Keywords in Lightroom

Lightroom 4 appears to have the same problem as the previous version in regards to exporting keywords. I had a support case in Lightroom 3, in regards to the same problem. This was never fixed, as support didn't appear to understand the problem.
Assuming you have already thousands of photos in your library. Keywords were originally assigned in Bridge CS4 and 5. Now some of these are imported into Lightroom 4 and map data assigned - nothing else done to them. Now the metadata is saved to the files and it all appears to go well. However, going back into Bridge, the "Group" keywords have been added to the pictures. I'll explain:
Group "People" has "Sub group" Ted, John, Susi, Mother, Father and so on
Group "Places" has "Sub group" London, Wellington, Glasgow and so on
Group "Trips" has "Sub group" London 2010 Glasgow 2011 and so on
The main group is never selected, only the relevant subgroup. On import into Lightroom 4, the keywords are imported without any apparent change. However, when the metadata is saved back to the files, the "Group" keywords are also written to the files.
Instead of a picture having the keywords John, London, London 2010, they now have People, John, Places, London, Trips, London 2010.
If I export the photos instead of updating the metadata, the problem is the same. It doesn't matter what type of photo. The interesting thing is, if I just update a single photo, the keywords are left untouched

Hi John,
of course it would be possible by about 32000 photos, but somehow I don't think so. The 2 directories imported into LR4 are fixed now, as the errors caused by LR fixed in Bridge as well. So I can't check these any more. Have made a check of all other folders and found no errors - at least none that I can see.
Have started to import another directory - and again errors. This time, checked the keywords that were imported incorrectly. Found some errors in Bridge, none that I could figure out, as the individual ones all appeared correct, but when selected with the next one, a minus sign appeared in the keyword check box. Found a few of these, for which I reapplied the keyword. The keywords in error were PSD files, originally created in CS3 and later edited in CS5
Again deleted the directory in LR4 and all keywords and re-imported the now fixed photos. Then went through the other ones, but couldn't find any errors in Bridge. So I removed the particular keyword and then reapplied the same. Again deleted the photos and keyword from LR and re-imported them. Again, this time they were all imported correctly.
With the next directory I will try to just scan for metadata changes, I thought of this after finishing the last one.
So, it would appear that Bridge is the cause of all this. So far, Bridge CS3, CS4 and CS5 were used, therefore I can't say that one particular version is the culprit

Similar Messages

How do I transfer keywords in Lightroom from one computer to another?

How do I transfer keywords in Lightroom from one computer to another?

You know, in the one screen capture, from the old computer, we can see that the photo has the keyword "bees"
In the other screen capture, from the new computer, we cannot see the keyword "bees"
And better yet, show us the Keywording Panel instead of the Keyword List Panel
I am also concerned that you are showing us the original catalog on the new computer that you created via importing the photos. That's not what we want to see.
So please confirm that you are using the catalog file that was copied from the old computer, and when placed on the new computer, you double-clicked on that exact catalog file, and then created the screen capture. Please confirm that you are NOT looking at the catalog you created by importing the photos.

Problem Exporting Keywords in Lightroom 5

I recently converted from Lightroom 4 to 5. I just noticed that not all my keywords are exported to my jpeg file. For example I have the following keywords in Lightroom; Horizontal, Landscape, National Forest, Scenic. My exported jpeg has only the keyword Landscape.
In the Library Module, when I click on the dropdown Keyword Tags and select "Will Export", I only see the keyword Landscape. I'm not sure what this "feature" is all about. Can someone explain it to me. I need to be able to export all keywords.
This problem seems to be consistent and I have a test file set up so I can repeat the problem. Only certain keywords are not exported.

Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it. After checking some other keywords, I think this problem involves a minority of my keywords. I tracked the problem down to October 12, 2013. That was the day I installed Lightroom 5. Something must have happened in the catalog conversion.
I'll try exporting the keywords to see if I can identify the problem keywords.
Thanks again!!!

