Writing keywords into picture files

[Anton]

This is my first post here, so hi everybody. I am also at the very beginning of the Lightroom journey, travelling from Nikon Capture NX2, via Apple Aperture, some free photo editing software and back.. Few times i was using Lightroom Trial versions, but never longer than few weeks and never as my main post-proces tool. But no more hesitation, at least until NX3 is released

Ok, but here come problems. Among them, my first is to organise an over 50 thousand photos collection. My goal is to have organised folders with described pictures (keywords) that are readable by Windows or Apples finding device (search, spotlight). So, is there a way that I can update an original photo file with attached in Lightroom keywords NOT as a sidecar file, but inside that original picture file? I know I can get what I want by exporting described photos. But that sounds like making a copy of my photo collection (not to mention that I am afraid of loosing quality of a file that is exported, even without changing the File Settings options (Image Format: Original) in comparison to one not exported).

I hope I explained what is on my mind and you guys can guide me through..

Anton

 

[Tony Jay]

Hi Anton wlecome to the forum.

The short answer to your question is no, unless you convert all your RAW files to DNG files.

However, I think that an explanation of why you need to use Windows or Apple finding devices to find your RAW images with keywords is needed.
As far as I am concerned Lightroom is the application that I want to use to organize and search for my images so XMP side-car files are fine.
If you are exporting derivative files for others to use then metadata (all the keywords) can be incorporated into the derivative files (TIFFS, JPEGs etc).


So, I think a bit more of an explanation about your proposed workflow would be helpful.

Tony Jay

 

[Anton]

Ok, here is what idea lights under my questions..

I got over 60 thousands pictures, which I can frankly say all of them are JPEGs, but what is more important they are, or.. they come from multiple cameras, they were put there with no order by few people, there are'nt even organised in years - its a mix of folders, default names, dates and so on. My idea is: firstly, make a date based folder collection (by putting photos in a propper "year/year_month_day/" folder set), and secondly, tag them (add keywords and perhaps geo-tags), so from every computer in my home network i will be able to find photos containing given tags.

After searching, I made a decision that the second part will be done in Lightroom (tagging and exporting as originals). Which give me the second goal achievement, and a good-looking Lightroom catalog in which I can easily edit and send selected photos whenever and to whoever I will want.

I have also got a trouble that concerns this solution. I don't know if effort in making Lightroom based catalog and tags (put in sidecar-files) will last "forever". I mean, I don't know if this system in which those keywords are written) will stay the same, or maybe will change, or will collapse.. That is why I prefer having keywords inside a photo file rather than in a side-car file that cannot be read in no other way than with special (Adobe-like) software.

 

[Tony Jay]

With JPEGS there are no sidecar files, keywords, once written to metadata, will reside in the the file as well as in the catalog.

Tony Jay

 

[Anton]

But only after exporting? Not after adding a keyword to a picture in Lighroom?

 

[Tony Jay]

No, if you update your metadata it will be written to the JPEG.
With RAW files it is written into the XMP side car file.
If you don't update metadata then any added metadata just sits in the catalog.

Tony Jay

 

[Anton]

Now when that is clear, may I ask some other questions considering keywords in this thread?

I imported my pictures into Lightroom, many of them had been tagged, many more have been tagged in Lightroom, then exported (and in that way organized). Now in Lightroom i got hundreds of keywords in non hierarchical way. Now I want to have them put in the hierarchy (because I think it will be better - easier and faster during tagging). Am I right when I say that as long as I am changing those keywords, rephrasing them, setting hierarchy IN LIGHTROOM, all my picture files on disk are untouched? And what will happen when I hit export button?
I set export location for a group of pictures filtered by keyword (i.e. name of my brother) to "same folder as original photo", but whole group consists of pictures from many different folders. When I set file format to "Original" and switch off every possible extra change, will Lightroom replace each picture file in its genuine disk folder or make a duplicate or all photos will be put in one folder without any other folder division?

Is there (in Lightroom) way only to update metadata in original JPEG files stored in different folders on disk?

 

[Tony Jay]

The first question is easy: As long as you do not update the metadata (ie write it to the file) then any changes made to the keywords (in the sense of organizing them into hierarchies) will not be reflected in the metadata written to the file but will be reflected in the catalog.
Just at the moment I am not sure what will happen on export (I am not at home and don't have access to lightroom to check,not to mention several resources that I use).
The other questions are making my head spin a bit because the ambiguous phraseology, so I am not entirely sure what the question really is. I certainly don't want to mislead you, so maybe have another crack at that part of the post to make it more understandable.

Tony Jay

 

[Tony Jay]

OK, on export there are several options that determine how much of the metadata is included on export.
So it is possible to export without keywords - if that is what you want to do.

Rereading the other question: my take on this is that you want to know if exporting an image to its original location as its original format will result in the original file being overwritten. The answer to this is no. Lightroom will rename the exported file.

