Find and synonyms

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Steve Crane

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It seems logical to me that Find, for keywords and anywhere, would look not only at keywords but at their synonyms too. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case. Perhaps this is an option but I don't see anything in the preferences.

For example, I have created a keyword lonely with synonyms alone,solitary. Entering alone in find does not reveal the images with this keyword. It would be nice if it did, but it seems that synonyms are only intended for adding keywords into metadata of exported images.

Thinking about this I thought of a feature that I would find beneficial as it would help me with my keywording strategy, greatly reducing the amount of manual keyword maintenance needed. It would work as follows.

The keyword editing dialog would have an option titled Expand synonyms. When checked this would cause each synonym to be created, if not already there, as a keyword, under the same parent as the keyword it is a synonym for. This keyword would then have the original keyword and it's other synonyms, as synonyms. Keywords created in this manner should have the synonym expansion option checked and be linked so that adding one to an image automatically adds all the linked keywords. Using the example above, the creation of keyword lonely with synonyms alone,solitary and with synonym expansion enabled should result in the following being created.Format is keyword {synonyms}.
alone {lonely,solitary}
lonely {alone,solitary}
solitary {alone,lonely}
Deleting a keyword that is an expanded synonym should warn the user presenting the following options.
  1. Remove keyword from synonyms of all linked keywords.
  2. Convert all linked keywords to static, unlinked keywords and delete only this keyword, leaving at as a synonym of previously linked keywords.
Renaming a dynamic (i.e. linked) keyword will rename the corresponding synonyms in linked keywords.

The keyword list should have an indicator that shows that a keyword is a dynamic keyword.

Does this sound like a useful feature to others? Are there any problems I may have overlooked with the feature working as described above? I would appreciate your comments on this so I can provide a complete user specification when requesting the feature.
 
Steve, I definitely agree with your first point. I get annoyed that the synonyms only get used to expand the list of keywords on export. I wish they were used in the find so you could get everything together. On your second point though, I am not sure I follow the utility here since you would essentially be adding the same keywords to the system many times over.
 
Yes, it would allow keywords to be added multiple times, but only once per parent, as is already possible. If find could look within synonyms then that would probably be enough. The scheme I describe would additionally allow keywords that are currently just synonyms to be browsed via the keyword browser. If finding within synonyms was available I could certainly live without the additional stuff.
 
I see. Well that makes sense. Sounds to me like they just need to make keywording stronger, such as creating smart collections, etc.
 
Keywords are the only thing in a 'Smart Collection' or Group in LR. You apply a Keyword to an image and it instantly shows in the 'Collection' under that Keyword in teh Keyword list. Nothing else (Except other specific Metadata) collects or groups like that in Lightroom.

An LR version of Bridge Smart Collections with more than one criteria and kind of criteria listed at a time would be great.

I personally have asked for them since at least Beta 2 nearly 2 years ago!

Don
 
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