Read DNG Embeded Keywords in Lightroom

A search did not reveal the answer to my question, which is: I have a number of DNG images that I have keyworded in CS3 Bridge beta 2. I can read these keywords just fine in programs such as Idimager, and I can add keywords to the DNG using Idimager, and read those new keywords in Bridge2. Opening and closing the image with the new key words results in those new keywords being added to Bridge 2 XMP file. Can I read those DNG embeded keywords easily in Lightroom? If I add additional keywords in Lightroom, will they be readable in Bridge 2? In other DAM programs?
Reed

OK, Thanks.
What I am looking for is something smaller than PSCS3 to install on my laptop for use on trips. Probably will do minimal image tweaking, but I want all keywording to be usable in the other applications. It sounds like they will be. I guess the only way to really find out is to spring for a copy and install it. Oh well, what's $200? (grin)
Reed

Why can't I add keywords in Lightroom 5.7 at Photo/Add Keywords?

Why can't I add keywords in Lightroom 5.7 at Photo/Add Keywords?

You need to be much more verbose about "can't".
Any error messages?
Make sure the right pane of tabs is visible. The menu command is just a jumper into the "keywording" tab.

Deleting ALL keywords from Lightroom database?

Hi, gang. I've been playing around with Lightroom and Bridge and I've realized that I got very deep into adding keywords in Lightroom but that I would much rather add them in Bridge, then import them into Lightroom. The problem is that I now have amassed a huge number of keywords that migrate into Bridge and that are time-consuming to change. I'd rather just delete every keyword in Lightroom at once, then re-create them in Bridge, and THEN import them into Lightroom.
So, does anyone know if Lightroom has one specific file that it stores in a folder somewhere that I can just delete? If I have to go through and delete each keyword one at a time, I'll just uninstall Lightroom and reinstall it (unless there's also a way to dump my whole database and start again).
Thanks for the help!
-A

>Does this not need confirmation on each keyword as you delete it?
He's been polishing his crystal ball again ;-)
The dialog will probably tell you that keyword X will be deleted from Y photos and give you the option to Cancel or Delete All. Chose Delete All and ALL selected keywords will be deleted. The dialog is either presenting the wrong info about what will be deleted or is deleting everything when it shouldn't. Strangely, had there been 100 selected keywords then you would need to hit Cancel 100 times.

Keywords from Lightroom 2 to Explorer

It appears that when I keyword in Lightroom 2, those keywords are not picked up by Explorer. When I keyworded in Bridge, they were.
Is there some setting I need to change in order to have Explorer pick up the keywords? Sometimes I want to seach in Explorer and I'd like to have the keywords there too...
Any suggestions?
Thanks much,
MF

I have been using Windows Live Photo Gallery in XP to apply keywords and they appear in Lightroom 2 and Bridge. And, Kenneth, embedded keywords written in XMP in Lightroom (with Edit>Catalog Settings...>Metadata>Automatically write changes into XMP)show up in Windows Live Photo Gallery. I find this all very useful.Use Ctrl+S if you want to leave Lightroom open and view the XMP data at the same time in another program. Otherwise it will not be visible until you close LR. I also find it a bit cumbersome to separately import the jpg copy of the RAW file so that I can attach the keywords that will then be visible in other organisers such as Windows Live Photo Gallery etc..
Is there a way of having them import from the camera into Lightroom at the same time as the RAW file? I will keep looking, but maybe it is something to consider for Lightroom 3?

Does 'Write Keywords As Lightroom Hierarchy' work?

