Cano someone explain keyword hierarchies

[dkperez]

OK, here's another one where I seem to be having a problem getting a useful answer over at Adobe

I have LR set to show "keywords and containing keywords", but it still doesn't show the whole hierarchy.

In location I have a bunch of spots in Yellowstone in Wyoming in the USA...

location
....usa
.......wyoming
............yellowstone
..................old faithful
..................lamarr valley
..................morraine park
..................sprague lake

SO, if I have an image of an elk in the lamarr valley, how should the keywords show up? I thought it should show up in the keyword pane as

lamarr valley>yellowstone>wyoming>usa>location

and none of the parents should show up anywhere else in the keyword list since they're strictly part of this specific hierarchy... So, how does LR think it should work? On my system, right now, it looks like this instead:

lamarr valley, location, wyoming, yellowstone

and its very difficult to identify the hierarchy from the keyword list.

HOW, do I get Lightroom to show this information in the keyword lie, linked rather than as an alphabetical jumble? I know I can scroll through hundreds of keywords in the left pane and see the hierarchy, but that seems unnecessarily crude when I'm looking at images.

If there's some online tutorial or article that fully explains working with keywords to get functional, visible hierarchies, feel free to point me there...

 

[Brad Snyder]

David,

There's some helpful info here, at David Rieck's Controlled Vocabulary site.

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/help/cvkc-lightroom.html

Two things:

1) to see the information you're asking about in the Right hand keyword panel, at the top of the RH Keyword panel, on the drop down list beside "Keyword Tags", select "Will Export", that will show you what will be written to metadata.

2) What gets written to metadata, depends on the export settings of each parent keyword, (e.g. you wouldn't want to export keyword "location", but you do want to maintain it as an organizing heading. Secondly, there are two choices for writing keyword hierarchy, which impacts compatability with Bridge and other metadata aware applications. This is explained well in the above reference.

hope I'm answering the right question ........

 

[Brad Snyder]

Yes, you're correct, but since it shows the exported parents, I thought that might help establish which branch of the hierarchy we were referencing. (Which is where I thought we were trying to get to.

I've also responded to OP's very similar question, in another thread which may come closer to what he's looking for. ( I think, but maybe not.)

 

[dkperez]

I think its me being confused and asking the questions wrong, not you guys..... I sometimes struggle with the idea that it appears the people that designed and built Lightroom seem never to have seen Bridge - or at least refused to incorporate some things that work well there. So, frequently my questions wind up being "I do this, this way, in Bridge. How do I do the same thing in Lightroom?"....

I think in this case my problem is - I understand the hierarchy is shown in the left panel - I JUST DON'T LIKE IT! It means when I'm looking at an image I have to scroll through a long list of keywords to figure out what's assigned and how... I have a box in the right panel that SAYS it shows "Keywords and containing Keywords" So I want this box to SHOW the assigned keywords and their containing keywords... As it is, it appears to randomly select zero to "n" entries to show as a hierarchy, and the rest are just an alphabetical jumble of terms. Even though the entries that are part of the jumble are part of hierarchies.

For example, an image of bear cubs in a tree has assigned keywords that look like this in the keywording window:

bear, black, creator, cub, david, location, mammal, minnesota, shute bear refuge, Unrated > iview label, USA, wildlife

when I'd expect it to look like

cub>black>bear>mammal>wildlife
unrated>iview label
david>creator
shute bear refuge>minnesota>USA>location

which is how they're assigned in the left panel... This is what it looks like when the keywords are set to "Keywords and containing keywords" OR to "enter keywords"...

So, HOW does Lightroom decide what to show as hierarchical in the right pane (notice that Unrated>iview label IS a hierarchy) and which hierarchies to ignore? And how do I get LR to show the hierarchies as they actually are assigned in the right pane?

 

[Brad Snyder]

Erm, I don't know.

As far as the Unrated < iView, I believe that means you have multiple instances of "Unrated", and this particular assignment is the one in the iView tree. (You probably already know that) I believe the only keywords shown there as hierarchal, are instances of multiples.

I can tell you that I personally believe that keywording in LR is not even up to what I would call version 1.x status. It's like it's still at beta level.

With Adobe's reputation and background, and competition in the marketplace, I think the design team will be looking to make improvements in future versions. I know I push for it at every chance I get.

A lot of the engineering and forum attention goes to image processing, but its supposed to be a DAM tool as well.

 

[dkperez]

In this case, because I had so much trouble figuring out what hierarchy a given keyword belonged to, I made ALL the keywords unique - for example, I may have a bunch of things happening in 2''5:

2''5>northfield>prca>rodeo>event
2''5>halloween>holiday>event
2''5>christmas>holiday>event

and on and on....... It was so onerous in the keyword window I changed EVERYTHING so now they're things like

2''5 rodeo>northfield>prca>rodeo
halloween 2''5>holiday>event
christmas 2''5>holiday>event

so I can tell in the keyword window what's assigned... It's redundant and gross, but its better than having "2''5" show up there once when I have three entries in different hierarchies that all terminate in 2''5..... BUT, because of this, I can virtually guarantee that "unrated" only exists once in this keyword list. Which is one of the reasons this whole thing is so confusing. It SAYS its going to display keywords and their containing keywords, but? I found a mention in the controlled vocabulary article that seemed to indicate LR will only display one level of hierarchy... In which case, since it doesn't even do that consistently is this just another bug, missing feature, etc that we'll have to wait and hope somebody eventually fixes?

 

[jevidon]

I am a recent convert to Lightroom from Bridge/Iview Media Pro as a primary cataloging tool and the keywording issues I am experiencing are driving me nuts! I don't want Lightroom to assume that the keyword should be listed as "Minneapolis > Cities" and subsequently when browsing the folder in Bridge see "Cities" as a new keyword for that image. And when browsing my photos in Lightroom using the Keywords tool on the left, I would greatly prefer if the term "Minneapolis" would stay part of the main list and not hidden under "Cities".

Judging by the rest of the posts in this thread I am guessing that I am just SOL until the program is further updated, but it really annoys me that I have gone to such trouble properly maintaining my archive with the correct keywords only to have Lightroom go in and fudge it all up.

 

[Bruce J]

I am a recent convert to Lightroom from Bridge/Iview Media Pro as a primary cataloging tool and the keywording issues I am experiencing are driving me nuts! I don't want Lightroom to assume that the keyword should be listed as "Minneapolis > Cities" and subsequently when browsing the folder in Bridge see "Cities" as a new keyword for that image. And when browsing my photos in Lightroom using the Keywords tool on the left, I would greatly prefer if the term "Minneapolis" would stay part of the main list and not hidden under "Cities".

Judging by the rest of the posts in this thread I am guessing that I am just SOL until the program is further updated, but it really annoys me that I have gone to such trouble properly maintaining my archive with the correct keywords only to have Lightroom go in and fudge it all up.

Umm, were you asking for some help with a particular problem, or are you complaining about a bug? If the former, if you could be a bit more specific about what you're trying to do and how it's not working correctly, there are a number of people who monitor this forum who have quite a lot of metadata experience and who might be able to help. It would also be useful if you would create a signature file with information about your system, as you see from looking at other posts here (see the User CP button at upper left).

If your intent was to complain about a bug in LR, I suggest you file a bug report w/ Adobe. Cheers,