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Need a 'visually convenient' keywording plugin

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_MZ_

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Mar 17, 2012
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31
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Let me start by stating that keywording photos in LR is a pain in the rear. No one's gonna argue with me on this one. However, my main complaint is that the keywords are just mashed together in a list that's displayed using a tiny font. Typing in each keyword, trying not to misspell, is painful enough on the eyes but how about REMOVING unwanted keywords? Ever tried that?

For many years I've been compiling and editing my keywords OUTSIDE of Lightroom. For keywording a new photo I would open up Notepad, type in (or copy & paste) my keywords and then transfer them to Lr via copy & paste. It's been the only way to get the keywords "in front of me", "black on white", not tucked away in a corner, listed using a tiny font.

I know there are all kinds of "keywording assistants" out there. However, that's not at all what I'm looking for. I can keyword my own photos just fine, without paying someone to trash my keyword list with an extra 150 trivially-relevant words or phrases that no one searches for anyway.

So far I've just been waiting and hoping that Adobe would address this issue. But from what I see, the keywording tools REMAIN largely crippled in the latest version of Lr.

I've done an extensive search on the net, and nope... No one's got a decent keywording plugin. Or maybe I just didn't look hard enough?

Now... I have a whole ton of old photos to go over. For most of them I will need to EDIT the associated keywords. Copying and pasting the list into Notepad and then trying to make a sense of it is (unfortunately) the only way I can do it right now. I am literally looking at 'months of work'.

Basically what I (and many people like me) need is:

The ability to select any photo in the catalog and pull up a dialog box with the list of the keywords that are ALREADY associated with that photo. The font has to be large enough and the keywords should be arranged in the alphabetical order, in a list that runs both horizontally and vertically. Next to each keyword there must be a CHECKBOX, which would allow to conveniently remove any given keyword with a click of a mouse by simply "unchecking" that keyword.
At the bottom of the dialog box there should be a field where new strings can be input (typed in or otherwise). It should work like this: Make the field active, type in a word or a phrase, press Enter, type in another keyword, press Enter.. and so on. The additions to the list must be displayed immediately in the dialog box (in the list with the other keywords).
As a bonus, the dialog box with all the keywords should have a nice preview of the photo that's being keyworded.

I am not describing anything new or unusual. Many of the photo-stock agencies made similar tools available to their contributors YEARS ago.
I am disdained by the blunt lack of attention from Adobe to addressing this extremely important issue.

Enough is enough. I am not editing my keywords the way I've been doing thus far. If there is a Lr plugin - great! If not (probably not), I'll have to think outside the box. What external software can I use to do what I described earlier? I can copy the keywords from Lr, paste them into a new window and work on them in that 'other software'. As long as I have a neat list right in front of me and as long as I can simply "uncheck" anything I don't want - I'm cool. When I'm done I should be able to copy the list and insert it back into Lr, overwriting the (now) old keywords.

So what is out there? I know I'm not the only one who would pay $$$ for a (simple) tool like that, so there's gotta be something.
 
Impressive, except that this tools does not see existing keywords in your keyword hierarchy, so it adds the same keyword again at root level.
 
Yes, this will be fixed in the next release. Keywords will be reused - even if they are at a lower level in the hierarchy.
 
Hi again,

Just wanted to let you all know that this has been fixed in the new release (v1.20), which also allows the following preferences:
  • Placement of new keywords below a special keyword "New keywords" - this makes life a lot easier if you have keywords in a hierarchy.
  • Create new keywords as upper case - a user requested this.
  • Copy-paste field to copy list of keywords to clipboard - another user requested this.
Please visit: MyKeyworder | Find Images and Generate Keywords Instantly to download the latest version.
 
Had a look at MyKeyworder.

It is not clear to me how this might work for removing keywords from images.
For lots of reasons this is an important part of workflow flexibility.

Tony Jay
 
I sent a donation, not via the 'Donate' button but directly through the Donate menu on the website. I did not get a respons so far, so how do I tell the plugin that I donated?
Hi Johan,

Ahh - you need to donate through the plugin to have the donation linked up with your user account. I'll contact you directly on email to sort this out.
 
Last edited:
Had a look at MyKeyworder.

It is not clear to me how this might work for removing keywords from images.
For lots of reasons this is an important part of workflow flexibility.

Tony Jay
Hi Tony,

The plugin will overwrite the existing keywords with those you choose with the plugin. For example, if you have "woods" and "woodlands" and decide to replace those by "forest" you just open the plugin and make sure the keywords you want are in the right list - these will be the final keywords. You can either add "forest" manually or probably find it through "auto identify" or by searching on "forest" which will give you "forest" and about 200 related keywords. Use the > and < to select and deselect the keywords to want to add and remove and finally click "Save keywords to photo".

Hope this answers your question.
 
So, to clarify, I can see any and all keywords already assigned and can delete them at will within this plugin.
It may not have anything to do with replacing one keyword with another.

Tony Jay
 
Yes, you can see the already assigned keywords and remove any of them as you like. You can also add new keywords from search, auto-identify, synonym search or manually added. Words in title and caption will also be placed in the list and you can choose which of these you can assign to the photo.
 
Yes, you can see the already assigned keywords and remove any of them as you like. You can also add new keywords from search, auto-identify, synonym search or manually added. Words in title and caption will also be placed in the list and you can choose which of these you can assign to the photo.
Thanks for the clarification.
This might make certain workflows a bit more efficient and flexible.

Tony Jay
 
I'm not sure how best to use this with hierarchical keywords.

I seemed to see that if I had _Plants>flower>rose it will find rose (wish that would go to top of list since I know I wanna add that for sure) and deal with the implied keywords as expected (_Plants and flower). But what about when I don't remember that _Plants and flower are implied? I can add flower and that will list it in the keyword box in Lr but I still can't tell if it's now part of a hierarchy. If say "crane" is only in one hierarchy, say bird, that's fine, but it gets more confusing if "crane" is also a child of "construction equipment." It will imply bird, but not the equipment (not sure why it didn't at least imply both, although perhaps that's an Lr thing).

Perhaps most importantly, if say "jaguar" is a completely new to me keyword, how can I CREATE a hierarchy, like cars>jaguar? (Cars won't come up searching "jaguar").
 
You can simply create the hierarchy afterwards. Assign 'Jaguar' to some images, then in the keyword list drag & drop it onto 'cars'. The problem may be if you also shot the animal, so you already have 'cats > jaguar'.
 
You can simply create the hierarchy afterwards. Assign 'Jaguar' to some images, then in the keyword list drag & drop it onto 'cars'. The problem may be if you also shot the animal, so you already have 'cats > jaguar'.
True enough. But that means the plugin doesn't save me much work although the suggestions can be nice.

But I'll keep an eye on it. Content searching is the future; I've found some interesting things using that with Google but there's no automatic way to get what Google finds (or Flickr either I think) back into keywords. This gets me some similar things.
 
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