In a previous post, we learned how to start keywording from scratch, but many Lightroom users have already added a few keywords, so this week, we’ll do some cleanup. This is mostly aimed at Lightroom Classic, where the keywords are held locally and can be in a hierarchical structure, but some keywording is also possible using the Lightroom (cloud-based) version.
Lightroom (cloud-based):
How do you delete a keyword from one or many photos? Simple, just select the photo(s) in Grid view and click on the keyword. It will show as struck through and will turn red. There’s no way to rename a keyword currently, but you could use the filters to select all the photos with the keyword, add the correct keyword to all of the photos then delete the incorrect keyword.
Here are some other things you can do with the Desktop version of Lightroom (cloud-based) with keywords:
Lightroom Classic: How do I edit an existing keyword?
If you want to edit a keyword, perhaps to correct the spelling, simply right-click on the keyword in the Keyword List panel and select Edit Keyword Tag. When you rename a keyword, it’s automatically updated on all of the tagged photos too.
Lightroom Classic: How do I delete a keyword from a single photo or from all photos?
If you add a keyword to a photo by mistake, you can remove it using either the Keywording or Keyword List panel. With the photo(s) selected, select the keyword in the Keywording panel and press Delete/Backspace to delete the keyword, or remove the checkmark against the keyword in the Keyword List panel.
To delete the keyword from the keyword list as well as any tagged photos, select it and click the – button at the top of the Keyword List panel, or right-click and select Delete.
Lightroom Classic: How do I create or change the keyword hierarchy?
By default, new keywords are added as a flat list, but in Lightroom Classic, you can drag and drop them into a hierarchy of nested keywords. This is particularly useful if you have a large number of keywords on Windows, as too many in a flat list may hit a Windows limitation that prevents some from being displayed.
As you drag a keyword onto another keyword, that new parent keyword is highlighted. When you release the mouse, the keyword moves inside the new parent keyword, just as you would drag folders onto other folders to make them into subfolders.
If you want to do the opposite and change a child keyword into a top-level keyword, drag and drop the keyword between existing top-level level keywords instead. As you drag, a thin blue line appears. Don’t worry about dropping it in the right place in the list, as the Keyword List is automatically set to alpha-numeric sort.
If you’re building your keyword hierarchy for the first time, and want to add a series of child keywords inside the same parent, select Put New Keywords Inside this Keyword from the right-click menu. Any new keywords are then added to that keyword as child keywords, unless you specifically choose otherwise. The keyword is marked with a small dot next to the keyword name to remind you. To go back to adding new keywords at root level, right-click and uncheck the same command.
Lightroom Classic: How do I merge duplicate keywords?
At some stage, you’re sure to end up with duplicate keywords. Perhaps, before you decided on consistent capitalization, you added dog to some photos and dogs to others. Or perhaps you edited photos in another program and the photo came back into your catalog with new flat keywords. Merging them isn’t as easy as it should be, but it is possible:
- In the Keyword List, click the arrow to the right of the “wrong” keyword to show the photos tagged with that keyword.
- Select all of the resulting photos in the Grid view and drag them onto the “right” keyword, or check the checkbox next to the “right” keyword. This assigns the “right” keyword to the photos.
- Finally, go back and delete the “wrong” keyword.
Over the last 4 weeks, we’ve only skimmed the surface of keywording in Lightroom. We’ve discussed the kind of keywords you might add, whether to use flat or hierarchical keywords, and the basics of getting started with adding keywords to your photos. For more detailed information for keywording, see the Keywording sections of our Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ or Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro books, depending on which Lightroom version you’re using.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 10 April 2017, updated for current Lightroom versions, May 2020.
I set up a really nice keyword hierarchy in light room based on your instructions. I did want to mention that one thing I found out after I had set it up and exported a bunch of photos to apple photos, is that the keyword hierarchy does not export correctly. All of my exported photos have only the top level keyword (for example “who “) which really is no use. Because my Workflow involves exporting all of my photos to apple photos, and I don’t want to lose my keywording there, I can’t find a way to make the keyboard hierarchy work well for me. Do you know of any workarounds?
