Importing Filename Words as Keywords in the Metadata when importing photos

[adiscerningeye]

Hello,

Apologies if this question has already been asked. I can’t find the response: Will / Can Lightroom import the filename words for my photos as keywords into the metadata when importing my photos from my hard-drive? And if so, how can I do this?

I am new to Lightroom from iPhoto. Having read various articles on transferring photos from iPhoto I have exported some 7000 photos, all into an electronic file onto my Hard Disk. Following advice, I am classing and renaming the photo files on my hard drive to be able to import them into Lightroom in an orderly fashion. It’s not too difficult because iPhoto has already mostly changed the filenames to the event names as ordered in iPhoto.

I am renaming the picture files with extra information though to improve the organisation even more with what would be the keywords anyway “DATE/EVENT NAME/NAME OF PERSON/S IN THE PHOTO” so it would be good not to have retype these as keywords into the metadata after importation for each photo. Is this automatic and if not is there a way of achieving this? Any other advice is welcomed !

Thanks

 

[tspear]

Look at the iPhoto/Aperture to Lightroom plugin. I am pretty sure this will pull the keywords directly from the iPhoto library and add them in Lr.
Someone will be along to explain this in much more detail.

Tim

 

[adiscerningeye]

Thanks Tim. Everything that I have read suggests not to use the Plug-in because of numerous teething problems and bugs. Also, I would prefer to do it manually because my iPhoto organisation was far from perfect and I have already started to vastly improve it by changing the filenames.

 

[clee01l]

Thanks Tim. Everything that I have read suggests not to use the Plug-in because of numerous teething problems and bugs. Also, I would prefer to do it manually because my iPhoto organisation was far from perfect and I have already started to vastly improve it by changing the filenames.

Welcome to the forum. "Everything you've read" isn't everything. I would say that most people converting iPhoto Libraries do not encounter problems. The Plugin might have had some issues when it was converting to LR5 but the plugin that ships with LR6 is more stable. Most of the issues that I have seen expressed here comes from a lack of understanding on the part of the user as to how the plugin works, how iPhotos works, and how LR structures referenced files, keywords and collections.
You will give yourself fewer headaches if you use the plug-in. If for some reason you totally screw up the conversion via the plugin, you still have a clean catalog file backup and a clean iPhoto Library to start over with the correct plugin set up or even manually.

There are those here (I can do it but I'm probably not the most experienced) that can walk you through the conversion process painlessly.

 

[tspear]

Thanks Tim. Everything that I have read suggests not to use the Plug-in because of numerous teething problems and bugs. Also, I would prefer to do it manually because my iPhoto organisation was far from perfect and I have already started to vastly improve it by changing the filenames.

If you really want to go this way, there is a plugin that can help with it. Basically you add the images to the catalog and then run the plugin. I forget which author has it, but the author is a regular on Lr forums so we can expect someone to chime in.

Tim

 

[rob211]

Filenames are a rather poor place to store info about images. They are far less flexible than keywords, and are tougher to sort and filter in some situations. You could end up doing a LOT of work for nothing. An example is putting people's names in filenames. Lr has a special People keyword category and it's not gonna know anything about your filename names.

There is a script John Beardsworth wrote for copying pathnames to keywords, but that's gonna include all your folder names as well. I've found it useful for certain tasks. But if you wanted to move say the person name in "Mac/Users/You/Pictures/2015-10-09/birthday/Joe Blow Jill Blow Kid Blow" to Persons in a the Lr keyword hierarchy it's gonna be very time consuming. And the script only applies after you've imported. It's in this thread: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/commu...yword-hierarchy&highlight=script+path+keyword

Furthermore, it's redundant. Why enter the same info twice? If Persons>Joe Blow is a keyword, you select 200 images, and with one click on a button all are keyworded. With a filename, you've gotta write it to each filename, and distinguish each by number or other unique identifier. Do yourself a huge favor: import a bunch of photos with their filenames intact, then keyword with the same info within Lr. And you're done. It won't matter what the filenames are; you'll be able to find the images in Spotlight, the Finder, Lr, or anywhere photo metadata is read just as easily.