With regard to the issue of updating metadata: it doesn't matter where the files are as long as they have been imported into Lightroom and the catalog knows where they are; Lightroom can update the metadata.

If I have got the wrong end of the stick on any of these issues please clarify - all this stuff does have answers!

Tony Jay

 

[Anton]

Yeah well.. It's hard for me to explain what is on my mind... I am still referring to the general idea of having all JPEG's tagged no my computer's HDD. And when I tag those thousands pictures and select my whole catalog and hit export. Will Lightroom export those pictures in the order of Lightroom's catalog? Or will put 60 000 pictures in one folder on disk?

What I do now, is to have one folder in Lightroom catalog to work on (i.e. Christmas) and after tagging I export it to a folder on disk called "2012_12_25 Christmas". What will happen if I select many lightroom folders and hit "export to its original place"?

(I will check this also at home..)

Anton

 

[johnbeardy]

Since you seem to be talking only about JPEGs, why not select the images and do a Cmd S? This writes the metadata back to the originals, and without any need to export.

Do not be tempted to "export to original place". What you will do is overwrite the originals, destroying capture data and replacing it with LR's interpretation. At worst, if you choose a size, you could be destroying pixels.

John

 

[Anton]

With regard to the issue of updating metadata: it doesn't matter where the files are as long as they have been imported into Lightroom and the catalog knows where they are; Lightroom can update the metadata.

Since you seem to be talking only about JPEGs, why not select the images and do a Cmd S? This writes the metadata back to the originals, and without any need to export.

My goal now is to update metadata (which are changed keywords - hierarchical, more organized). Yes, I am talking only about JPEGs at this point. Does Lightroom really updates metadata in original JPEG files without loosing anything else?

John, as you wrote, Cmd+S with selected files writes metadata into original JPEGs, but after doing that, my mac search engine (spotlight) doesn't find files by looking for new keywords (added in Lightroom and "saved") as if they are not written into files.

 

[Tony Jay]

Anton I am still confused as to why YOU need to use third party software to search for images on your system.
Surely you just need to use Lightroom?

Tony Jay

 

[Anton]

The thing is I want to use Mac's search device (which is called "Spotlight") or Windows' search to find a particular picture. Not a third party software. I can use Lightroom when I am working on my computer at home. Or when I know how to use it. When someone from my family wants to find a picture, they don't have to turn Lightroom on, they want to find a picture, copy it on flash-usb-drive, and show somebody. And I want to make it easy for them.

At this moment I cannot imagine working with photos only in Lightroom and leaving computer catalogs and original files only for software purposes.

I want to have opportunity to change my software whenever I want while not having to loose all work done (tagging, keywording).

I really want to get used to Lighroom, I want to use it as long as possible - its a great tool. But for now I just need to find a way to tag every picture, so that whatever happens every single picture will be tagged and ready to read and find by its tags - not only by exactly same software that was used to tag, but by as many ways as possible (and as far as I know all serious applications (including Windows and Mac operating systems) read EXIF, IPTC or XMP data written in the file, and that is why I want to have my keywords written into file.

 

[johnbeardy]

Exactly how are you searching in Spotlight? My Mac skills aren't too high, but I know Spotlight allows you to do something like kind:Excel to find all Excel files. Is there something like that for keywords, keywords:Austria for example?

Anyway, I just tried creating a Finder smart folder. I chose keywords, entered the keyword saved by Cmd S, and my JPEG was found.

John

 

[johnbeardy]

Got it, it's singular - keyword:Austria.

 

[Jim Wilde]

When someone from my family wants to find a picture, they don't have to turn Lightroom on, they want to find a picture, copy it on flash-usb-drive, and show somebody. And I want to make it easy for them.

That's perfectly understandable, I'm sure most of us have similar needs. I can't help thinking, though, that you're possibly going about this in the wrong way or with perhaps a slight misunderstanding. The way I look at this is in a series of stages:

1. Import pictures into Lightroom, review and decide which ones to keep, which ones to discard. Delete these rejects.
2. "Develop" the ones I've kept, then do the metadata bit: keywords, location data, titles/captions, labels, etc.
3. During the "metadata bit" I'll start making decisions about "what's next". In other words, now that I've developed and organised via metadata, what do I do with them? Currently I could do one or more of the following:

- Do nothing, retain them in the catalog "just in case" I may want to use them in the future.
- Show them on one or more of the 3 digital photo frames that I "manage" of behalf of the occupants of my house and my mother-in-law in her apartment. This entails exporting them to hard drive prior to copying to a flash-drive for subsequent uploading to the photo frames. I control the first part of this through keywords and a couple of hard drive Publish Services.
- Upload them to my Flickr account, which entails organising them into "sets". This is controlled by the use of appropriate keywords, and then subsequently uploaded via the Flickr Publish Service.
- For my wife's benefit who has a craft box-making hobby, I take pictures of them then plonk them on the NAS from where she can email them to whoever. Again, keyword controlled and hard drive Published.
- Upload them to my iPad/iPhone. Again a series of sets are created via keywords, and published to my iTunes photo library via Publish Services. All of the other uploads (photo frames, Flicker) are included in this Publish Service and because this library is part of my regular backup process, effectively all of my published photos are available (organised into logical sets) on my NAS for anyone else in my family to grab a copy (or just grab my iPad). And because they are organised into sets, there really isn't a need for them to go searching via keywords.

