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Keywords Not Differentiating Properly between Capitalized Words and Non-capitalized Words

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lgphotography

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Oct 18, 2013
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73
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
11.5
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
Back in 2020 I asked about this but that thead is closed. I have never found a solution but did just report this as a bug to Adobe. Hoping some unfortunate souls have also been struggling with this issue and have figured out a new solution.

Lightroom Classic Version Number: 11.5 and earlier
OS Version Number: 12.6 and earlier

I've been having a problem with keywords for the past few years.

I had a dog named Sugar and for years I could keyword photos "Sugar" that would add all the above words in its hierarchy (dog, Weimaraner, etc.). But suddenly one day if I type in "Sugar" with a capital S, even though I see both Sugar AND sugar (with a small S) in the autofill options and select the one with the capital, it will now always place the small S "sugar" in the final keywords box resulting in food being in there too since "sugar" is in the Food hierarchy.

Any one know why this is happening? Any idea on how to fix? The only option I currently have is to go to the Keyword List panel, find "Sugar" and then apply it from there or I can type Sugar<Weimaraner. This also happpens with Circle, Montana and the shape circle, as well as Whitefish, Montana and the fish whitefish.

As I said at some point this worked properly for many years, now it has been broken for many years. Thanks.
 

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Lightroom Classic is not case sensitive. I don't know if that was a choice by Adobe when building it or it is a functon of the SQLite database they use for the catalog. You can enter text with upper and lower case characters but for all intents and purposes thay are treated as the same thing. Therefor, in filters and smart collections Sugar is the same as sugar. You are allowed to have both a Sugar and a sugar keyword as long as they aren't both under the same immediate parent.

There is no "fix" it is the way it is.

The autofill functon is providing words that you have used recently. Why slececting Sugar mapped to keyword sugar I can't say. If it were me - well actually it was me who had similar issues as well - I'd make the dog keyword "Sugar-dog" with a synonym of "Sugar" and set the keyword to not export and the synonym to export. If desired you could also change "sugar" to "sugar-flavor" and do the same synonym thing again. By doing this it will be plain which is which when auto-fill is presenting you options as you start typing "sugar". It will also give you a way to search (filter) for just the images with the dog's "Sugar" KW and not get the images with the "sugar" Kw as well. So, you will also be able to filter for Sugar (you'll get both) or Sugar-dog if you want just the one.

The downside, which some of the other Guru's here usualy add to threads where I suggest this is that you are "abusing" the keyword system. I agree that is exactly what you're doing but I'd call it a work-a-round. Adobe is not likely to ever really address the situation and as long as it works, "abusing" the keywords is preferrable (to me) to being annoyed by the problem every time you run into it. My blood pressure is high enough without such things getting under my skin.
 
Lightroom Classic is not case sensitive. I don't know if that was a choice by Adobe when building it or it is a functon of the SQLite database they use for the catalog. You can enter text with upper and lower case characters but for all intents and purposes thay are treated as the same thing. Therefor, in filters and smart collections Sugar is the same as sugar. You are allowed to have both a Sugar and a sugar keyword as long as they aren't both under the same immediate parent.

There is no "fix" it is the way it is.

The autofill functon is providing words that you have used recently. Why slececting Sugar mapped to keyword sugar I can't say. If it were me - well actually it was me who had similar issues as well - I'd make the dog keyword "Sugar-dog" with a synonym of "Sugar" and set the keyword to not export and the synonym to export. If desired you could also change "sugar" to "sugar-flavor" and do the same synonym thing again. By doing this it will be plain which is which when auto-fill is presenting you options as you start typing "sugar". It will also give you a way to search (filter) for just the images with the dog's "Sugar" KW and not get the images with the "sugar" Kw as well. So, you will also be able to filter for Sugar (you'll get both) or Sugar-dog if you want just the one.