When Lightroom exports the photos, it includes both the keyword hierarchy (which only a few programs can understand) and also the standard flat keywords that other software should understand with no issue. If you go to the Keywording panel and set the pop-up to “Will Export”, does it show the individual keywords? If so, it sounds like Photos is mangling them.
Hi. Thanks for the response! I’m not sure and I already reverted my keywords back to the old structure without the hierarchy so I can’t check easily… At some point maybe I’ll add a level and test it. (I’ll send an update if I do.)
To clarify: I had my keyword hierarchy setup with WHO and WHAT at the top level. I checked the option to export keywords. When I exported and then imported to Photos, only the WHO and WHAT are coming through, not the words underneath that (like ‘Daddy’ and ‘boating’). Will update later if I get to test it out again.
I was disappointed not to be able to use the hierarchy. It felt really clean and well organized.
Sometimes when I add a new Keyword to a Hierarch, I see it in the KEYWORDING BOX showing the complete Heirarchy for Example USA>NY>NYC>MANHATTAN>EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. If I only want “EMPIRE STATE BUILDING” to appear, how does one accomplis that, I assume it has omething to do with the EXPORT CONTAINING KEYWORDS check box, evn though I may not be Exporting?
That sounds like Empire State Building is in the keyword list twice, so it’s having to specify which one you mean. Try using the Search field at the top of the Keyword List panel to decide which of the keywords you want to keep.
Drag and drop not that easy to use in my experience. You can move a few existing keywords to nest with your chosen higher level one then it goes pear shaped with all the keywords above the one selected being highlighted. I’ve got a lot of work to do to get my keywords into a more use able form which the hierarchy approach gives.
One thing I have found very useful is you can cut and paste keywords into Lightroom from Word – very useful if you need to use Norse, Greek, German or other languages with more letters/sybols than the standard keyboard.
That sounds odd Steve. What goes pear shaped about the higher ones? It sounds a bit buggy, so you might want to report it at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new/add_details?topic%5B
I have a v large flat keyword list which I’ve started to convert to a hierarchical structure. Example from a just a short while ago – I wanted to move street name with 6 images associated with it to nest with the town concerned. Clicked on the street and attempted to drag it up the list to the town – nothing happened then the keywords up the list from the street named became highlighted. That’s what happens more times than not. On a good day, I can get 3 or 4 keywords moved to nest with their selected higher level keyword. It’s very frustrating. I raised it on the LR Forum and got no help as to how to solve it. You will find it quite easily as I don’t use a nom de plume so to speak
I’ve found your question on the help forum, but I can’t find your bug report on the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new/add_details?topic%5B where it’ll actually get in front of the engineers. It does sound very frustrating, but it’s not something I can tell you how to fix, unfortunately, because it doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything wrong. If you can record a video of it happening, and add that to the bug report, that should get it a bit more attention from the engineers.
Didn’t know about how to get this in front of LR’s engineers until you posted the link. I’ll be doing something about it shortly with some screen shots (if I can work out how to do it).
Thanks
You’re welcome. There’s some extra tips on how to write a great bug report here: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Bug report now done. Nice if it could be sorted – and have asked if a better way of doing through the edit dialogue box could be included (and for perpetual license users like me) as a wider improvement.
Thanks again
This method works fine if you have a few dozen keywords, but how do we tidy up a few thousand keywords? I have a mostly hierarchy based list, but with a few hundred keywords added as a flat list when I’ve been rushing jobs. Meaning I have a rather cumbersome list now.
It’ll still be a drag-drop job I’m afraid Reuben. One thing that can help is dropping all of the flat ones into a “sort me” keyword or some other temporary grouping, so you can keep the other keywords collapsed while you work. It makes the list a bit shorter, so easier to scroll.
That’s what I feared! But that’s a brilliant idea regarding a “Sort Me” keyword, which I’ve now added! Thanks!
If you right-click on your Sort Me keyword and choose Put New Keywords Inside This Keyword, any new flat ones will automatically get dropped in there in future.
