Writing full keyword hierarchy to masters

I've assigned hierarchical keywords to the vast majority of my images and am looking for a way to write the full hierarchy when exporting. For example, I'll attach "sculptures", which defines the relationship "civilization" -> "objects" -> "scupltures". Aperture has only ever written "sculptures" when exporting. I'd looking to write something like "civilization|objects|sculptures" to the file so that other applications can understand the hierarchy. Any ideas? Could this be done with AppleScript?

Any easy way would be to rename your keywords:
For example, I'll attach "sculptures", which defines the relationship "civilization" -> "objects" -> "scupltures".
Replace the keyword "sculptures" by "civilization-objects-scupltures" and "objects" by "civilization-objects". This can be done in the Keywords HUD. Since epxorting always adds the most specific keyword in the hierarchie, in this case "civilization-objects-scupltures", your exported image will carry the full set of keywords.

Similar Messages

How do I filter photos using the keyword hierarchy?

Since Aperture 3.1 came out, I've been taking another look at it and considering switching back from Lightroom. One baby step was to set up a proper keyword hierarchy with Aperture. Trying to use that for sorting photos, I started feeling incredibly frustrated and felt like I must be missing something screamingly obvious.
Here's my issue. Using the keyword HUD, I can set up a nested, hierarchical keyword list. The HUD helpfully displays a running tally of all photos that keyword is applied to. "Great!" I thought, I've got 46 photos of John Smith, let's take a look at them. So I click on the number. Apparently, while Aperture is happy to show you the number of photos with the keyword, it's not willing to take you to those photos (i.e., create a library filter and show the results) via the Keyword HUD.
Bringing up the filter HUD seems unhelpful for the opposite reason. While you can search via the keywords there, it doesn't show the keyword hierarchy! Am I missing something? Say I've got keywords for two people, Adam and Zoe, filed under People/Friends/. Using the keyword box in the filter HUD will list one at the beginning and the other at the end of my entire list of keywords. Worse, the filter HUD only seems helpful for keywords if you know which ones you're looking for, which defeats the point of using a hierarchy. If, say, I know there's 3 or 4 people I'm looking for under a particular category, but I can't remember their name of the top of my head, how do I go about finding them using the filter HUD? All I have is the long, uncategorized master list of keywords.
Again, I feel I must be missing something obvious. Thanks for your help.
Cheers.

I agree, clicking on a keyword in the HUD that has a number after it to get those photos seems like a no brainer. Even though I know it doesn't do that I still find myself clicking on it before I catch myself. Need to send feedback to Apple on this, clicking on a keyword should create a filter to and display those images.
In your example the images of Adam and Zoe should be tagged with the keywords that apply to them. That is they would have the keywords people, friends, male or female, Adam or Zoe, and whatever other keywords you use to describe these images. Then you check as many keywords in the filter that apply and you can remember.
While the keyword HUD shows the keywords in a hierarchy, keywords applied to an image are one dimensional, linear. Its just a string of words without structure. The hierarchy is just there to make it easier to conceptualize the structure.

How to use keyword hierarchy?

Hiya,
In my Keywords HUD, I have created a hierarchical order of keywords, such as
- Europe
-- Ireland
-- Germany
- Prints
-- A4
-- 6x4
If I want to assign the keyword "Ireland" to a bunch of photos, I select all these photos and drag the keyword from the HUD to the photos.
What I am struggling with are 2 problems:
- How do I browse interactively by keyword hierarchy? Can I select "Europe" as a keyword in order to see all photos being taken in Europe? Can I select "Gemany" afterwards in order to see the subset of photos being taken in Germany?
- How do I create smart folders containing all photos being taken in Europe? If I take as a search criteria "IPTC > Keywords" and search for "Europe", I don't get any feedback, but if I search for "Ireland", I get all the photos being taken in Ireland.
Does Aperture ignore the upper levels (e.g. "Europe", "Prints") for all its features?
Is the hierarchy exclusively used for the presentation of keywords in the Keywords HUD?
Thanks in advance for any feedback,
Stephan

