Running Out of Ideas for Keywording?

      US $24.95

Paypal/Keywords -- Buy Now

It works with Lightroom 2, Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 4.

What's the purpose of keywords?

The purpose is to find the photos among the thousands of photos in your catalog. It can be for you or it can be for customers or it can be for internet searches.

The keywords are associated with a photo to describe:

  • subject matter
  • status
  • style
  • use

The simplest way of creating keywords is just add another keyword when you need it. The problem with just adding them on the fly without any structure is fine for the first few dozen keywords. Then it becomes unwieldy when it becomes thousands.

The “cleanest” way is to create base categories, then expand these various categories.

Lightroom Keywords Categories

First: Always fill in the IPTC information. The problem, with the IPTC information, is that you can't search for it! The IPTC search is so limited that I find it useless. It's only possible to search if you already know the exact word and you cannot select in which IPTC field.

Photographers by the dozen Photographers by the dozen lined up to take a couple of photos of a snowy owlsnowy-owls-20111231-1513.jpg -- ©2011 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Photographers by the dozen They are lined up to take photos of a snowy owl

Here's a photo of a group of photographers. This photo was taken in December 2011 at Boundary Bay in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, when there were 29 Snowy Owls, a very rare occurrence for us in the Pacific Northwest. I took photos of the owls and also of the photographers.

The expected keywords would be:

  • people
  • photographers
  • group

Is this all the keywords or can we do better? Here's how I use the keywording to get better keywords, so the photos can be found either by me or by Google/Bing.

There are 28 categories:

  • [ANIMALS]
  • [ARTS / ENTERTAINMENT / CULTURE]
  • [BUILDINGS]
  • [CELEBRATIONS / HOLIDAYS]
  • [CONCEPTS]
  • [CUSTOMERS]
  • [ECONOMY / BUSINESS / FINANCE]
  • [EDUCATION]
  • [ENVIRONMENT]
  • [FOOD]
  • [GENRE]
  • [HEALTH / BEAUTY]
  • [HUMAN INTEREST]
  • [LIFE EVENT]
  • [LIFESTYLE]
  • [NATURE]
  • [NEWS]
  • [OBJECTS]
  • [PEOPLE]
  • [PERSONAL]
  • [PHOTOGRAPHY]
  • [PLACES]
  • [RELIGION]
  • [SIGNS]
  • [SPORTS]
  • [STATUS]
  • [TECHNOLOGY]
  • [TRANSPORT]

The 28 categories are divided in 225 subcategories and 5100+ keywords

Lets first look at the [PEOPLE] category since we are dealing with a group of people:

  • Action > Photographing
  • Action > Birding: There are at least a few people with scopes for birding
  • Age > Senior Men and Senior Women and Young Men and Young Women
  • Emotion > Content
  • Group > Crowd

Lets look at [CONCEPTS] category and go down the list, what about:

  • Active: the people are outdoor doing something
  • Discovery: it's a stretch but people have found something new they are photographing
  • Diversity: There are Caucasian people and there are Asian people
  • Enthusiasm: Many of the people look quite excited
  • Happiness: Many of the people are happy with either themselves or with there photography
  • Joy: Many of the people seem happy and joyful
  • Luxury: Photographing with big and expensive cameras/lens is a luxury
  • Participation: So many people doing the same thing
  • Success: People seem to enjoy themselves which is successful
  • Technology: Photography is all about technology
  • Wealth: Photographing with big and expensive cameras/lens is a luxury

What about the [GENRE]category ?

  • Documentary: They are photographing wildlife
  • Nature: They are photographing wildlife
  • Portrait: This is a group of photographers
  • Scene > Group: Plenty of people
  • Scene > Panoramic: A little bit of a stretch (pun almost intended)
  • Subject qualifiers > Amateur: Most of the people are just amateurs. You can also add Professional as some of these photographers are clearly professionals and/or Semi-professional
  • Subject qualifiers > Men and Women

What about the [HUMAN INTEREST] category?

We have:

  • Animal Stories: Why has the Snowy Owl moved so much south for the winter?
  • Curiosity: What are they photographing?
  • People: It's about all the people coming to photograph...

What about the [LIFESTYLE] category?

We have:

  • Family > Children: Some of the photographers have their kids
  • Family > Parenting: Some of the photographers have their kids
  • Mature Age > Active Retirement: Many of the people are in their 60s and their 70s

What about the [NATURE] category?

We have:

  • Atmosphere And Sky > Clouds: It's a cloudy day
  • Rural Landscape > Rural Road
  • Seasons > Winter

What about the [OBJECTS] category?

We have:

  • Color > Grey Light and many others
  • Electronics > Photography

What about the [PHOTOGRAPHY] category?

We have:

  • Color Space > AdobeRGB
  • Location > On Location
  • Orientation > Horizontal
  • Print > Canvas
  • Type > Editorial
  • Type > People

Do you have to use all of them? No, but you can choose, you get ideas. We went from 3 keywords to 49 keywords. Spending another 10 minutes would have added another two dozen keywords.