I'm trying to export my keywords along with their hierarchy in the xmp of a jpeg.
I believe I've read somewhere that enabling the 'Write Keywords As Lightroom Hierarchy' is supposed to output the keywords in their hierarchy separated by a pipe '|' character.
From what I can tell this doesn't happen. It seems that containing keywords are included but are not separated by a pipe.
e.g. if I have the keyword 'test2' within the 'test' keyword when I export instead of seeing:
test|test2
I see:
test;test2
Which means that other programs can't interpret the hierarchy.
Anyone got this to work as designed? Am I misinterpreting what is supposed to happen? Did it work differently in older versions and this hierarchical export is no longer supported in 2.5?
Thanks
-Adam

The first image is a screen capture of a throw away image in PSE 7. The second image is a screen capture of MS Pro Photo Tools and the Vista Image Properties/Details for the same image. There are two hierarchies created in Lightroom and exported as Lightroom hierarchies: Places/National Parks/Glacier and Wildlife/Birds/Clark's Nutcracker. The keywords show up as a flat hierarchy with each keyword separated by a comma in PSE 7 and by a semicolon in both Pro Photo Tools and the image details. I have not been able to find a way to get PSE 7 to respect Lightroom hierarchies.
I would be particularly displeased with Adobe to learn that the Windows version of Bridge does respect Lightroom hierarchies now that Adobe is offering Bridge bundled with the Mac version of PSE 8 but sticking Windows users with the Organizer

How can I integrate metadata and keywords in Lightroom with those in Photoshop, Bridge, and Photoshop Elements? In other words, is there a way to retrieve common metadata templates from all modules? Thanks!

Keyword and Metadata Integration throughout Adobe Modules

Thanks! That's helpful.
What I mean by "common metadata", is a unified, updated, most current metadata, which I could update in each program. That is without overwriting the metadata, but appending new keywords to the metadata I created in the previous program.
I use Bridge, then Lightroom and finally Photoshop. That's the regular workflow: Bridge for preliminary sorting and and adding some keywords; Lightroom for organizing and picking the best images; finally, Photoshop for processing. I got Photoshop Elements on trial. Doesn't work for my purposes.
I need to share and update the metadata / keywords when I go from one program into another. Can't retrieve metadata I set up in Bridge into Lightroom. Same happens with Photoshop, where I can't retrieve keywords I add in Lightroom. It's tedious to write up the keywords again.
Thanks for your efforts!

Searching for a single keyword in lightroom 5

Hi there,
I am a newbie to lightroom 5 and I am slowly learning the power of keywords.
My question is,
I have 1000's of images of my daughter in my catalog I have key worded all of them. There are some images with her on her own or with me, the mum, nan, granddad etc etc. I have also key worded the photos with, for example me. So on an image the key word is annie, nick. When I go to the 'text' search in the library list I type in annie and every single image of her comes up be it with me the nan, the mum etc. My daughter has hundreds of image with different family members. How do I just get the search to pick "annie" as the keyword and not the rest of the keywords in the catalog.
For example,
I know I can do a search like this, annie, !nick, !mum, !granddad etc etc, but this is so time consuming. Is there a character that can tell lightroom that you only want the image of annie with no one else or nothing else.
I am aware you can select all of the singular images of my daughter and create a collection with just her but this is also time consuming.
Another way this would be annoying is if you had images of trees for example, some trees might be taken by a water fall, mountain, road, picnic table or just one on its own. you might have hundreds of tree image on there own and hundreds of images of trees with a feature. If you try and search for just a tree or trees with nothing else in the image your search result is going to bring up every single image with a tree in it. Not just the images of a tree.
Hope this makes some sort of sense. I have searched all over the internet and there doesn't seem to be an option for this. Or maybe I am missing something. If I'm not missing something and this just isn't possible maybe lightroom designers could look at implementing this search criteria in future updates.
Regards,
Nick.

I have tried that and i think i am more confused. Its going to take me a while to learn this stuff. I have done the ! option and have narrowed it down to the images I want and have created a collection with just the images I wanted. I think I am going to have to think ahead with the keywording in the future. I will get there, its all trial and error at the moment.
Its only a problem at the moment as I have an external hard drive so I have just added 'ADD" all images (over 4000) to lightroom from there as I want to save all future photos I do on the external hard drive. I am reluctant to fill my new IMAC with loads of images and take up loads of space. With photos I do in the future I will be saving on the imac probably and backing up on my external hard drive. The 4000 images are from the last year or so before I got this MAC.
When I do future photo shoots etc it will be easier to move the images to the correct folders as I will be working on a lot less images. So I believe in the future it will be more managable. Trying to key word 1000's of images at the same time has confused me a bit.
Cheers for you inputs peeps, appreciate it.