Maybe I'm missing something, as I typically ask questions, not answer them, but doesn't this work for you?
Either type Europe into the quick search section of the Search Panel or toggle open the "text" criteria and enter it there.
That should find the images by the upper level keywords.
You can narrow the search by selecting match "all" and adding more text items for upper level keywords, or by selecting lower level keywords from the keywords criteria section.
The manual states that you can quick search multiple text items by separating them by commas, but that didn't seem to work for me. Aperture seems to treat upper level keywords as text, and they can be searched as such.
Once the search is completed, click the create smart album, and you should have what you are looking for, I hope.
Good Luck!
Steve
MacPro 2.66GHz, 2G Memory Mac OS X (10.4.8) Aperture 1.5.2

How About Some Standard Standards For Keyword Hierarchy?

After reading Wolf Eilers post in the "Respect Keyword Hierarchy when importing" thread, I tried his example and exported a RAW file with the "Outdoor>Landscape" example he gave and then re-imported the jpeg. It came back in with Landscape as the parent of Outdoor, that is backwards from what I intended. Go figure.
If LR respects ">" as indicating a parent-child relationship between keywords it is fine with me. However, Microsoft decided to use "/" because there is apparently no XMP standard for keyword hierarchies. Wouldn't it be nice if Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple too got together and set a defacto standard for keyword hierarchies. As it is now, I can create a keyword "Outdoor/Landscape" in LR and have it appear in Vista Photo Gallery with Landscape as a child of Outdoor. However, if re-imported into LR it comes in as "Outdoor/Landscape". Can't we just all get along?

Absolutely no. A completely pointless exercise. As there can be no standard for such a thing. As people have so many, very different ways of filing things. It like suggesting that we all use the same folder tree for filing on our computers. Our relationship to keywords and their meaning will change.
Take Brad Pitt, would you put him under Actor, celebrity or relative. His mum would file him under Son/Family.
What about places. I use UK, Europe, Asia, Africa...as top level domains. Now someone who lives in Japan would have Japan as home and the UK as Europe/UK. Some people may like to file musical acts by city of origin, others by genre, neither is wrong and both are correct for the right person. Being able to do both would be even better.
You just design a heirachy that suits yourself. Adobe just has to find a way of respecting that and allowing you to transfer that heirarchy intact between apps.
Someone else posted this example of heirachy. Which will work well for some, but not for others. Plus, in context of what you ask, remember everyone's family structure is different so how can you possibly have a 'standard' heirachy.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=98612897&size=o
In your example above, I wouldn't use Outdoor and Landscape as Landscape. As for my filing I simply do not have an inside and outside category. I probably wouldn't even have a landscape category either, I would file them under location in a heirachical tree like UK/Wales/West Glamorgan/Gower/Rhosilli/Headland. I may add Landscape as a key word, but would not use it as a category as the heirachy tree above makes more sense to me as I can remember where things are.
I also file everthing by date in my OS as I can remember when I took things reasonably well and that ensures I have a coherent filing system onto which I can apply a database.

How to flatten keyword hierarchy?

For about a year I had all my keywords organized into a nice hierarchy, but after moving projects between libraries and computers my keywords are in chaos because keyword hierarchy information is not included in exported projects. I have keywords repeated with one nested in a folder and its copy sitting at the top level (with photos assigned to both).
After seeing what a mess moving projects causes, I'd like to eliminate the hierarchies and just keep a flat list. Does anyone know of a way to flatten the structure without having to drag each keyword out of its folder? I tried deleting the Keywords.plist file, but it gets rebuilt with the hierarchy intact. Any help is appreciated!

