Keyword Hierarchy Help

SloYerRoll

I'm using LR and want to have an acurate comprehension of why the hierarchy is so vital for keywording. THis way I don't have to reinvent the wheel a year after I've been keywording. Not to mention go back and change all my existing keywords.

Either an explanation or links to good resources would be a great help.

Thanks.

-Jon

Duffy Pratt

I don't have lightroom, but I think its keyword structure is basically the same as Bridge or the Elements Organizer.

Basically, the tree structure allows you to search at different levels of generalization. For example suppose you had the structure:

Animals - Dogs - Working Dogs - Spitzs - Malamutes - [Dog Name]

With this structure, any dog named at the bottom level would also carry each of the parent levels. So if you had a Malamute named Kodiak, and you did a search under Working Dogs, or just Animals, Kodiak would pop up. With a flat structure, you would have to apply each of the tags to each photo, and they would not carry these automatic relationships.

Duffy

SloYerRoll

Duffy Pratt wrote:

I don't have lightroom, but I think its keyword structure is basically the same as Bridge or the Elements Organizer.

Basically, the tree structure allows you to search at different levels of generalization. For example suppose you had the structure:

Animals - Dogs - Working Dogs - Spitzs - Malamutes - [Dog Name]

With this structure, any dog named at the bottom level would also carry each of the parent levels. So if you had a Malamute named Kodiak, and you did a search under Working Dogs, or just Animals, Kodiak would pop up. With a flat structure, you would have to apply each of the tags to each photo, and they would not carry these automatic relationships.

Duffy

I assume this hierarchy is just in the order that you enter your KW's (at least for BR + EL). So writing down my KW's on paper and really thinking them out is going to be vital to a solid KW system.

WHat about ppl that shoot allot of diffrent things? I'm not a pro and don't shoot alot of the same thing. DOesn it still make sence to create a KW template for my shots?

WHAt about the ppl that use 50+ KW's for a shot? Are they just going for web visibility? (That's not a bad thing) Looks like it's back to the ol books and drawing boards regardless of your answer...

Thanks for your time.

-Jon

Duffy Pratt

The main purpose of the keywords is to allow you to find pictures quickly when you have thousands of them. So you wouldn't just have keywords to cover the subject.

You might also have keywords covering Place - United States - State - City - Address or Location. Another that does Events - Dog Shows - Type of Show - Particular Show.

You might also want to add words for types of shooting -- Color - BW - Selective Color. Or type of shot -- Portrait - Full Body - Landscape etc...

Then later, you might know that you were looking for a black and white picture of a malamute that you took at a weight pulling trial in Vermont, and the filtering would narrow your shots very quickly.

Duffy

SloYerRoll

Duffy Pratt wrote:

the filtering would narrow your shots very quickly.

Duffy

THanks DUffy,
THis makes perfect sence. I just need to study a bit now that I understand the importance of hierarchy.

All the best,
-Jon

LiquidAir

I take about 10K shots a year and if I don't tag them I won't ever be able to find anything. The Lightroom keywords pane gets very unweildy if you keep everything flat, so I find using a heirarchy to be critical. Often I use the heirarchy just for organization and I set up grouping keywords so they are not exported. As an example, every photo I take of a person gets tagged with who is in it and I group all the names together under a "people" keyword. However, I set up "people" so it doesn't get exported because in the context of JPEG EXIF I find it to be more confusing than useful.

As for places, I use the EXIF location tags rather than kewords for that. I have metadata presets for all the locations I shoot in often and the first thing I do after loading a shoot into Lightroom is fill in the location tags.

SloYerRoll

LiquidAir wrote:

I take about 10K shots a year and if I don't tag them I won't ever be able to find anything. The Lightroom keywords pane gets very unweildy if you keep everything flat, so I find using a heirarchy to be critical. Often I use the heirarchy just for organization and I set up grouping keywords so they are not exported. As an example, every photo I take of a person gets tagged with who is in it and I group all the names together under a "people" keyword. However, I set up "people" so it doesn't get exported because in the context of JPEG EXIF I find it to be more confusing than useful.

