LR4 Automating additions to the Keyword List

Is there any way to automate/batch the creation of words for the Keyword List?
My photos are stored on a hard disk in more than 2000 named folders. Each folder name is a keyword for the images within. I would like to create a Keyword List of the names of each folder. Since all the names are in digital form, is there any way to automate/batch the creation of words for the Keyword List?
Chuck

I guess this is a job for a plugin.
John Beardsworth's
Search-Transfer-Replace<http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/jbeardsworth/findreplace/>
plugin
can copy metadata between fields (in your case, you need Folder name -> *
keywords*). Not sure if it can do exactly that. John?

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Bug with Lightroom 4? - Big problem in the keyword list!!

Hello guys,
I am Rafael Rojas, a nature and landscape photographer. This is my first post, trigered by a quite bothering problem I am having with my LR...So hello everybody!
I upgraded to LR 4 a week ago. Today I realized many of the keywords I have installed in Lightroom do not appear on the keyword list (basically all keywords after the letter S). Moreover, half of the keywords which appear on the list are not editable: that is, I cannot assign them to the selected image (by clicking on the left box), or I cannot double click them or right click them to get the Edit panel. All the rest of keywords (those which appear on the list on top), can be edited and there is no problem.
When I export the keywords as a .txt file (in metadata, export keywords) I can see that all the keywords are there. When I try to write some of them on the box LR recognize them and adds them automatically. However, I just cannot see them on my keyword list or just cannot edit them.
The reason I want to edit the keywords is because many of them got desactivated while upgrading (something more people have reported). Right now, I cannot send my images to my stock galleries, since many of my important keywords are not active, and I just cannot edit them...
Can you help me please?
thanks so much!!
rafael

Well, 64 bits.
And yes, it seems when I erase one keyword, the list "shows" one more below...so it seems the problem is related to a certain limit in number.
That would be still a problem I could live with, the big problem tough is that many of the keywords got "deactivated" alone by Lightroom (see problem here described http://www.backyardsilver.com/2012/02/strange-behavior-with-capitalized-keywords/) and that means I NEED to edit some keywords which are really important and which are not active. Otherwise, when I export the images those keywords are not embedded...
Any thoughts?
Rafa

Using Windows 7 and LR 5 when I look at the Keyword List a certain keyword has 7 pictures but when I check the Library Filter with that keyword 350 pictures are shown which includes the 7 pictures that have the keyword. Why does the Library Filter showi

Using Windows 7 and LR 5, when I look at the Keyword List a certain keyword has 7 pictures but when I check the Library Filter with that keyword 350 pictures are shown which includes the 7 pictures that have the keyword. Why does the Library Filter showing pictures that do not match the query

Dan,
Here's what's going on in the catalog you sent me, "Joel & Caitlin's Wedding". There is the keyword "gwenn", which is explicitly assigned to 7 pics. But keyword "schwartz" has a number of synonyms, including "gwenn", and it is assigned to 25 pics. There is no overlap between the two sets of pics.
I discovered these two occurrences by doing Metadata > Export Keywords, opening the exported file in an editor, and then searching for "gwenn". I found two occurrences of "gwenn":
gwenn
schwartz
{gwenn}
From this, you can see that the keyword "schwartz" has 9 synonyms, of which "gwenn" is one.
The filter criterion "Keywords Contain gwenn" will match the 7 pics that are explicitly assigned the keyword "gwenn", and it will also match the 25 pics assigned the keyword "schwartz", because that keyword has a synonym "gwenn".
This illustrates the behavior I mentioned above: The criterion "Keywords contains x" will match against any of a pic's assigned keywords, any of those keywords' ancestor keywords, and any of the synonyms of the assigned keywords and their ancestors.
So LR is operating correctly here, if not in a way that's easy to understand.
It appears that you are using the synonyms of "schwartz" to represent individual members of the Schwartz family. A better way of representing family relationships is to have a parent keyword "Schwartz", with subkeywords for each family member, e.g. "Gwenn Schwartz", "Joe Schwartz", "Jane Schwartz", etc. Repeating the family name in the subkeywords has a couple of advantages. LR usually only displays the "leaf" name of a keyword, so instead of showing you just "Joe", it will show you "Joe Schwartz", helpful when there are a number of different people whose first name is "Joe". Also, if you ever export your pics to other software, it may not understand the LR hierarchy and won't show the parent keywords, so again it's more informative to see a keyword named "Joe Schwartz" rather than "Joe".

How Can I Improve the Readability of the Keyword List?