Is there a smart way to convert People annotations in iView to Keywords in Lightroom?

I have annotated several thousand pictures in iView using "People".
I can see this in PS or Bridge if I use File Info. But i have to look in the Advanced section of the XMP reader.
As I have started to use Lightroom I would like to transform the "People"-annotations in iView to IPTC Keywords.
I suppose the best would have been if I had thought of this before I started to use Lightroom. Then I could have searched for all photos in iView that had a certain name and then add a key word with the name and export the key words (syncronizing annotations). And then import the pictures in Lightroom. But I didn't. So if I import metadata from files now I will destroy the ones I added in Lightroom.
Does anyone have a good idea on what to do?

I purposely don't use People or other on-standard fields in iView because of confusion with other software. I think there's a script in iView that will allow you to move the contents of one field to another (people to keywords). You'd then have to re-synch them.
I wish I paid close attention to meta data 5 or 6 years ago!

Problem deleting multiple keywords in lightroom 5

I am importing about 20,000 pictures from Flickr. they are all creative commons, and the end result will be the use of approximately 4000 of these in an online sign language dictionary.
I use Bulkr to import them and this process imports the tags as well as other information such as the photographers name and url. Many of these photos arrive with hundreds of tags, so that the total number of tags might be 20000 or more. I need to assign my own tags and delete all the tags that the photo arrived with. I use the lightroom batch delete to do this (the little minus sign at the top of the keyword list). i select a keyword, hold down the shift key and scroll down. the problem is that i cannot just scroll down to the bottom of the list. There appear to be unpredictable keywords that cause the shift-select process not to work. if i scroll back up and then carefully scroll part of the way back down, then there will be a point at which shift-select stops working and above that it works.
The end result of this is that it takes numerous shift-select-scroll down-select to delete everything so that what should take maybe 2 minutes takes 20 minutes or more.
The problem may be related to foreign language keywords especially chinese characters, but even what looks like a perfectly ordinary keyword can stop it. Two recent examples: travellers cheque and Київ. In all cases, the words can be deleted when i click directly on them. you just cant shift-select THROUGH them.
A separate annoyance that i will just grumble about is that i was forced to put these pictures in a separate catalog because there is always the risk that i could manage to delete my own keywords while batch-deleting everyone elses, and there is no simple way that i know of to undo this. with the separate catalog at least i wont delete all the keywords for my own pictures.

With respect to problems deleting multiple keywords: On Windows, since at least version 3, LR has had basic bugs when you have more than about 1600 keywords showing. (Hard to believe it isn't fixed by now.) A simple workaround for you situation is to filter the keywords one letter at a time and then select the subset of keywords that are showing -- e.g. filter all keywords with the letter "t", then all keywords with the letter "b", etc.
With respect to not getting the keywords into your catalog in the first place: You can define a Metadata Preset that will clear the keywords on import:

I can't delete a keyword plus Lightroom now automatically displays keyword folders

Lightroom has suddenly started behaving oddly with regard to keywords and I can't seem to find reference to it anywhere, even if it is "switch" that I have accidentally turned on.
In my set up, I have, for example, the keyword "Portrait" stored under a keyword folder "Photographic styles". Normally only the word "Portrait" appears within the keyword box and that's how I want it, but recently whichever keyword I type, the containing folder pops up alongside it. Note, this isn't during an export of a file, this is actually whilst keyboarding a photograph with the Library section of LR.
Secondly, I can no longer delete a keyword by highlighting it with the keyword box in Library so, unless that word is still within the Recently Used collection of words where I can can un-highlight it, I can't remove a highlight from a photograph at all.
Have I changed a setting by mistake or is there something market going on?
Many thanks in advance for your help,
Martin

