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Jun 04 2009

Lightroom Keyword = Maybe

Posted by jeff in Lightroom

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Photo by just.Luc

I was chatting with a friend yesterday about the next version of Lightroom and the things we would like to see included/changed.  During our conversation the topic of keywording came up.  Not whether it needs improving but just how much it is actually used. There is a lot of emphasis on keywording in Lightroom to include setting, adding, importing, exporting, shortcutting, and a bunch of other things that you can do with all those wonderful keywords.  My question is, how much do you use them in your workflow?

Here’s how I use keywords.  When I import images from my camera, I usually just add one keyword that relates to that photo shoot.  I might add two but that’s a rare occasion.  Once the images are imported, the only time I use the keyword is to locate those images.  The problem of multiple keywords on import is that you can’t add different keywords to different images during the import process.  All of the importing images will receive the same keyword so if you want to have more of them that are specific to the individual pictures you have to do it after the import has finished.  I don’t know about you but I just don’t have time to go back and add a bunch of individual keywords, especially since I already know where to find my images.

I’m not saying this is right or wrong, it’s just the way I do things personally.  I would rather spend my time sorting and creating collections than adding words like tree, green, mountain, and snow to a few images that I shot up on Sandia Peak. What I am curious about is whether or not you use keywording and if so, how and why?

A Small Correction -

Monday I told you about the sale going on at Barnes & Noble this month but I made a small mistake when I told you that you can receive 20% off on select Peachpit books.  The truth is that you can get 30% off for the rest of the month.  Here’s a direct link to the sales promotion.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 12:03 am and is filed under Lightroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “Lightroom Keyword = Maybe”
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  1. ramin says:
    June 4, 2009 at 1:26 am

    For me one of the more powerful aspects and compelling reasons of originally beginning to use Lightroom was the ability to use keywords (or metadata in general). Admittedly I’m a metadata junky.

    The power of keywords comes when you shoot many types of things and use keywords well. If you need to find a specific type of picture, it can become much easier and you don’t need to remember the date etc. of when you took the picture.

    For example, I take lots of pictures of dogs being shown in dog shows or working in (hunt) tests etc. One of the keywords stored is the type of activity that is going on, another is the (registered) name of the dog. With this information I can easily find all pictures of a given dog – and if necessary in a given activity.

    Keywords are a very important part of Digital Asset Management and their importance will grow – especially as everyday users begin to use them more.

    Reply
  2. sharon says:
    June 4, 2009 at 5:47 am

    I do use keywording. A lot. It started out as simple enough with the names of family and things like swimming or biking. Now there are tons. I am involved with site like Shutter Sisters where they will have a post about something and then ask for your shots about the same thing. I tend to use the renaming and meta for more general keywords like place and setting.

    Reply
  3. Roger Dallman says:
    June 4, 2009 at 6:03 am

    Jeff,
    Which comes first – the keyword or the search for an image? ;-) I actually grabbed the original Lightroom Beta release BECAUSE of the keyword database. I had been carrying many boxes of 3×5 cards that described all my negatives and slides for 20 years, as I moved all around the world (Army). To me, keywording images is like backing up your files (OK, might be a little hyperbole there…) If you shoot as much as I know you shoot, some day, you’ll really need that particular image and won’t be able to find it. Ten years from now, when you’re son is getting married and your wife wants you to do a pull on just that boy’s pics through the years, they’ll be much easier to find if you have his name as a keyword.
    I use keywording on every image as part of the workflow. Yes, it takes some time. Import; do your picks and rejects; keyword; adjust image as necessary. Since I occasionally get rushed on a shoot, I created a smart collection for photos without keywords. When I’ve got more time, and I’m watching something on the tube, I go back and keyword.
    Roger

    Reply
  4. John says:
    June 4, 2009 at 8:59 am

    I use keywords quite a bit. I have three hierarchies of keywords: location, people and event. By going through and indicating that a picture includes, say, my son, I can then go back later and easily filter for pictures only of him, pictures of my immediate family (parent keyword), or all pictures with people. By adding a location tag, I can filter for “All pictures of my son on our vacation last year”. It’s a lot of work, but I’ve found it to be well worthwhile.

    In order to make it more powerful, I’d love to see Adobe add something similar to iPhoto’s face recognition capability. If it could show a list of thumbnails and say, “It looks like all of these pictures show X person”, or if I could tell Lightroom, “this picture is X, find all the other pictures with this person”, that would be a huge time saver for me.

    Reply
  5. Rich C says:
    June 4, 2009 at 9:11 am

    Jeff,

    I will usually pop between 5 & 10 keywords in when first importing photos from a card. It helps me manage pretty easily with keyword searches. It also reminds me of where and what I was shooting. Fortunately it remembers prior keywords, so it takes no time. When I do something in Sedona I’ll keyword: Arizona, Sedona, red rocks, water, river, Cathedral. If I ever search on red rocks I might get a ton of stuff, but condensing down to the location name always helps me in a big way.

    Reply
  6. Steve Kalman says:
    June 4, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Jeff,

    When I saw the title of this post, I thought you were going to suggest a keyword to use with the pictures that need some “marinating” (from your post a few days ago).