I've often wondered if you guys actually test this stuff in real-world conditions.
This white-on-gray and gray-on-gray (!) micro small font stuff may be the cool du jour UI look and work great for you bloodshot-eyed youngsters beavering away 24/7 in the bowels of Adobe Developer Central on your supermax workstation screens, but for us bifocal challenged 50+y/o codgers on deadline working in the field on ruggedized laptops in sunlit conditions, this is not a very time inefficient UI.
The Keyword List is particular painful to use since there are no keyboard shortcuts and we're forced to click on these microscopically small squares and read the keywords in what must be a 2pt font.
Other than stretching the left-panel container max left (which isn't very far), Is there ANY WAY to make the Keyword List more readable?

justjesper wrote:
Excelent question.
I have been searching around, and it looks like a lot of users is asking this question.
Where can I make Siri learn my accent ? Some users was talking about a feature where you could correct Siri so it would learn, but I have not been able to find it.
Nor have I, but it does seem to get better as I go along, so maybe it learns.

Should I Avoid LR4 and Get LR3 Because of My Huge Hierarchical Keyword List?

I abandoned LR2 several years ago because it crashed from my hierarchical list of 12,000 keywords. (Botanical and common names and other terms.) I have been using CS5/Camera Raw/Bridge to manage and edit my images. The hierarchical list is necessary for my stock photo business.
I will soon be needing to compare and edit images for a book publication and gallery show and I am thinking I may need to return to LR so I can work more effciently. I do not care about not exporting some keywords or synonyms etc. I think (right now anyway) that it is fine that all keywords associated with the images get exported for my stock submissions. I ususally check off only the sub-keywords or sub-sub-sub keywords.
Here are my questions:
1) Is LR 3 able to handle my huge list of hierarchical keywords which is now larger than 12,000 words?
2) Should I upgrade to LR3 and not to LR4 to avoid the keyword mess I have been reading about but don't understand very well?
3) Is it possible to even upgrade to LR3 now that LR4 is released?
3) Would LR4 handle my keywords better or worse than LR2? Than LR3?
4) Is there a work efficiency reason to upgrade to CS6 without using any version of LR and continue using Bridge and Camera Raw as I have been?
5) Is there anything else I have not thought to ask? I am somewhat technically challenged and dread learning new software, having been burned in the past with ExpressionsMedia disaster and LR2 which crashed etc.
Thanks for any and all input from the forum!

I try to answer your questions. I also have a large list of hierarchical keywords (funny ... also botanical names) but not as much as you have.
1) I think that Lr3 is able to handle your list of keywords. I have not heard from anybody that there is a limit to the number of keywords that Lr is able to handle.
2) There seem to be some keyword issues in Lr4. My keywords were perfectly fine in Lr3 but after upgrading to Lr4 some of my keywords were not populated, meaning that the keywords themselves were listed in the keyword list but the image count showed 0. I still have my Lr3 catalog so was able to check (with Lr3) that, indeed, in Lr3 all the keywords in question were populated with the correct number of images. Fortunately there were not too many of these not-populated keywords, so I corrected the issue manually.
Since correct keywords are mandatory for your stock business, you are right in hesitating to upgrade to Lr4. In my opinion, the improvements that Lr4 offers over Lr3 are mainly in areas that are - probably - not so important to a stock business: improvements in the Develop Module and new Process Version, the Book Module, the map Module. On the other hand I would think that image management is paramount for you and in this area Lr4 is not much different than Lr3.
3) You will not be able to get an upgrade to Lr3 from Adobe now that Lr4 has been released. So you had to find a 3rd party vendor (B&H? Amazon?) who still sells Lr3.
4) Apart from the issue described above, I don't see any difference in keyword handling between Lr3 and Lr4. Lr2 is too far back for me - I don't remember.
5) My suggestion for you would be: You have to upgrade at some point. The longer you wait, the more difficult the transition will be because the differences of future versions to Lr2 will become greater. Since at the moment version 4.1 is in the works (there have been two RCs (Release candidates) of version 4.1 already), maybe it would be wise to wait until the final 4.1 version is out. maybe the keyword issues have been fixed.
6) You can "upgrade" to Lr4 and still have Lr2 on your system. All the Lr versions are stand-alone versions, not "plug-ins" for the previous versions. So you can have two (or more) different Lr versions on your system. So I would suggest that you upgrade to Lr 4.1 (once this version is out) but leave Lr2 on your system. When you Lr4 you will be asked if you want to upgrade your Lr catalog to Lr4 and you have the option of saving the Lr4 catalog as a different file, so that your Lr2 catalog is still available for Lr2 (Lr2 will not be able to work with the Lr4 catalog!). That way, if anything is amiss in Lr4 you can go back to Lr2 and work from there.

