows version. There appears to be a version for MacOSX on
PowerPC. It doesn't look like there is a version for Intel based Macs
(though if you know how, you could always try downloading the source and
compiling it yourself).
STEP 3
After you install the browser, open it up, choose "Open Database" and
select the COPY of the lightroom database we made in step 1
STEP 4
go to the Execute SQL tab and issue the following command
SELECT A.idx_filename, count(C.name)
FROM Adobe_imageFiles A, AGLibraryTagImage B, AGLibraryTag C
WHERE A.image=B.image AND B.tag=C.id_local AND C.kindName='AgKeywordTagKind'
GROUP BY A.idx_filename
HAVING count(C.name) <= 3
That will give you all images with 3 or fewer keywords applied.
Of course, theres no guarantee that this wont break in future versions.
Now an explanation of the data.
Adobe_imageFiles - contains data about image files:
1) idx_filename is the filename
2) absolutePath is the full file path
3) image is a unique ID for the image which you can cross reference in
other image related tables
AGLibraryTag - contains info about "tags" applied to images:
1) id_local is a unique ID for this "tag", which you can use to cross
reference in other tag tables
2) kindName is the kind of tag you are looking at. Available values
appear to be:
AgCaptionTagKind
AgCollectionTagKind
AgCopyrightTagKind
AgEnumeratedMetadataTagKind
AgFolderTagKind
AgImportTagKind
AgKeywordTagKind
AgMissingFileTagKind
AgQuickCollectionTagKind
AgSpecialContentOwningTagKind
AgTempImagesTagKind
3) name is the value for that tag (the collection name, the keyword, etc)
AGLibraryTagImage - Use this to connect the images and tags tables