One thing that might be a factor is the way Aperture keeps keywords active even if you move or delete them in the keywords list.
In order to have control over your keyword list, you need to delete existing keywords from your images. As Steve Weller points out in his articles, Aperture keeps keyword information in several places, not just the keyword list, and you need to deal with all of the places in order to control the hierarchy of the keyword list. For example, if you have set up custom keyword buttons, they store the keyword in the hierarchy of the time the button was created, so each time you use the button, you are making Aperture "remember" the hierarchy, even if you have later moved the keyword.
But your issue is that you have many images using keywords. When a keyword is used in an image, it is stored with the image; Aperture remembers the hierarchy of the keyword. This means that if you later move that keyword in the keyword list, Aperture considers the moved keyword to be separate and independent of the keyword previously used with an image. You can see this in the smart album display of keywords, which is based on actually used keywords. If you are having this problem, then keywords will appear more than once in the smart album keyword list. If you want to keep the same spelling of a keyword that has been moved in the keyword list, the only solution I know of is, frankly, a bit tedious:
1. use the smart album to select all images using the unwanted version of the keyword
2. then assign an "intermediate" (not identically spelled) keyword to those images,
3. then delete the unwanted version of the keyword from the images (use the keyword field in the control bar; option-tilde or click on the field, then type the name of the unwanted keyword, then shift-return to delete the keyword)
4. then assign the new version of the keyword to the images
5. then delete the intermediate keyword
Good luck!

Questions about keyword hierarchy

I'm in the process of designing and building a keyword hierarchy for LR3.5, and I'm at a loss to understand a couple of things.
In the process of deciding how to build this, I've looked at a number of hierarchies people have posted to the web. One thing I've noted is that people sometimes have the same word in multiple hierarchies, and sometimes the same word as both a regular entry and as a synonym. For example:
Architecture
      Building
          Church
                  {Cathedral}
          Cathedral
          Skyscraper.....
Cities
      Building
      Cathedral....
So what happens if I use the keyword building?
I *think* what will happen is that LR gives me a choice of selecting Building>Architecture OR Building>Cities. Is that correct?   Is there a way to get Building, Cities AND Architecture? What happens if I select Cities? Do I get ONLY cities, and none of the lower level keywords?
And I'm at a total loss about synonyms. If, while applying keywords to an image, I select the synonym {Cathedral}, under Architecture, what keyword(s) get assigned to the image? What if I select Church? And what if I select Cathedral under Cities?
Many thanks.

Thanks web-weaver.
I posted basically the same question in a couple of other places, and got conflicting answers. And the information I found on web searches tended to explain HOW to set up a hierarchy, but not how it really worked, and information on synonyms is especially limited, and often conflicting. So I did some tests. So as to not use any words that were already in my keyword list, I built a simple hierarchy of words not currently in use:
Colors
    Blue
        {Cyan}
        {Azure}
    Red
        Pink
                        Salmon
        Rose
    Green
        {BRG}
        {Emerald}
    Cyan
    Orange
Fruit
    Orange
    Apple
(I actually had a couple of other trees, but this is enough to demonstrate how they actually work.)
And it turns out synonyms don't work quite like I expected them to, and are, honestly, so limited I question their value.
Test1: Tag a photo with the keyword Cyan. Only Cyan gets applied to the metadata, not any of the words associated with it (Blue, Colors, Azure). Searching, I can find the image by searching on Cyan, or Colors. But NOT by searching on Blue.
Test2: Tag a photo with the keyword Blue. Only Blue gets applied to the metadata, not Cyan, or Azure. When searching, I can find it by searching on Blue, or any of it's synonyms (Cyan, Azure), or Colors.
(I had expected synonyms to work the other way, I think. So that if I searched on Blue I'd get all images tagged with Blue, but also those tagged with Azure and Cyan. )
Test3: Tag one photo with Cyan, and another with Blue. Searching with Cyan gets me both images, as does searching with Colors. Searching on Blue gets me only the image tagged with Blue.
Test 4: Tag a photo with the word Colors (and nothing else). I find it by searching ONLY on colors, not Blue, Cyan, or Azure.
Test 5: Tag a photo with the word Red (and nothing else). I find it by searching on Red, or Colors, but not Pink or Rose.
Test 6: Tag a photo with the word Pink (and nothing else). I find it by searching on Pink, Red or Colors, but not Salmon.
Test 7: Tag one photo with Orange->Color, and a second image with Orange->Fruit (this nomenclature seems backwards to me, btw. It's really Fruit-Orange and Color-Orange, but whatever...) Searching on Orange finds both images. Searching on Color finds only one, searching on Fruit finds only the other.
Synonyms affect only search, and not tagging (assignment). Searching on a term that is a synonym will find images tagged with the main word. (e.g., search on Azure and you'll find Blue, but not Colors).
On another site someone replied that when you search you'll find "any image which bears that keyword or any keyword BELOW it in the hierarchy." That's backwards, at least as I understand the word "above.". You'll actually find images using the keyword, it's alias, or any word ABOVE it in the hierarchy. So if an image is tagged with Red, you can find it by searching on Red or Colors, but not Pink. If the image is tagged with pink, you can find it with Colors, Red or Pink, but not Salmon.
The worst limitation of using synonyms is that when you're tagging an image, LR3 isn't smart enough to know the synonyms exist. So if I tag an image with the word Azure, LR3 doesn't substitute Blue, or use the synonym where it already exists in the hierarchy. Instead, creates a new, top level entry named Azure, not tied in any way to the alias or the "Colors" tree.
It seems like it would be useful to be able to enter Blue as a search term and find any images tagged with Azure and Cyan. Or enter Red as a search term and find Pink and Rose, too. The way it's implemented now forces you to enter the term you're most likely to use (Blue, for example) at the bottom of the hierarchy, and the least used words above. Or to use synonyms, and hope you never get confused an enter a synonym as a keyword instead of the word it refers to.
It seems to me it's more useful to just use Azure as another keyword beneath (or maybe above) Blue in the hierarchy. At least that way if I tag an image with Azure, I'm not creating a new entry in the Keyword list. I'm not sure I see much value in synonyms as they're currently implemented, but if someone has some examples of how synonyms benefit them I'd be delighted to see them.
Hopefully this information will be of use to someone.

