• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Impossible request: Keyword batch rename

Status
Not open for further replies.

bill.fischer5

Active Member
Premium Classic Member
Premium Cloud Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2021
Messages
196
Location
Somerville, MA. USA
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
10.3
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
This time I think I am asking for the impossible. Is their software or a work around that can easily edit and apply large batches of kew words in LRC.

I have close to 6,000 photos with dogs in them. I use a naming format that tells me that this is a dog. I put _k9 after the dogs name. I go on to identify the owner by adding - then the owner name after the _k9. I now would like the K9 to come first, than the dogs name, then the owners name. The change will group all dogs KW's in the kW list. this will be very helpful if I change to a flat KW structure. Does anyone have a solution?
 
No, keywords aren't suitable for filenaming (what if there is a line of 4 dogs in the photo?) and there are no workarounds. It's just not a good idea to overcomplicate file names.

If you want to include the dog/owner names, first enter them in a field like title or headline which LR's batch rename can use, and use that tool for renaming.
 
John: I am guessing from you comment that you may have thought I was referring to file name for the picture. I am only using the naming system in KW's not the picture file name. I don't think there is a limit to the number of KW's a picture can have. So a picture with 4 dogs will just have 4 KW's.

I take a lot of picture of some of the same dogs at different times. It is easiest for me to choose the dog and the owner at the same time. I also can be reminded that there are 2 or 3 dogs with the same name. when I start typing the dog's name the choices show up clearly for me to choose. (At least the do in apple photos, I will check again in LRC). I am just making the switch. Sometime I pick the dog's name from the kW list on the right panel when I see the correct name and owner. Then I just check the box to add to the selected dog. That is one reason I would like to edit all my dog names at once and move the K9 part of the KW to the beginning of the KW. That will have all the dogs alphabetically separate from humans and other species of pet.

I hear your advice not to make KW's too complicated. Do you think that applies to the way I am using these?

I should do some research on Titles and headlines in LRC. Are their any good tutorials on the subject. This would be useful if I am able to copy KW's to either title or Headline as a batch since I have close to 6,000. That group is made up of well over 200 different dogs.
 
Sorry, Bill, I did misread you. Ignore my previous comments entirely - I'll start over again.

You ask about good tutorials and I would point you to The DAM Book by Peter Krogh and Welcome | Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow | dpBestflow . These focus on good practice in metadata and equip you with basic principles which you can then apply to Lightroom. I only really mentioned titles and headlines because I thought file renaming was the issue, so the only things I would add is that:
  • copying from KWs to another field is hard to control because a photo can have many keywords and keywords can be a jumble.
  • it's easier, technically, to copy to KWs.
  • but copying between any fields is irrelevant to most people unless they have some plugin or script.
I see keywording dogs as an extension of the problem of keywording humans. For example, the dog may change ownership, more than once, and a new owner may change their dog's name or their own, while the same person may own more than one dog of the same name. But humans pull similar tricks to test our keywording, so I think the Dog+Human keyword would work, and my only point of difference would be the separator _k9.

This is where I would advise you not to make KW's too complicated, and would follow up by saying it's a mistake to try to bundle too much information into a single keyword. I understand you are following a convention like DogName _k9 OwnerName where one can read the _k9 as "dog". If that's what you've already done, leave it, and it'll allow you to filter your keyword list to show only dog name keywords (like I filtered the list with - below). I'd probably use a single character like ~ or | and use that same character for horses, cats and other pets. So I wouldn't have HorseName _hh OwnerName with the _hh acting as a pseudo keyword like your _k9. DogName | OwnerName would have been my approach. And I certainly wouldn't paste an emoji into the keyword like this!

emoji.jpg

While I am not a fan of hierarchical keywords, this is an area where pragmatism takes over. So I would not move the K9 (moving those characters will be difficult anyway!) and might go with something like this:
Dog names>
>Charlie _k9 A Beardsworth
>Preston _k9 John Beardsworth

So this lists all the dogs alphabetically, and separates them from other animals, if that is what you want (I'd probably bundle them together under Animal names).

What you want to avoid is overloading a keyword with information that should be recorded in separate keywords. So rather than "a picture with 4 dogs will just have 4 KW's", 4 would be the starting point. While you can certainly make a compound keyword like Preston | Red Setter | John Brown work for you, it's more effort entering and subsequently when you might want to find every Red Setter or anything associated with John Brown. Think in terms of adding one keyword for each aspect of the picture, as if you're describing the image over the phone to someone who knows nothing about it:

Dog
>Breed
>>Red Setter
>Dog phases
>>Puppy
Animal names>
>Preston _k9 John Beardsworth
People
>John Beardsworth
>Manuela
Dog shows
>Loweswater 2019

So this is a picture of a dog, a Red Setter called Preston Beardsworth when he was a puppy, John Beardsworth and Manuela are also shown in the picture, and it's at a dog show. Another picture of the dog on its own would be keyworded like this:

Dog
>Breed
>>Red Setter
>Dog phases
>>Puppy
Animal names>
>Preston _k9 John Beardsworth

Hope that helps - plenty to chew on!
 

