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Building Keyword Lists Outside of Lightroom
Level 3 is contained within Level 2 which is contained within Level 1. The same kind of structure is shown for Level C, Level B, and Level A. The small triangles to the left of these keywords indicates that these levels are collapsible.
When collapsed your keyword list is easier to scroll through and manage.
While Lightroom gives you this organizational structure, the interface is not the best to work in as you build more complicated keyword lists. If, like me, you need more room to organize your thoughts you can turn to other programs to build keyword lists that Lightroom can use. Another advantage to external keyword list files is the ability to easily import them into new catalogs as needed.
The most basic application you can use to build your keyword lists is a text editor. Here is an example of a basic text file of keywords.
Each level in the keyword hierarchy is indicated by a TAB character. So colors is our first level keyword. [warm tones] and [cool tones] are preceded by one TAB character and are second level keywords under colors. The keywords red and orange are preceded by two TAB characters making them third level keywords under [warm tones]. So the structure is visually apparent when you look at the text file. (We'll talk later about what the square brackets mean in relation to keywords.)
Depending on your text editor you may or may not be able to show the TAB characters.
Being able to see the TAB characters can be helpful.
If you have a spreadsheet program like Excel then you can use that to build your keyword lists. Spreadsheets can be easier to use since the row and column layout can be more intuitive and help prevent you from accidentally deleting a TAB character (and promoting a keyword up a level unintentionally).
I find spreadsheets easier to manipulate when adding rows or columns. These programs usually have more powerful search and replace features and better spell checking.
Now that we've built our list we can bring it into Lightroom. Under the Metadata menu in the Library module, choose Import Keywords...
Then find your file in the Finder (Mac) or Explorer (Windows) dialog. Now your keywords are in your catalog ready to be used!
Easy! If you later edit your list in the external program you can reimport the file and Lightroom's keyword list will be updated.
So what about those square brackets we added around cool tones and warm tones? The square brackets tell Lightroom that the keyword they surround is a category. For example, if we tag a photo with the keyword blue our list looks like this.
When we export this image the file will contain the keywords colors and blue but not the category cool tones.
If you decide to include the categories as keywords then you can check the option Write Keywords as Lightroom Hierarchy when you export.
Now the file contains both the keywords and the categories.
The possibilities are many. Keywords are powerful and essential tools. As your collection of images grows over time you will be very happy that you added keywords as you went along. Just imagine trying to find an image of a red bird in a pine tree among 10,000 image files without keywords!
Thanks for this. Ill have to try and see if I can export the keywords I have at the moment and tidy them up.
Tell me do you know where to get some keywords lists to get us started? Id be very interested in how others do it and try and get mine up to scratch.
Scott
That's a wonderful tip!
Nice write up but it doesn't carry a key warning. After you work on your keyword list outside of LR and then re-import it back into the same catalog, LR doesn't change your original list, it just adds a complete new set of keywords to your original list.
If you can anticipate all of your keyword needs at the beginning of using your catalog, this method is very useful, however, if you find your keyword list growing, you will be frustrated by the import process and decide the only way to work with managing keyword lists right now is to do it inside of LR.
I export my keyword list so i can see how it is managed and go back into LR to edit the existing list.
Great stuff!
Another element on this tip is that you can include any synonyms for a keyword by moving to the right one more column and adding a synonym to a new row. You also have to put the synonym in {} brackets.
For example:
colors
[warm tones]
red
{ochre}
{rouge}
Then when you import this into LR, those terms in the {} appear in the synonyms field in the Edit Keywords dialogue box.
Thanks
Beau
A few other little items:
1) You can use this to sync your keywords between Lightroom and Bridge too. In bridge, go to the Keywords tab, click on the little drop down in the upper right corner of the tab and select Clear and Import... This will bring in your keyword list (just not the synonyms, which are only in LR).
2) If you save this as a spreadsheet, you will need to save it again as a tab delimited text file to do the imports again.
Beau
Thanks Scott. Surprisingly there aren't very many lists floating around out there. On place I'd recommend for a really in depth discussion of keywording theory is http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/. They also have a very extensive keyword list product for sale that works with Lightroom.
Thanks Beau! You're correct on the synonyms formatting. Synonyms are a topic I plan on examining in a future post. There's some hidden power there!
Thanks Steve. I guess it can be both a blessing and a curse the way the import function handles keywords. I've found it a good method in that any keywords I add get folded in where they belong on the next import. But you are right in that full management is really best done in Lightroom. Sometimes it can be useful to export, purge the list, work on it and the re-import. Thereby always having a "master list" at the ready.
@Gene
You are correct that export then purge, work on it, and then re-import gets you a clean list but it causes a different problem. When you re-import, none of your images are keyworded. LR will not magically find the keywords on the new list, you have to go in and re-keyword. So this is another reason to print the keyword list but only work on it inside of LR.
Steve Spiegel has pointed out what I consider to be a major flaw in the proposed tip (re-importing either creates a whole new keyword structure or removes all keywords). I'd appreciate it highly if the author of the tip answered this and, maybe, offered a work-around or an alternative solution.
Maybe Lr ought to be modified to adapt an existing keyword structure using an imported one (het, I didn't say this would be easy).
Cheers.
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Jepomat,
Yes, there are issues involved when editing your keywords outside of LR. However, the tip is geared more towards developing a standard list or a controlled vocabulary that can easily be added to a new catalog. For any catalog that has been worked on extensively it should be done inside of LR.
You can make feature requests at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
--Gene