Photoshop Keywords have vanished!

[StephenEdgar]

Hi Folks,
I'd appreciate any help with the following issue. I recently had to re-install CS2  on a Windows XP system (because of a problem loading Bridge..lost DLL's etc).
I've just noticed that all the keywords I had assigned to my images have disappeared. In addition, the keyword selection pad has also reverted back to the standard headings seen on an initial clean install.
I tried a system restore which simply took me back to the original 'Bridge' problem.
Is there anyway to access the original keyword database and 're-connect' it to my image database? I'd hate to have to start re-assigning keywords to 1000's of pictures  
Thanks in anticipation for any help on this issue

Stephen

[photobadger]

I was really hoping to see a reply to this one, as I had a similar problem happen twice. In my case the keywords are still associated with the pictures, but my defined keywords revert to the original photoshop set.

I'm surprised that the keywords have disappeared from the pictures as they should be going into the XMP file for each individual picture and it is alot of work for a program gone bad to delete them all.

As for putting the keywords back into your definitions for Photoshop, I have a solution that works if the keywords are still part of your pictures. Select all your pictures (I do this folder by folder, but I'm fairly sure a search of all folders that put them all into the view would work as well), the keywords you have defined but that aren't part of your defined set will appear in italics. You can then right-click (at least on PC) and a menu come up that will let you put that keyword into the defined set.

If anyone knows how to save the file off so the defined keywords can be reloaded, I'd love to hear about it.

Joe

[john beardsworth]

Going back to Stephen's original question, the keywords could have disappeared for a number of reasons - the most likely being that the originals were raws and he'd had been saving the metadata in the cache, not in xmp sidecar files.

As for the case of the missing keywords list, System Restore might well be the culprit since it would restore the user application folder to a previous state. The file itself is at:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Adobe\Bridge\Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml

It's XML so you can edit it with a text editor or xml editor (I recommend the free XMLSpy Home Edition or Microsoft's old XML Notepad if it's still around).

NB if you have Bridge 1.0.0 (you should upgrade ASAP), then the keywords file is Adobe Bridge Keywords.abdata and is binary.

John

[photographist]

Hey John...

 Thank you so much for this answer.  I'm working between two machines (one on the road) and sync'n the keyword sets has been a manual pain.  

Again, thanks!!!  

Jeffrey