Keyword list problem: "No photos match the filter"

LR4.1 64-bit Windows 7
I have relatively small (1k), and completely flat (non-hierarchical) keyword list.
for a small number of keywords, I have the following problem:
If I open Library, witht the centre panel in Grid View, then select Keyword List from the RHS panel, and select one these "problem" keywords, On the rhs of the screen it shows a number, indicating the number of images to which this keyword is attached.
I then click the arrow next to the number to display the images with this keyword.
the library filter opens in the centre panel of the screen area, dropping down the Keyword filter and correctly highlighting the selected keyword; however against this, the keyword show 0 matches and the message "No photos match the filter" is displayed.
If I right-click on the keyword in the Keyword List and select delete, the message is displayed that the keyword will be deleted from n photos
Thus I don't know if there are photos with the keyword which are just not being displayed, or whether there are a number of "phantom" keywords which are not associated with any images.
It may be that I am lacking understanding of some aspect of LR functionality; or that somehow there is an indexing problem within my LR catalogue.
thanks in advance for any help and advice

Thanks, I've been having this trouble in my catalog since LR3, problem is still there in LR4.3.
I used your suggestion to show the offending photos in a smart collection and could finally see the photos to fix all the keywords that way.
Most of mine have come from duplicate keywords that I accidentally created - I have a hierarchy of keywords and some have appearedin two places. So I have been trying to delete the old unwanted ones but have not been able to see the photos when using the filter or the keyword arrow.
My solution was to rename every one of the old dud keywords with a suffix of "XXX" - this also helps me to not use those old keywords again. Then I made a smart collection that simply searches for all keywords containing "XXX". From the collection, I go through the photos and replace the old keywords with the new corrected one. Once the filter shows the count of the number of photos down to 0 as it should be, I can finally delete that old keyword!
I am keeping this new collection (called "XXX Keywords to fix") for when it happens later... This sure sounds like a bug that Adobe needs to sort out.

Keyword List doesn't show the correct images when clicked

I'm using LR 2.3RC on a Windows Vista Ultimate PC, although the same error occurs on LR2.2.
I have a keyword structure "Karl > Family > People" with Karl having 33 images with this keyword. When I use the "Keyword List" on the right panel in the Library module to display these images I get over fourteen thousand images in the grid! This doesn't happen when I use the "Library Filter" bar above the grid.
What gives?

Don,
the result of clicking on "Karl" should display 33 images in total. In fact I'm getting 14,589 of a possible total of 14,734 in the catalogue. This hardly a limitation, rather the opposite I would say!
John

LR4.4 - Library filter by keyword - unable to select keyword.

Lightroom version: 4.4 [891433]
Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
Version: 6.1 [7601]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 4
Processor speed: 2.6 GHz
Built-in memory: 6087.8 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 6087.8 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 523.6 MB (8.6%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 551.5 MB
Memory cache size: 1012.7 MB
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 2
System DPI setting: 106 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: No
Displays: 1) 1600x900
If I am in Library module, select filter Metadata, select Keywords from dropdown (no other filter panels selected), and start to scroll down the list of keywords, I can select keywords by mouseclick, and see the matching photos as thumbs in the main window.
However as I scroll further down, I can no longer select keywords - the mouseclick no longer highlights or selects. This happens rather incosnsistently - by which I mean, the point in the eyword list where the select stops working is not always the same place in the keyword list.
If I click several times on the same non-selecting keyword, LR4.4 jumps to taking 50% (exactly) of processor time (shown in task manager) , and the memory usage climbs steadily until all free RAM is consumed.
This is a small (~8000 image) catalogue, with ~2500 keywords, entirely non-hierarchical.
The catalogue is set to optimise on backup, weekly.
I've tried deleting and recreating the preferences file btw to no avail

LR on Windows starts choking when you have more than about 1500 keywords. It's a longstanding bug from at least LR 3 that still isn't fixed in LR 5 (hard to believe, but true).
Please add your vote to this official bug report:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/i_cannot_access_the_whole_keyword_li st_to_edit
That thread also has a couple of workarounds.

How can I copy keyword list to a new library

I'm a keyword fanatic. Keywords are my most favorite feature of the product. It's the reason I use iPhoto in the first place. I recently created a new iPhoto v6 library and can see that the keyword list did not get migrated. Is there a way to do this? Can I export and import the keyword list? Thanks.

gtigan
Keywords are kept in the main database file and when you create a new library, you create a new database.
The only way I can think of to what you want is to select a single pic and give it ALL the keywords, then use iPhoto Library Manager to move that pic from the old library to the new one. iplm is the only way to move pics and metadata between libraries while using v6. (hmm, another reason to upgrade.)
And, as I mentioned in my other post, if you're a "keyword fanatic" then check out Keyword Manager
Regards
TD