Keyword Hierarchy Suggestions?

I've just imported about 6000 photos from iView MediaPro and I'm pondering how I should go about creating my keyword hierarchy. Obviously "People" is one good top category, but what about the others? Are there any standards out there to use? I'd like to do this right the first time.
What are others doing? Post your tips here!

Yes, IPTC fields for Country, State, City, Location, can be used for searching, but have limits and weaknesses in assigning the metadata.
IPTC metadata are *intended* for use in describing individual photos to consumers of images (e.g news publishers) who receive them *already* tagged from owners/creators/licensers of images (e.g. photographers, wire services, etc). and not intended for organizing/searching archives of images (though used, to some degree, for that). Certainly some photographers will use Lightroom to apply IPTC descriptive fields, but in Lightroom, IPTC metadata location fields have limits and problems when used for searching/organizing:
1) If not done via Import, it seems you have to manually type in each of those IPTC fields after selecting the images to which to apply the metadata values. LR does not seem to allow drag/drop between selected images and Metadata panel items. Unlike IPTC location metadata, user-defined keyword hierarchies for automatically assign implied parent category tags, e.g. putting an image in "New York City" in a keyword hierarchy automatically puts in NY, US, and North America if you set up your own state, country, continent tags. For assigning metatadata for location and other purposes at the same time, this can be tedious when all the pics are not all the same subjects taken at the same place, same date & time, etc. Not all LR users are PJs who shoot an assignment and upload only that assignment's new images at one time. Many new users or LR will assign metadata to thousands of old images that may not share much metadata at all. Being unable to drag and drop IPTC metadata can make IPTC fields tedious to use.
2) IPTC location metadata does not have fields for every possible type of location tag that users might want to use in a geographical hierarchy, such as Continent, County/Parish, District, Subdivision, etc. For example, if organizing images for a real estate multiple listing service, the IPTC data is inadequate.
3) No canonical definition, spelling, or form of the IPTC fields are enforced by Lightroom. You can put free-form text into IPTC fields including misspellings, and thus hurt your ability search (remember, IPTC metadata is descriptive, not intended for organizing/searching). Once you define your own tags in a keyword hierarchy, you don't have to worry about definition, format or spelling; you just assign from the list of pre-defined tags by drag/drop.
Bottom line: Hierarchical taxonomies are very powerful for describing and searching archives, but descriptive IPTC metatdata does not have the most important features of hierarchical taxonomies for organizing and searching. Lightroom's user-defined keyword tags provide those most of those important features, though still weak in a few areas.