For others reading this;
I’ve done that and also unticked the “Export This Keyword” checkbox, so I can happily add child keywords to this parent, but not have the parent export to lots of random photos.
Creating and editing tab-indented hierarchical keyword lists can be done with a simple text editor, but when it comes to sorting, visualizing, error-checking, splitting, converting, and exporting, a more specialized toolkit is required. After some months of work, it’s now available here:
http://www.photo-keywords.com/tab-list-tools.php
Congratulations Tim, thanks for sharing!
That program is for Windows users only. There is no macOS version.
I’ve lost three photos when trying to revise keywords. Thought I was doing it correctly. I’ve found two of them, one in smart collection, another moved to a different keyword set. The existing keywords for each photo disappear, then the photo itself.
Using Windows 8.1 on Gateway computer (yes, I know it’s a cheapie). LR CC/Classic; otherwise happy with it, despite its complexity and my slow learning.
I’m not quite following your steps here carterike. Can you explain a bit more? It sounds like you have a smart collection selected at the time, so when you remove the keywords, the photo no longer meets the smart collection criteria so it disappears.
This is super helpful for cleaning up Lightroom keywords- thank you! I sometimes wonder what I was thinking when I go back to old catalogs! 🙂
Hi there, I remember that one used to be able to remove Keywords with Zero images, without having to go through each one. Is that feature still available, please? Thank you. Kindest regards J
Yes, Metadata > Purge Unused Keywords. Any not used (zero count) will be deleted.
Hello,
Having keyword issues with Lightroom 6. What does ” <+ Mentions" mean? "Mentions" is a keyword group I created. Most of my keywords do not exhibit this "< +Mentions", but some do. Why?
If you have a Keyword with the < sign, it means the Keyword is nested within another Keyword, but also exists as a Keyword in it's own right. For example, if you have the Keyword 'dog' twice, once under a higher keyword of 'Animals' then apply both keywords to a photo, one will show as 'dog' and the second as 'Animals < dog'.
Is there a free text editor for Mac where you can load the keyword export file and edit to add names, etc and fix the Hierarchy? It needs to be able to save as a UTF-8 file and shown hidden characters.
BBEdit is my text editor of choice, it has a free mode.
How do i delete a parent keyword without deleting all the attached child keywords, many of my images are showing the parent keyword as a keyword in various images, in collection and folder, want to remove this parent keyword from all the photos, but if i select delete of this parent keyword it says it will deleete all child keywords also, may there is a way to convert a perent keyword to a child one help please
Hi: I have found a work-around for this type of situation. First, I would rename the child keyword that you want to retain by adding another symbol; i.e. Cat would the changed to Cat1. Then, create a Cat keyword outside of the previous Parent Keyword location. This should result in a Cat keyword residing in the location with ‘no’ actual images being associated with it.
Then, go back to the Cat1 keyword and click the arrow to the right of the Cat1 to perform a search of images. This should display all the images that have the changed keyword, Cat1. You will also see that within your Cat1 keyword tree, there is a ‘check-mark’ associated with them.
Now, find the new Cat keyword in the keyword ‘tree’ that you created and place a ‘check-mark’ in this location. This will assign the new Cat keyword to the same images that also have the Cat1 keyword already assigned.
Finally, with the same image selected go back to the location on the key-word tree that displays the Cat1 keyword and remove the ‘check-mark’. This effectively removes the ‘Cat1’ keyword and should leave you with 0 images with Cat1 associated with it. At this point, right click the Cat1 keyword to delete it. You are now done.
Here is a great reference link by You Tube creator Wayne Fox. It is very helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bte9pxjfWZ8
I hope this helps!
I have been having the exact same issue as Steve Chasey above, posted
MAY 5, 2017 AT 9:34 AM
However, with the new LR classic 12 version I can’t even move one keyword onto another without the entire list above getting highlighted.
Have you tried the standard troubleshooting steps? https://www.lightroomqueen.com/standard-lightroom-troubleshooting-steps/