Export and Import a Keyword List

Yesterday I exported the keyword list and then acted on the suggestion from LightroomSecrets site to 'organize' while it is in text format. This went very well using a text editor.
The IMPORT doesn't overwrite the existing list. It merges INTO the list.
So now I'm still scrolling up and down collecting the keywords that are stand alone to undo and then put a checkmark beside the subkey in a category. I would have been wiser to have reorganized a few and repeated the export,import <grin>
If keywording is promoted as such an important feature and a main item for management in Lightroom then, it would seem to me that the 'LIST' itself could have been designed in a more efficient manner...Such as : a right click menu...or a browse and choice to move to...
I suppose the architects of this list assumed users would have their keywording planned out ahead of time. Never assume <grin> I've only now (V1 to V3.4.1) got my head around the category concept so much reorganization required. Scroll up and down and zoom past the category wanted....not an exercise I can stay with for long periods of time <LOL!>
Rose

gtigan
Keywords are kept in the main database file and when you create a new library, you create a new database.
The only way I can think of to what you want is to select a single pic and give it ALL the keywords, then use iPhoto Library Manager to move that pic from the old library to the new one. iplm is the only way to move pics and metadata between libraries while using v6. (hmm, another reason to upgrade.)
And, as I mentioned in my other post, if you're a "keyword fanatic" then check out Keyword Manager
Regards
TD

I can't import keyword list into Aperture

I want to import a big keyword list from last years photo library into this years, but when I export the keyword list from my 2012 library it's greyed out and won't import into my 2013 library. The Aperture help says it should work just fine, any tips on what I / Aperture / Apple are doing wrong here greatly appreciated: I have a big family keyword list which I don't want to have to recreate from scratch!
Thanks all, James

You are welcome, James! Thanks for the virtual flowers and chocolate!
Very pretty!
Léonie

Use a keywords list as a source for an autocomplete list?

Is this possible? I have a large keyword list that has been developed over a long period of time. I want to be able to autocomplete when I start typing, based on the keywords list. The list has become very difficult to quickly navigate in the keyword panel. Thoughts?

Crop the image out of the print screen. I imagine your screen will be a much larger resolution then the camer, and will only take up a portion of your browser window.
Unofficial Forum Rules and Guidelines - Hooovahh - LabVIEW Overlord
If 10 out of 10 experts in any field say something is bad, you should probably take their opinion seriously.

In Keyword List panel, need to support quotes for AND'ing multi-word keyword searches

As far as I know (and read around), there's no way to search multi-word keywords in the keywords list panel using the "Filter Keywords" box. i.e. If I want to search for the "Great Blue Heron" keyword in a large animal keywords list I have, Lightroom will OR the three words instead of AND'ing them like Aperture does more intuitively. Adding quotes like "Great Blue Heron" doesn't work either. Again this is to filter a large keyword lists through the "Filter Keywords" box in the Keywords List panel.
Am I missing something? Is it possible to AND multi-word keywords?
Thanks.

Rob,
as far as I know spaces are also contained and allowed in controlled vocabularies (e.g. for the "official" names of animals 'little panda' for example and plants). I'm using spaces for names very often. As a prof. photographer I need to write captions for all of my images before sending them to my agency with WHEN/WHAT/WHERE/WHO etc. So when shooting persons very often or regular (e.g. politicians or athletes) I started years ago to create keywords and hierarchies for them. So it is much easier and more comfortable to assign them later.
Please check out PhotoMechanic or IMatch. These progs doesn't have any problems with spaces in keywords and keyword searches...
BTW: when using a space in a search I expect that the default behaviour of such a space is a locical AND.
Lars

Placement of Keyword List on screen

As an old LR 1.4 user, I've been used to having my Keyword List on the left column. I've just upgraded to LR3.3, and the darn thing is on the right. So now I have a totally overloaded right column, and ABSOLUTELY no use for the left column.
Is there any way to move the Keyword List from the right column into the left? It doesnt make ANY sense on the right to me.
Cheers
Richard

If it's important to you, put in a feature request on the new Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum. No promises that moveable panels will ever happen, but it's at least a way of getting features discussed and voted on.

!!!! Scott Kelby's taken over my keyword list

Hi. Coming home from a shooting session today, I imported my files as usual, but when I should start tagging them, I found that most of my keywords were missing from the keyword list (approx. 45 of 50 categories missing). Instead, I found keywords like "grunge", "headshot", "inside" etc, which made little or no sense at all to me. Clicking to see these pictures, I found they must have found their way to my PC while I was reading Scott Kelbys LR2 book, and downloading the example photos from his site. So now I'd like to know what I should do to get my own back. Using a previous back-up would only partly do the trick, as I still haven't finished the book, so I would have to dl the same photos over again, and then probably once again mess up my keywords. Anybody else been through this, or have an idea how to solve it? Please?

I'd be inclined to set up a separate new catalog for the tutorials and other testing. I'd then remove all Kelby's photos from your existing photos, then purge unused keywords, and see where that took me, and then decide the merits of using a backup .lrcat.

LR4 Automating additions to the Keyword List

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