Export keywords hierarchy

I would like to export the whole keyword hierarchy for the photos I export but I can't find a way to do it.
For example, if I have
a
--b
-----c
d
e
f
--g
-----h
and a photo keyworded with b, e and h I would like the exported image to have the keywords:
a, b, e, f, g, h
I can do this with FlickrExport but I can't figure out how to do it using the standard "version export".
Does anyone know how it can be done?

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

Export Resized Photos as New Catalog with Keyword Hierarchy

I want a new catalog with small jpgs and the hierarchical keywords. But I seem to be able to get each part of that individually but I can't seem to get them all at the same time.
If I select images and export them with "Write Keywords as Lightroom Hierarchy" checked, then import those new jpgs into a new catalog, my keywords are a flat list without the hierarchy. I tried exporting my keyword hierarchy as *.txt then importing it into an empty catalog so the hierarchy already existed. When I imported the new jpgs into that catalog, the keywords still came in as a flat list appended to the hierarchical keyword list.
I tried selecting the images and importing as a new catalog, which gives me a new catalog, but the new catalog has the original raw images.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for any help with this.

Thanks, I thought I might be missing something. I had thought of doing what you suggested, but was worried about the potential for messing up my "real" catalog. If this is the only option, I think I'll just live with the flat keyword list for this project.
To answer your question about why I want to do this: I am exporting photos that I'm putting into a ZenPhoto gallery on my website. I'm resizing the images for the web, and I don't want the resized jpgs in my main catalog. The web jpgs will have something in the Rights Usage IPTC data that I don't want in my main catalog, so I wanted the web jpgs in a catalog to change the IPTC data, although I could do that in Bridge.

Keyword hierarchy, nesting, and labels

I have keyword hierarchies set up. I utilize the drag and drop method of keywording.
Is there a way to tell Lightroom to keyword the nested(above) keywords to the photo I am keywording?
In other words:
I have an 'adirondaks' keyword. this is nested below 'places' 'united states' 'new york'. If I drag and drop the photos onto adirondaks, then only that keyword shows up, and not the places, united states, new york, also.
There has to be a way to do this... right?

Given your example, let's suppose the following keyword hierarchy:
Places
---United States
-----New York
--------Adirondaks
-----California
--------San Diego
--------San Francisco
Only the bottom keywords of a keyword hierarchy should be used to tag a photo. From the above example, that would be 'Adirondaks', 'San Diego' or 'San Francisco'. The higher level keywords will not show in the keyword tags of the photos but will be inherited for searching. You could therefore filter on New York and it will bring you all the pictures of the Adirondaks, or filter on Californa and all photos tagged with San Diego and San Francisco will be in the selection. Finally, if you filter on United States, you will see all photos tagged with the bottom keywords of all sub hierarchy under United States, in this case Adirondaks, San Diego and San Francisco.
If you export a photo tagged with the Adirondaks keyword, all keywords in the hierarchy will also be included in the export as long as each keyword in the hierarchy have the "Include on export" option checked.
Hope this helps!

Problem with Keyword Hierarchy Export

Hello All,
I've noticing an issue with keyword export in Lightroom 4.0 64 bit Mac OS. In 4.0, as compared to 3.6, when I select uncheck the "Include on Export" box of a parent keyword not only is that keyword removed from the exported keywords but all parents keywords above it in the heirarchy. For example if my keyword hierarchy is as follows:
Animals
     Vertebrates
          Reptiles
               Turtles
                    Black River Turtle
In Lightroom 3.6 if I was to unckeck the "Include on Export" box of Vertebrates the exported keywords would include:
Animals, Reptiles, Turtles, Black River Turtle
While if I was to do the same the keywords would be:
Reptiles, Turtles, Black River Turtle
Has anyone else exprianced this problem or does anyone know how to return the export behaviour to that of 3.6.
Thanks

According to this (See B. Warde's response in the thread) http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/keyword_options_no_longer_available_ in_lr4 this was a behavior that was incorrect in 3.6 that has now been fixed.