The key thing about that is that other than the "do nothing" option, in order to see the developed image they all have to be exported in one way or another. So in your case, just adding keywords into the metadata section of your file headers by means of Ctrl+S really isn't going to do what you want....any of your family looking at any of those images will see the original unedited versions. The only way they can see the results of your develop processing is by "publishing" them in one way or another, i.e. either by using Export or Publish Services.....so doing that gives you the opportunity to "organise" them into meaningful collections which would make your family's searching far easier.

 

[Anton]

Got it, it's singular - keyword:Austria.

yeah it's so easy to use.. But does it look like what I want to achieve won't be possible?

I can't help thinking, though, that you're possibly going about this in the wrong way or with perhaps a slight misunderstanding.

For this moment, I have got an idea of how my photo catalog should looks like. Maybe there are a smarter way of organising pictures or having them sorted out, I am really trying to be open minded for anything that can help me with all that stuff. Do you see some newbie-mistakes that I am making in stating my Lightroom/photos goals or needs?

The only way they can see the results of your develop processing is by "publishing" them in one way or another, i.e. either by using Export or Publish Services.....so doing that gives you the opportunity to "organise" them into meaningful collections which would make your family's searching far easier.

So back to the square one. I have already asked this question, but.. First of all there are two aspects.
1) A new set of photos, that I import directly from my camera will be exported to JPEGs with no further questions. After deleting bad ones, developing and adding metadata - they will be put in a named and folder with a date and plenty of keywords inside. No problem.
2) My all-time photo collection which consists of over 60 000 files. Mostly JPEGs. There is no way to have them tagged with keywords in Lightroom and then just update their metadata, right? According to what TNG wrote. So I have to publish/export them.

Here comes my question: Do i need to export each folder alone, or I can select all my folders in Lighroom and click export, what will give me all my pictures with saved meta-data organised in order of Lighroom catalog?
Second question is: What is the best way of exporting photos to not loosing even a bit of their quality?

Thanks guys, it's really helpful what you are writing

 

[Jim Wilde]

There is no way to have them tagged with keywords in Lightroom and then just update their metadata, right? According to what TNG wrote. So I have to publish/export them.

Well no, that's not at all what I said. So let's try again:

Lightroom is a non-destructive editor, which means that by default ALL the changes that you make to an image inside Lightroom are NOT recorded in the original image, but they are in fact recorded in Lightroom's database, i.e. the catalog. So make some changes of any type to an image inside Lightroom, then go look at that image from outside Lightroom and you will see the original image, with no changes.

OK, it IS however possible to optionally have most (but not all) of the metadata changes written back to the original file, either automatically via a catalog setting or manually via the Ctrl+S command. What happens when this is done is that the updated metadata is written only into the specific metadata section of the image file's header, but the actual image pixels are NEVER changed. This updated metadata could be keyword tags, title information, captions, etc.....and it could include any develop changes you may have made, which would be in the form of specific adjustments, e.g. Exposure +0.3. Some of these metadata changes, such as the keyword tags, ratings, captions, can be seen by many applications outside Lightroom, such as Finder. However, any develop change instructions will be ignored by the majority of external software, in fact only other Adobe products such as Bridge and Photoshop will be able to read and apply them, and thus show you the edited version of the original file.

So what this means in terms of your 60,000 jpegs.....once you have applied your keywords and then done a Ctrl+S on those images, then yes, you and your family WILL be able to search by keyword outside Lightroom and find the images.....but when they open those images in whatever software you use to view them, you/they will NOT see the effect of any develop adjustments that you may have made inside Lightroom. Of course if you haven't "developed" these images in Lightroom, then no problem....your family will see the image the same as you will see it in Lightroom. However, as soon as you make any develop adjustment in Lightroom, the only way your family will be able to see the effect of your efforts is if you export or otherwise publish those adjusted images.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Very well said, Jim!

 

[Anton]

I think I'm getting it. Now it's time for some tests, after which I'll write all my observations

 

[johnbeardy]

yeah it's so easy to use.. But does it look like what I want to achieve won't be possible?

I never said "won't". I had JPEGs in LR, saved keywords to them, could find those pictures by typing keyword: in Spotlight . Isn't that what you wanted?

John