Normally only the word "Portrait" appears within the keyword box and that's how I want it, but recently whichever keyword I type, the containing folder pops up alongside it. Note, this isn't during an export of a file, this is actually whilst keyboarding a photograph with the Library section of LR.
It sounds like you created a top-level keyword "Portrait", so now you have two top-level keywords, "Portrait" and "Photographic styles", and you also have a child keyword "Photographic styles > Portrait". (Note that the usual terminology is to call "Photographic sytles" a parent keyword, rather than a folder, since it is also a keyword.)
When your Keyword List has more than one keyword whose leaf names are the same, then LR will include the parent name of the child keyword to remove ambiguity:
To replace the top-level keyword "Portrait" by the child keyword "Photographic styles > Portrait", follow these steps:
1. In the Keyword List panel, hover the mouse on the right edge of the line containing the top-level keyword Portrait, until you see a right arrow appear:
Click on that right arrow, and all the pics containing the top-level "Portrait" will be shown in grid view.
2. Select all those pics by doing Cmd-A (Mac) or Ctrl-A (Windows).
3. In the Keyword List panel, hover the mouse over the left edge of the line containing the child keyword "Photographic styles > Portrait". A check box will appear:
Click on the check box and a checkmark will appear, indicating the child keyword is now assigned to all the selected photos.
4. In the Keyword List, right-click the top-level keyword "Portrait" and select Delete:

Keywords in Lightroom/Bridge

I have all my photos marked with a lot of keywords i Bridge, but I would like to use Lightroom to add keywords to all my new Photos, but if I do that, Bridge can't read them
Any one who knows what to do ???

Hi John
Thanks for the very good and usefull answer, it works like a charm
The solution is simple, I can see that now, but haven't thought of saving the darn thing.
All the best ... Peter

1000's of keywords imported - Lightroom Freezes and burns CPU

I imported approx 7000 keywords (most with hierarchical synonyms and some with sub-keywords). In other words a BIG keyword collection.
Now I cannot use Lightroom. When I start it it becomes non-responsive (Windows XP) while burning huge amounts of CPU. I have LOST ACCESS TO MY IMAGE COLLECTION!
Please, please, can someone tell me how to delete ALL KEYWORDS outside of Lightroom, so that when I start it it will be usable again?
I have searched my hard disk an cannot locate any files corresponding to "keywords".

Well, I discovered some things which may be of interest - but no actual solution.
First, I bypassed the problem completely by going back to my last "pre-keyword" catalog backup, then importing the 2 days of image files (including XMP sidecars). This gave me back a responsive Lightroom, with all my (meta)data.
Regarding Lightroom's keywords, I found that they are stored in a table in the catalog, which is actually a SQLite database. The table name is AgLibraryTag. You can install SQLite, then run it on the lrdb file:
sqlite> .schema AgLibraryTag
CREATE TABLE AgLibraryTag (
id_local INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
id_global UNIQUE NOT NULL,
changeEpoch INTEGER,
dateCreated NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
flattenedParams,
folderInfoCache,
genealogy NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
imageCountCache DEFAULT -1,
kindName NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
lastApplied,
name,
parent INTEGER,
sortDirection,
sortOrder
doing a "select * from..." on this table gives a dump of all my keywords. So...I figured that emptying this table as follows might solve the problem, given that I hadn't actually assigned any keywords to any images:
sqlite> delete from AgLibraryTag;
sqlite> select * from AgLibraryTag;
sqlite> vacuum;
sqlite> .exit
WRONG! Lightroom loads, but all my folder information is lost.
I gave up and worked around the problem as noted above, but if anyone from Adobe reads this - you NEED to provide a way to delete large numbers of keywords. If a reasonably high-end WinTel laptop chokes on 7000 keywords then this is NOT usable software.

Keywords in Lightroom

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