Exporting picture with only the bottom of a keyword hierarchy

Hi,
I am exporting my pictures to be shown in a wordpress blog. I set up wordpress in a way to use the meta data. I have a hierarchy for people "People > private > Paul". What I get now in wordpress is the flattened hierarchy. What I want to see is "Paul". Is it possible to achive this somehow? The checkboxes do not seem to do the trick.
Thanks!

If you only want the bottom (last) keyword to be exported you'll have to setup the keywords higher up the hierarchy as non exportable. Right click the containing keyword and choose Edit Keyword from context menu.
Also, make sure that the Export window option to write the Lightroom keyword hierarchy is unchecked.

Export more verbose keyword hierarchy

Today when you export the keyword hierarchy (Lightroom 1.0) only the names of the keywords are exported (tab-delimited). I'd like to also include the other information, such as if the keyword is exported and its synonyms etc.

Including synonyms (maybe another tab and then a list) would make it much easier to edit.
I have a problem (could be pilot error...) that when I export a keyword set and edit it to create hierarchies that when I import the new list, it has a) not replaced the prior list (should have an option) and b) that moved keywords loose the associate to all of the photos they had.
It seems that the only effective way to build hierarchies is drag and drop of keywords which is slower than the external editor approach.
Patrick

Include all keyword hierarchy in version export metadata?

I've spent a lot of time rebuilding my Aperture 3 Library with a new workflow that includes extensive use of keywords. To simplify I have taken advantage of the keyword hierarchy that Aperture offers.
For example; an image with the keyword "Times Square" inherits "Manhattan", "New York City", "New York", "United States of America"
However, when I export my version of the image the EXIF metadata only contains "Times Square" and does not include the parent keywords. Almost the entirety of work I have done in building my keyword hierarchy is useless outside of Aperture - for example in posting to Flickr.
Is there any method of ensuring that all the inherited keywords are included in the version metadata?

Is there any method of ensuring that all the inherited keywords are included in the version metadata?
No luck - that is driving me crazy too. It is particularly annoying, if you export and reimport; then you have all of a sudden duplicate keywords:
Your old "Times Square" as subkeyword of "Manhattan" and another "Times Square" at the top level. And all smart albums using the keyword "Times Square" do no longer work!
You could try to rename the keywords to include the inherited part: Times Square-Manhattan-NewYork ....
A better handling of hierarchical keywords is my fondest wish for Aperture 4
Regards
Léonie

Keyword hierarchy confusion???

I'm getting very confused with regards to how a keyword hierarchy behaves on export.
For example, let's say I have the following hierarchy;
People
            ^Family
                       ^Joe Bloggs
If I tag a photo with 'Joe Bloggs', I would expect keywords 'people', 'family' and Joe Bloggs to be exported, correct?
Now, for the confusion...
In the keyword options for 'people', I have 'export containing keywords' checked. Does this mean that all photos with the keyword tag 'people' will also have keywords 'family' and 'Joe Bloggs' added to them???
I have tested this, and it doesn't seem to be the case. So what is the purpose of 'export containing keywords'???
Any help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Martin

I'm getting very confused with regards to how a keyword hierarchy behaves on export.
For example, let's say I have the following hierarchy;
People
            ^Family
                       ^Joe Bloggs
If I tag a photo with 'Joe Bloggs', I would expect keywords 'people', 'family' and Joe Bloggs to be exported, correct?
Only if that's what you want. If you set up the keywords so Joe Bloggs has "Export Containing Keywords" checked, and Family has "Export Containing Keywords" checked, then the export has them all. But you can set it up other ways, so in other setups only Joe Bloggs gets exported.
In the keyword options for 'people', I have 'export containing keywords' checked. Does this mean that all photos with the keyword tag 'people' will also have keywords 'family' and 'Joe Bloggs' added to them?
This makes no sense to assign "Joe Bloggs" to any photo that has a "People" keyword, and in fact this will not happen. There's no set of options that would cause this to happen.
So what is the purpose of 'export containing keywords'???
To enable you to control what keywords get exported, and what keywords do not get exported.

Writing full keyword hierarchy to masters

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