Misconception about Keywording...

[MMarz]

I have been diligent in assigning keywords to all the images I ingest into LR, but until today hadn't really used them to get back an image I wanted to work on.

I thought that I would be able to drill down to an image or a small group of images by using multiple keywords assuming I could narrow my search with each additional Keyword I selected until I either found my image or no more images were displayed...

It appears I was wrong, or I did something wrong.. suggestions?

 

[DonRicklin]

How were you attempting to do this? Give us an example.

Don

 

[MMarz]

How were you attempting to do this? Give us an example.

Don

Let's say I want to find all images of Bald Eagles in flight.

When I finished my edits on imported images I assigned detailed Keywords.. Bald Eagles, Great Blue Heron, Birds Feeding, Birds in Flight, Mallards, Wildlife...as examples.

While in the Library Module...I expand the Keyword Tags in the left pane, click on the first Keyword...Bald Eagles. I get about 4'' images many with other keywords as listed above. Maybe 2'' are in flight images... (If I selected Birds in Flight as the first keyword I would get these 2'' plus mallards, sea gulls, hawks and Osprey in flight)

I thought that with the Bald Eagles filtered, if I then selected Birds in Flight (in addition to the Bald Eagles) that I would get just the Bald Eagles in Flight...getting only images the qualify under both keywords.

This doesn't happen, instead the Bald Eagles images are replaced by all the Birds in Flight, not just the Eagles. It appears I can only select one Keyword. Is this a "Ctrl" or "Shift" function when selecting the second keyword??

 

[Brad Snyder]

As Don said, specifics would help.

Generally:
Multi-selecting (ctrl-click (Windows)) keywords from the keyword browser (left panel) is an 'OR' function, which is probably doing the opposite of the 'drill-down' you're looking for. I picture a drill-down as BLUE 'and' BIRD 'and' FLYING 'and' DUSSELDORF. Something like that?

For that functionality, you'll likely need the Find dialog at the top of the left panel in Library Module. You'll be interested in the 'Contains All' option.

There are some special characters, ! is a 'NOT', a leading + is 'Starts With', a trailing + is 'Ends With'

Edit:

You posted the details while I was typing the above. In your eagle example, selecting Eagles in the keywod browser, then ctrl-click (Windows, I think Mac is cmd-click, not sure) Birds in Flight, will give you the union of the set, an 'OR' function, so that you get all Eagles, and all Birds in Flight.

You should select the Eagles keyword, the using the Find dialog, select for Birds in Flight.

I personally don't have any multiple-word keywords, so I'm not sure how
"Birds in Flight" vs. something like "Birds_in_Flight" will affect the result.

/end Edit
.....brad s

 

[MMarz]

As Don said, specifics would help.

Generally:
Multi-selecting (ctrl-click (Windows)) keywords from the keyword browser (left panel) is an 'OR' function, which is probably doing the opposite of the 'drill-down' you're looking for. I picture a drill-down as BLUE 'and' BIRD 'and' FLYING 'and' DUSSELDORF. Something like that?

For that functionality, you'll likely need the Find dialog at the top of the left panel in Library Module. You'll be interested in the 'Contains All' option.

There are some special characters, ! is a 'NOT', a leading + is 'Starts With', a trailing + is 'Ends With'

Edit:

You posted the details while I was typing the above. In your eagle example, selecting Eagles in the keywod browser, then ctrl-click (Windows, I think Mac is cmd-click, not sure) Birds in Flight, will give you the union of the set, an 'OR' function, so that you get all Eagles, and all Birds in Flight.

You should select the Eagles keyword, the using the Find dialog, select for Birds in Flight.

I personally don't have any multiple-word keywords, so I'm not sure how
"Birds in Flight" vs. something like "Birds_in_Flight" will affect the result.

/end Edit
.....brad s

Thanks Brad. Is it a worthwhile endeavor to change my multi-word Keywords to single? Birds in Flight to Flight Birds Feeding to Feeding...

I can see that this would help organize the Keywords since Bison feed too, and that requires another "feeding" keyword.

I'll try what you suggest and report back. !!

 

[theturninggate]

There's no reason not to use multi-word keywords if they suit the task. I'm a teach and often take portraits of my students. In my class, I have two Daniels -- Daniel K. and Daniel J. -- and I've assigned exactly those names as their keywords. I find their images easily, and the space isn't a hassle at all.

The best way to do a multi-keyword search, as Brad said, is to use the Find panel. It's a beautiful thing. I especially like how, when using Find, numbers will display in the Folders and Collections panels showing you how many images in each folder match your search criteria.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Is it a worthwhile endeavor to change my multi-word Keywords to single?

I can't say from my own experience. There are folks here who should know, perhaps they'll stop by. Before you spend hours and hours on this, you might want to drop by Peter Krogh's website, (don't have the link handy, just google his name). He's a respected guru in the field of DAM (Digital Asset Management) with respect to photography.


....brad s

 

[cosilver]

Well, OK. I just tried this, and it appears the way to make this work is to first:

Select the keyword Bald Eagles so that all Bald Eagles display in your grid view. (You may want to use single keywords, as the find function uses a space as a keyword separator... or you can also use Bald_Eagles so that it is a single word)

Then, while only the Bald Eagles are being displayed, click on the "Text" check box in the Find section of the library.

Select "Contains Any" or "Contains All" depending on what you want.

In the text field, type in any keyword(s) separated by a space. For example, if I select "Contains all" and type in, [Flight Lakes Mountains] in this box, I would then get only the eagles in flight by lakes in the mountains.

If I select "Contains any" with the same text, then I would get all eagles in flight, all eagles by lakes, and all eagles in the mountains, regardless of whether they were in flight or not.

Hope this helps!

 

[MMarz]

Hope this helps!

Most excellent!! Thanks!

I have already changed all the appropriate two word keywords to one word versions and tried your suggestion. Huge thanks!!

 

[bschaldon]

>Is it a worthwhile endeavor to change my multi-word Keywords to single? Birds in Flight to Flight Birds Feeding to Feeding...

Its certainly worth thinking about how you want your keywords to work, and avoiding unnecessary duplication. In your example I'd probably have keywords like: Birds, Bald Eagles, Flight, Wildlife. At one extreme you could have a keyword describing exactly what's in a picture, but it will never get used on any other pictures; at the other extreme you don't only want entirely generic keywords like Birds as they give you too little selectivity.
Using the Find option, and specifying several different keywords, you can easily locate whatever combination you want.

brian