Question about unambiguous and consistent keywording

Status
Not open for further replies.
U

Ulrich

New Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2014
Messages
7
Location
Germany
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Hello everybody


I have about 10K images, 3K yet to be processed. I have been using Lightroom since version 3 up to LR 5.
Now it‘s time for a relaunch of my inconsistent workflow. Since last week I have spend many hours watching videos and reading posts about organizing my photos. My head is spinning.:crazy:


My first question ist about unambiguous and consistent keywording. How do I distinguish between a person or a location and their derivatives without investing too much time in keywording.


Example:
Person:
Peter
Peters Portrait
Peter in full length
Peters home - wife - car - dog - wedding - birthday and so forth
Peter at his office or Peter at any office
Vacation with Peter
Several persons named Peter, Peter A, Peter B, Peter C


A distinct search for or small collection with portraits of Peter A with his dog in his home at his birthday would then be:
Peter A, portrait, Peter A dog, Peter A home, Peter A birthday.
And if he had two dogs then the names or breed of the dogs woud add to that.
What spelling would be best practice „Peter A dog“ „Peter_A_dog“ or „PeterADog“?


Would a hierarchy take care for most of that issue?
people
 family A
  peter A
   portrait
   birthday 2012
   birthday 2013
   home
   office
   pets
    dog c
    dog d


How do I distinguish from a location/place/city where shots where taken and a unique view of that location.
When I search for a city, I normally want to find meaningful photos of that city and not anything generic that could be taken anywhere.


Are there any solutions for bilingual keywording and being able to choose one language at export?


Thanks.
Ulrich
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
My solution to this is to have multiple hierarchies, one for each "main purpose". So, your example:
Peter
Peters Portrait
Peter in full length
Peters home - wife - car - dog - wedding - birthday and so forth
Peter at his office or Peter at any office
Vacation with Peter
Several persons named Peter, Peter A, Peter B, Peter C

There are many Peters, and they would all go under a top-level keyword called PEOPLE

Where a photo is taken would go under a top-level keyword called LOCATION

The event at which a photo is taken would go under a top-level keyword called EVENT

And so on. So I would end up with:

- EVENT
- - Birthdays
- - - Peter A 37 years
- - - Peter A 38 years
- - Vacations
- - - 2013 Spain
- - - 2014 France
- LOCATION
- - Europe
- - - Spain
- - - - Barcelona
- - - - - Familia sagrada church
- PEOPLE
- - Family
- - - Dad
- - - Me
- - - Mom
- - - Wife
- - Friends
- - - Peter A
- - - Peter B
- - Others
- - - Peter C

And then I assign tags for each photo according to where they are taken, who is in the photo, the event and so on.

A photo taken of Peter B at the Sagrada familia in Madrid will get two assigned keywords: "Peter B" in the PEOPLE hierarchy, and "Familia sagrada" in the LOCATIN hierarchy. The photo will also automatically inherit the keywords "PEOPLE" and ""Friends" and "LOCATION" and "Europe" and "Spain" and "Madrid".
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
I would heartily endorse Robert's suggestions about implementing a keyword system using multiple hierarchies.
IMHO this approach is the only logical way to go when using an hierarchal system.

Tony Jay
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Upvote 0 Downvote
And to further expand on the subject....

You write:
"Peters Portrait
Peter in full length
Peters home - wife - car - dog - wedding - birthday and so forth
Peter at his office or Peter at any office
Vacation with Peter
Several persons named Peter, Peter A, Peter B, Peter C
A distinct search for or small collection with portraits of Peter A with his dog in his home at his birthday would then be:
Peter A, portrait, Peter A dog, Peter A home, Peter A birthday.
And if he had two dogs then the names or breed of the dogs woud add to that.
What spelling would be best practice „Peter A dog“ „Peter_A_dog“ or „PeterADog“?"

I think it is important to separete different aspects of a photo. Peter A is a name of a person, belonging in a poeple-hierarchy. Peters wife is a unique person, also belonging to a poeple-hierarchy. But she sits on the same level as Peter, not under Peter. If you put her under Peter, then when you tag a photo with "Peters wife" that photo will also inherit "Peter". But Peter isn't neccessarily in the photo.

"Peters office" is a specific location, belonging in a location-hierarchy. An office as such is not a location, it is an "environment", belonging under a different hierarchy, alongside other environments like "living-room", "restaurant", "store" and so on.

Whenever creating hierarchies, one has to think about the inherited structure. A lower level keyword will automatically inherit all parent keywords. If that is not suitable, then it should probably not be placed under that parent.

As for spelling, I personally use "Peter_A_dog" since this makes that keyword into just one word. The keyword "Peter A dog" is a keyword, or rather a key-phrase that has three words. If you search for:
Peter A dog
You will find all photos that have keywords matching Peter or A or dog. You can set the filter to "contains words" and then you will find photos containing all three words, but not neccessarily in that order, and not neccessarily within the same "key-phrase".
Others feel you shouldn't introduce "strange" characters (the _) in keywords, but I don't mind.

So, a photo of Peters wife, taken in Peters office, but without Peter in the photo would be tagged with:

ENVIRONMENT
- Office
LOCATION
- Europe
- - France
- - - Paris
- - - - Peters_office
PEOPLE
- Family
- - Peters_wife

This describes that the photo is taken in an office. It is geographically taken in Peters office. And Peters wife is in the photo.

If you want to destinguish portraits from full-lengths and so on, I would make that a hierarchy also, perhaps called.... I don't know.... lets say "STYLE":

- STYLE
- - Full_length
- - Half_length
- - Portrait

And so on. Each hierarchy describes something unique. The you combine keywords from different hierarchies to describe the entire photo.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thank you all for your support.
Robert - that makes it a lot clearer. I couldn't find your concrete information in any other tutorial. So far I wasn't sure how to deal with specific terms like "Peter‘s office" or generic terms like any office.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Ulrich said:
Thank you all for your support.
Robert - that makes it a lot clearer. I couldn't find your concrete information in any other tutorial. So far I wasn't sure how to deal with specific terms like "Peter‘s office" or generic terms like any office.
Click to expand...
The old "Who, What, When & Where" is a good beginning. "When" is always recorded in the Capture date field of the EXIF and does not need further keywording except to perhaps designate a non specific time - Event like "Vacation" or "Christmas". Where is "Location" which can begin globally and drill down to a specific place like my "Backyard" or Peter A's "Office". "Who" or "What" can be classed as an entity. Entities have attributes, Each attribute is also a keyword, though more likely already defined as an entity, event or location. So, Peter A's office birthday party consists of 4 keywords: Peter A, Office, Birthday, Party.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks Cletus.
I am now in the process of building my hierarchy. It's tedious (I'm often in doubt where to put a keyword) but I am looking forward to an effective image library.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Ulrich said:
Thanks Cletus.
I am now in the process of building my hierarchy. It's tedious (I'm often in doubt where to put a keyword) but I am looking forward to an effective image library.
Click to expand...
Mistakes are permitted. If you later decide that you have the keyword under the wrong hierarchy, you can drag it to the correct parent using the Drag& bDrop option in the Keyword List panel. Any images assigned that keyword take on the new hierarchy automatically.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top