The downside, which some of the other Guru's here usualy add to threads where I suggest this is that you are "abusing" the keyword system. I agree that is exactly what you're doing but I'd call it a work-a-round. Adobe is not likely to ever really address the situation and as long as it works, "abusing" the keywords is preferrable (to me) to being annoyed by the problem every time you run into it. My blood pressure is high enough without such things getting under my skin.
Well, it used to be case sensitive. I didn't have this problem until a few years ago so at one point this was possible and they broke it.

Maybe I wasn't clear but when I click on the autofill "Sugar" it puts in "sugar" to the keywords, even though both options show up in the autofill suggestions. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with keywords being case-sensitive or not.

Thank you for the workaround suggestions but I will just stick with my current one which someone in my earlier thread suggested which is to type Sugar<Weimaraner, etc., to get what I need.
 
Well, it used to be case sensitive. I didn't have this problem until a few years ago so at one point this was possible and they broke it
Maybe we're talking about two different things. I don't believe that LR has ever differentiated between "Sugar" and "sugar" in the following situaitons:

1) trying to add both versions under the same immediate parent - If Sugar is already there it won't let you add sugar
2) Searching with a text KW filter for either Sugar or sugar returns images with both spellings
3) Adding a rule in a smart colleciton for keyword Sugar or sugar will be "true" for images with either spelling
4) When typing in a KW using the Keywording Panel's "Click here to add keywords" box, if there are duplicate keywords (e.g. Sugar and sugar) it will first look for the one that is at the highest indent level. If it's a draw then it will take the one whose parent sorts before the other. At times it will give you the " < " form of type ahead showing which parent it's selecting.

Maybe I wasn't clear but when I click on the autofill "Sugar"
I'm not sure what you mean by "click on autofill". Are you referring to this box?

1664146687409.png


If so typing either version of Sugar, you'll get a list with parent folders shown and you can pick the one you want. The occuance at the higherst hierarchical level will show first. If there are versions of the word at the same hierarchical level they will be listed in the sort order of their parent keyword(s). Same as point 4 above. The top one in this autofill list will be the default selection unless you click on one of the others.

With these keywords
1664147735931.png


typing Sugar or "sugar" in the import dialog "enter keywords" box will give this list
1664147867528.png

It's a bug that the last one doesn't show its parent.

but I will just stick with my current one

Here's another workaround if you're adding keywords after the import.

Selectthe image(s) you want. Then In the Keyword List Panal, type "sugar" or "Sugar" in the "filter keywords" box, then just click the checkbox next to the one you want.
1664147014674.png
 
Maybe we're talking about two different things. I don't believe that LR has ever differentiated between "Sugar" and "sugar" in the following situaitons:

1) trying to add both versions under the same immediate parent - If Sugar is already there it won't let you add sugar
2) Searching with a text KW filter for either Sugar or sugar returns images with both spellings
3) Adding a rule in a smart colleciton for keyword Sugar or sugar will be "true" for images with either spelling
4) When typing in a KW using the Keywording Panel's "Click here to add keywords" box, if there are duplicate keywords (e.g. Sugar and sugar) it will first look for the one that is at the highest indent level. If it's a draw then it will take the one whose parent sorts before the other. At times it will give you the " < " form of type ahead showing which parent it's selecting.


I'm not sure what you mean by "click on autofill". Are you referring to this box?

View attachment 19328

If so typing either version of Sugar, you'll get a list with parent folders shown and you can pick the one you want. The occuance at the higherst hierarchical level will show first. If there are versions of the word at the same hierarchical level they will be listed in the sort order of their parent keyword(s). Same as point 4 above. The top one in this autofill list will be the default selection unless you click on one of the others.

With these keywords
View attachment 19331

typing Sugar or "sugar" in the import dialog "enter keywords" box will give this list
View attachment 19332
It's a bug that the last one doesn't show its parent.



Here's another workaround if you're adding keywords after the import.

Selectthe image(s) you want. Then In the Keyword List Panal, type "sugar" or "Sugar" in the "filter keywords" box, then just click the checkbox next to the one you want.
View attachment 19329
Please see the previous post by johnrellis. The link he provides a poster described the issue much better than me.
 
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