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Editing multiple keyword tags

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:55 pm
by Jens Peermann
A workflow change requires changes to almost all keyword tags in Lightroom Classic CC. Is there a way to edit multiple tags at once, or is my only option to go through the whole list word by word? Please advise.

Thanks

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:24 pm
by Anthony Medici
Can you describe what you are trying to do with an example or two?

Re:

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2019 10:24 am
by Jens Peermann
Anthony Medici wrote:Can you describe what you are trying to do with an example or two?
Thanks for your response, Anthony.

I use Lightroom for attaching title, caption and keywords because it has better keyword management than Capture One, and also because I have an extensive, hierarchically arranged collection of keywords - built over years of using Lightroom and one of my most valuable assets because it will be a tremendous task to rebuild - that cannot be imported into Capture One and used as in Lightroom.

Up to now my workflow was to process images in C1 and export them as a TIFF, import that TIFF into Lightroom and attach the captions and keywords. That works fine. But lately I more and more need variations of those images and creating a new TIFF every time will quickly fill up my available storage with those variations that I may or may not need again. So I decided to create additional variants in C1 instead, which requires only a few kilobytes of storage for the set of adjustment values.

However, this also requires captions and keywords to be attached to the RAW file - or the sidecar file - in LR, before processing in C1. And this is where a problem shows. Deselecting "Include on Export" in a root keyword will be ignored by C1 unless "Export Containing Keywords" is also deselected in all of the following keywords. The root keyword will not only show in C1, deleting it will also delete all keywords that follow.

I currently have 5,676 keywords. If it takes just 10 seconds to change the keyword tag settings for each of them, it will take about 16 hours to get this done, interruptions not included. I have no choice other than to do that if I want my new workflow to work. So, being able to do it in some kind of a batch process would be a great time saving.

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:10 pm
by Anthony Medici
Read through paragraph 3 again for clarity as I'm not understanding the issue your having between the two programs. I do understand that you need to change a keyword setting in Lightroom and Lightroom is making you do them one by one. Unfortunately, the only tools I know of in Lightroom for keywords involves exporting them, modifying the text file externally, and then reimporting them. Even then, a lot of manual work needs to be done to use the "corrected" keywords and stop using the old ones.

I was hoping to understand your base issue between the two programs to see if I could help suggest a change in the way you approach the problem. After all, there may be a better way to approach what you are doing so that you can stop using keywords in Lightroom for your solution.

My friend uses Capture 1 and Photo Mechanic to tag images with IPTC data rather than using keywords in Lightroom. I believe Photo Mechanic is a Mac only product though and might not be suitable for you.