  1. It's OK to have an unlimited number of keywords when you are keeping the photos in house.
  2. It's not OK to have too many keywords when showing your photos on the Internet. People do not read them. Both Google & Bing will penalize you for what they see as “keyword stuffing.” The “keyword stuffing” starts at around a dozen of keywords depending on the amount of text associated with the image.
  3. Do not “monkey” with singular/plural forms. Do not put both the singular and the plural form of your keyword. Both Google & Bing will penalize you for what they see as keyword stuffing.
  4. The only way, that I know of, for Lightroom to keep different sets of keywords is to to create virtual copies and assign the different keywords to each virtual copy.

There are 28 categories:

  • [ANIMALS]
  • [ARTS / ENTERTAINMENT / CULTURE]
  • [BUILDINGS]
  • [CELEBRATIONS / HOLIDAYS]
  • [CONCEPTS]
  • [CUSTOMERS]
  • [ECONOMY / BUSINESS / FINANCE]
  • [EDUCATION]
  • [ENVIRONMENT]
  • [FOOD]
  • [GENRE]
  • [HEALTH / BEAUTY]
  • [HUMAN INTEREST]
  • [LIFE EVENT]
  • [LIFESTYLE]
  • [NATURE]
  • [NEWS]
  • [OBJECTS]
  • [PEOPLE]
  • [PERSONAL]
  • [PHOTOGRAPHY]
  • [PLACES]
  • [RELIGION]
  • [SIGNS]
  • [SPORTS]
  • [STATUS]
  • [TECHNOLOGY]
  • [TRANSPORT]

The 28 categories are divided in 225 subcategories and 5100+ keywords

You can customize and add your own keywords to it to personalize it to your photography.

      US $24.95

Paypal/Keywords -- Buy Now

By clicking the Buy Now button, you will open a new tab/window on Paypal.com. After successful payment, you will receive instructions for downloading your "Lightroom -- Keywords".

Questions

Click on the link to email: Lightroom -- Keywords question The "turn around time" is usually within 24 hrs, as long as I am not traveling. When traveling, that will depend on whether I have Internet access, in some countries, foreigners are not allowed to use Internet cafes...

License

The license and usage is similar to Lightroom's. This mean that apart from the usual, (in plain English) such as:

  • Do not redistribute my taxonomy. Taxonomy is a classification arranged in a hierarchical structure.
  • Do not resale my taxonomy.
  • Do not use the taxonomy to create derivative work to be resold.
  • You can install the taxonomy onto a maximum of 2 (two) computers, such as one on your office computer and one on your laptop for when you are in the field.

Do I have to use PayPal?

You do not have to become a PayPal member to purchase the "Lightroom -- Keywords". PayPal is our payment service provider, you do not have to have a PayPal account. You will be directed to enter your credit card and address to complete your purchase.

      US $24.95

Paypal/Keywords -- Buy Now

By clicking the Buy Now button, you will open a new tab/window on Paypal.com. After successful payment, you will receive instructions for downloading your "Lightroom -- Keywords".

Instructions

To unzip the file

  • On Windows: You can either use WinZip or IzArc which is free.
  • On Mac: It's already included in most of the recent versions of OSx.

Backup, backup and backup

Before doing any important operation in Lightroom, you should backup your Lightroom catalog. Detailed instructions are at: Backing up Your Catalog

Please note that if there is a problem and you do not have a current backup, I will not be able to help.

Suggestion

You should delete all of your unused existing keywords

  1. Switch to the LIBRARY module
  2. Menu: Metadata > Purge Unused Keywords

To unzip the file

On Windows: You can either use WinZip or IzArc which is free. On Mac: It's already included in most of the recent versions of OSx.

Extract the zip file

Please remember which directory you are extracting the files, you will need that location when you will import the keywords into Lightroom.

To import the "Lightroom -- Keywords"

  1. Switch to the LIBRARY module
  2. Menu: Metadata > Import Keywords
  3. Select the file: Lightroom-Keywords-v3.txt

Mixing/Moving your own existing keywords with Lightroom-keywords-v3.txt

  1. I suggest that you should delete all of your unused existing keywords

    • Switch to the LIBRARY module
    • Menu: Metadata > Purge Unused Keywords
  2. Drag each keyword to the "correct" category. Lightroom will update the keywords in the photos.
      US $24.95

Paypal/Keywords -- Buy Now

By clicking the Buy Now button, you will open a new tab/window on Paypal.com. After successful payment, you will receive instructions for downloading your "Lightroom -- Keywords".

  • I suggest that when you are done with moving the keywords around, you should select all of your photos in the LIBRARY module, GRID view and select from the menu: Metadata > Save Metadata to File.
  • Depending on the number of photos, the speed of your computer, the speed of your hard drive, it could take hours, many hours.
  • After doing any important operation in Lightroom, you should backup your Lightroom catalog. Detailed instructions are at: Backing up your catalog.