Attachments

  • SNAG-0005.jpg
    SNAG-0005.jpg
    33.9 KB · Views: 95
Last edited:
Hi John: thank you for all the time and thought you put into answering my question. This is very helpful.

I do not know the key stroke to make the vertical line symbol you use in DogName | OwnerName. I am curious how the different symbols effect kW searches +, -, _, >, ect.

I know now realize that I can filter on "k9: even if it is in the middle of the KW fraze. So that illuminates my question about moving it to the front of the KW. .

I see that using one character to separate all animal owners from their pets or livestock cuts down on the complexity of KW's. Of course that requires a hierarchy or a complex filter to separate the animals. I will go with the hierarchy you suggested.

It would be nice to replace the "k9". with (that vertical line. I do not know how to type it. it is easy to see.and has a very clean look. The problem still is that I have 197 different dogs already kW'ed with the "K9". that brings back the question is there a way to auto rename and tag all 6000 photos that have these kw's.

Oh did you use a capital i? "I"
 
It's called the pipe, Bill, and on my Mac laptop keyboard it's on the right above the \. As you say, it's clean, I don't use | for anything else unlike regular punctuation characters, and it's not used in LR for anything, unlike + and - which can be used in the Library Filter, or * or % which can cause odd problems too.

There's no easy way to change the keywords automatically. It would need a script or plugin, and I haven't seen one doing it. But I'll have a think...
 
You're in luck - I had a script that could be modified.

It swaps _K9 to | , and it is case-senstive and exact. So it would miss _k9 or just k9, though these would be easy to add.
 

Attachments

  • Change _K9 keywords to pipe |.txt
    2.4 KB · Views: 118
You're in luck - I had a script that could be modified.

It swaps _K9 to | , and it is case-senstive and exact. So it would miss _k9 or just k9, though these would be easy to add.
Whow! THANK YOU JOHN! Knowing about the pipe is game changing for me. As for the script I have never used one. If it is not complicate or tricky let me know how to use it. If it is complicated or highly technical maybe I should not try that. I can either rename the KW's manually or live with K9.
 
I forgot to say that the setup instructions are at the top of the script - you can open it in Text Edit.
 
Ok thank Joun: I will make a new copy of my current catalogue with a different name and try the script. So If it goes wrong I will not mess up my current catalogue. I make lots of mistakes so I need to v=be very cautious. Also this is my first time trying to run a script of any type.
 
Ok thank Joun: I will make a new copy of my current catalogue with a different name and try the script. So If it goes wrong I will not mess up my current catalogue. I make lots of mistakes so I need to v=be very cautious. Also this is my first time trying to run a script of any type.
Perfectly sensible precautions! Have you tried it yet?
 
Perfectly sensible precautions! Have you tried it yet?
Hi John: I have one more question before i try the script. should I create a test catalogue froma backup of my current catalogue? or Should I make a copy of my current catalogue from within Lightroom? Does this make any difference?
 
Neither. Just use Finder to create a copy of your current catalogue while Lightroom is closed.
 
Thank you Hal. That sounds like good advice. the steps I will take are:
1 Turn off sync in my current catalogue, exit with a backup.
2. In finder copy my current catalogue and give it a new name
3. Turn off WiFi so that LR does not try to sync to the test catalogue.
4. the follow the instructions to run the script

Not sure exactly when I will do this I need a long quiet slot of time so I will not be distracted when I attempt this.
 
Alternatively, use the Metadata > Export Keywords command, then create a brand new empty catalogue and use Metadata >Import Keywords to bring the keywords into it. You can then test the script.

This avoids the problem with sync.
 
Alternatively, use the Metadata > Export Keywords command, then create a brand new empty catalogue and use Metadata >Import Keywords to bring the keywords into it. You can then test the script.

This avoids the problem with sync.
Thanks John: That sounds like a good start. I wont be nervous to try it that way. I will see how it works. The one thing it will not tell me is how well the KW's are applied to existing photos that had the old KW.
 
Then just add a few dummy photos to the catalogue, Bill.

The script only changes a keyword's name, not the assignment of that keyword to photos. It is also unencrypted so anyone can open it in a text editor.

John
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top