    I like that thought so much, I’m going to add it to my workflow. Like everyone else, I go thru photos in LR and easily identify ones to kill and ones to process, but that leaves a bunch in the middle. Now, I’ll add a “Maybe” keyword and when I’m looking for something to do I can grab them and see if any new techniques I’ve learned or new filters I’ve bought make a few of them jump out as candidates for post processing.

    Thanks,

    Steve

    Reply
  7. Andy Klafter says:
    June 4, 2009 at 11:36 am

    Jeff,

    I agree. Depending on the subject matter, sometimes I will only select those images upon import with a specific keyword. Then, import again and select the other images with another keyword. It’s tedious.

    For example, the last shoot I did was some architectural shots. When it started raining, I drove off to another spot and got some nice shots of ducks on a pond. The problem on import is that I can’t keyword all the photos “ducks” or “architecture.” I would have to go back and erase the inappropriate keywords, i.e. keyword “building” from the duck pics.

    So, I select only the architectural shots and apply appropriate keywords and import. Then I go back and only select the duck pics and give them the keyword “bird, etc. and import them.

    *** I would like the ability to choose keywords associated with the pics on import, i.e. make a selection of all my building pics and chose the keyword “building”. Then, at the same time, select all the bird photos and keyword them “bird.”

    By the way Jeff, do you know if there is a way to check or uncheck multiple photos from the import dialog box. I find I have to check or uncheck each pic individually. I can’t use command click or shift click to select a range of photos.

    Thanks.

    Andy

    Reply
  8. Erez says:
    June 4, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    I use keywords when I import from the card. If I have specific shoot I put the details there, then I can easily create a Smart Collection” using these keywords. You can also refine the collections later very easily. I slowly found out that this is better and easier than creating a manual collection.

    @Andy, when you import, first click “Select None” then mark the prints you want (I select/click the first, then Shift-Click the last, or Control-Click to select individual shots) and then clock the “tick” place holder. This will select the ones that marked. (At least on the Windows version).

    Reply
  9. Gary says:
    June 4, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    I pretty much use keywords in the manner that you do. I generally will import with the location only (state, county, city, park name, what ever is pertinent) of that shoot. I have tried to discipline myself, after I’ve culled my images and settled on the keepers, to go back and fill in additional more specific and meaningful keywords for each image. For me it doesn’t work. It is way too time consuming. I have enough control to find my shots. I’d rather be out making more!

    Reply
  10. JasonP says:
    June 4, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    I rarely put a keyword in on import… by the time I dump a day/card’s worth of photos into LR, it will be a large range of subjects. For instance, on a photowalk through my village, I could have a variety of birds, flowers, parts of architecture (doors, windows, gates, etc). If I have 10 walks through the same area over the course of several weeks/months/years, how would you find that ONE photo of a specific tree covered in ivy with the sunset hitting it just right? Keywords could narrow it down across my entire library in seconds.

    I never used to keyword much, and then only general terms. But lately I’ve become a metadata junky and I tend to keyword at least a few words per photo, using nested keywords when possible so that I get multiple keywords for one entry. Occasionally I work my way back through my collection finding photos that I now have applicable keywords already in my database to apply. It can be a little time consuming but if I don’t try to pick every minute detail I can move through photos pretty quickly.

    In addition to keywords, I also geocode everything utilizing my GPS logger or from Google Earth (both with Jeffrey Friedl’s EXCELLENT LR plugin) Locations (city, state, country) are NEVER used as keywords, that’s what the blocks in the IPTC metadata are for, and using them instead makes the metadata browser filters easy and fast to use. Combined, they all give me multiple ways to find specific photos as it’s unlikely that I’ll forget the time, place AND subject of a photo. If I do, it’s not worth finding!

    Reply
  11. Doug M says:
    June 5, 2009 at 9:23 am

    I do use keywords quite heavily as part of my workflow. Maybe because it seems my most frequent subject seems to gravitate to nature and wildlife, on any given shoot I might shoot anywhere from 10 to 50 different species of wildlife. You are right that keywording at import is almost useless to my style as well other than maybe to add a location keyword. What I do in my workflow is as I’m editing in lightroom to remove the “duds” I will generally have a lot of pictures of a particular species, say Norther Cardinal. Once I’ve eliminated the bad ones, I add the appropriate keywords to the first maybe Birds, Norhtern Cardinal, Red, etc. Then select the set of remaining cardinal pictures and sync metadata so now all 20 cardinal pix are tagged the same. This helps me tremendously in retrieving specific wildlife images later rather than creating collections by species. It really doesn’t add much time to the general edting workflow and saves a ton of time when at some point later I’m looking for images of Whitetail Deer Fawns for example.

    Reply
  12. Sue says:
    June 12, 2009 at 1:03 am

    I submit photos to microstock companies and use the keyword feature all the time. Rarely do I use exactly the same keywords for the photos I submit so I tend to do a lot of cutting, pasting, deleting and adding as I get to each new image. I never keyword on import unless the photos are of family. Then I’m most likely to put the name(s) of those in the photos. I find the keyword feature to be a huge time saver and a great way to find my images when I need them.

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