As for places, I use the EXIF location tags rather than kewords for that. I have metadata presets for all the locations I shoot in often and the first thing I do after loading a shoot into Lightroom is fill in the location tags.

So do you have any good resources for establishing this type of hierarchy? I'm looking around for a good foundation to set up on to make sure my database is scalable (Last year I took around 10k and I only see those numbers going way up). I'm having a tough time finding anything definitave in regards to setting this up though. I'm going through Martin Evenings LR book now. It makes sense, but I'm missing that 'AHA!' moment to take off w/ this...

-Jon

LiquidAir

SloYerRoll wrote:

So do you have any good resources for establishing this type of hierarchy? I'm looking around for a good foundation to set up on to make sure my database is scalable (Last year I took around 10k and I only see those numbers going way up). I'm having a tough time finding anything definitave in regards to setting this up though. I'm going through Martin Evenings LR book now. It makes sense, but I'm missing that 'AHA!' moment to take off w/ this...

-Jon

It all depends on what you shoot and what you are likely to be searching for. Personally since I am not running a stock photo business, I try to restrict my tags to things I can generate quickly so I don't spend forever tagging my photos.

My main top level tags are:

people > family, friends, clients, etc > Name
flora
fauna
things
elements - used for tagging potential images for composites or backgrounds
color > red, blue, etc. - for pictures witha predominant color
location > indoor, outdoor, studio
timeofday > sunset, sunrise, day, night
style > portrait, candid, landscape, street, etc.
project > project name - for photos which are part of a larger project
portfolio - a simple tag for portfolio class images.

Those are all tags I can generate quickly because often they apply to long sequences of shots so I don't have to tag each photo individually. The harder and more time consuming part is to assign star ratings to each shot so I can quickly narrow to the best shots which match my search.

SloYerRoll

LiquidAir wrote:

It all depends on what you shoot and what you are likely to be searching for. Personally since I am not running a stock photo business, I try to restrict my tags to things I can generate quickly so I don't spend forever tagging my photos.

My main top level tags are:

people > family, friends, clients, etc > Name
flora
fauna
things
elements - used for tagging potential images for composites or backgrounds
color > red, blue, etc. - for pictures witha predominant color
location > indoor, outdoor, studio
timeofday > sunset, sunrise, day, night
style > portrait, candid, landscape, street, etc.
project > project name - for photos which are part of a larger project
portfolio - a simple tag for portfolio class images.

Those are all tags I can generate quickly because often they apply to long sequences of shots so I don't have to tag each photo individually. The harder and more time consuming part is to assign star ratings to each shot so I can quickly narrow to the best shots which match my search.

OK so I understand Parents, children, the general idea behind a good hierarchy. Now onto a stupid question..
How can I be sure I'm entering keywords correctly so it falls into the proper levels?

FOr example I have pictures that I want to keyword w/: camping, friends, outdoors, kayaking.. on and on...
How do I update that keyword data to an image so when I search, it will yield the proper results?
Right now all I see is a KW field that I just enter KW's seperated by commas. I don't see anywhere that shows which level each word is on. If it is in chronalogical order.. Do I need to have a master list for all my KW's on a word doc so I can remember the order I used the KW's last time I updated images?

I know this is simple and I'm probably making muclear power out of an ice cream cone. I still just don't get it though

Once again. All this work takes place in lightroom.

Thanks for your patience and time.

-Jon

LiquidAir

You can drag and drop keywords, so they are easy to move around. I just periodically sweep the top level of my keywords and move them where I want them. Once you have put the keyword in where you want it, Lightroom will always find it there rather than creating a new one. Note that Lighroom uses case insensitive match and all keywords get forced to the case that is in the database. If you want to change the case of a keword, right click on it and rename it.

If you end up with the same keyword in two places in the heirarchy, lightroom will show the path to distingush them. I try to prevent that from happening, but if it does it is easy to fix. Select all pictures with the wrong location in the Library thumbnail view and edit the path for that keword to the proper one.