Keyword Hierarchy Question

[meyerweb]

I'm in a process of building a keyword hierarchy for my images in LR3.5. I've given a fair bit of thought as to how I want to organize them, and come up with a basic system that I think will work for me. I've concluded there's no "right" or "best" way. (I can think of two or three systems that might work, but I figure as long as it makes sense to me I should be OK.)

There are a couple of things about how hierarchies work that I don't understand, though, and I haven't been able to find any clear answers online.

In the process of deciding how to build this, I've looked at a number of hierarchies people have posted to the web. One thing I've noted is that people sometimes have the same word in multiple hierarchies, and sometimes the same word as both a regular entry and as a synonym.  For example:

Architecture
      Building
          Church
                  {Cathedral}
          Cathedral
          Skyscraper.....

Cities
      Building
      Cathedral....

So what happens if I use the keyword building? Does LR apply the keywords Building, Architecture and Cities?  And what happens if I use the keyword Cathedral?  Will LR assign Cathedral, Cities, Church, Building and Architecture?

Many thanks.

[Jeremy Roussak]

As I understand it (which may not be well), keyword hierarchy affects searches, not assignment. If in your example you assign Cathedral, you'll find that photo when you search for Cathedral. It'll also show up if you search for Building or Cities or Architecture. The only keyword actually assigned to the photo, though, will be Cathedral. I'm not sure what happens when you export.

In other words, when you search for a particular keyword, you'll find any image which bears that keyword or any keyword below it in a hierarchy.

If I'm wrong, wiser heads than mine will correct me, I'm sure.

Jeremy

[meyerweb]

Well, I posted basically the same question in a couple of other places, and got conflicting answers. And the information I found on web searches tended to explain HOW to set up a hierarchy, but not how it really worked, and information on synonyms is especially limited, and often conflicting. So I did some tests.  So as to not use any words that were already in my keyword list, I built a simple hierarchy of words not currently in use:

Colors      
   Blue   
      {Cyan}
      {Azure}
   Red   
      Pink
                        Salmon
      Rose
   Green   
      {BRG}
      {Emerald}
   Cyan   
        Orange

Fruit
        Orange
        Apple

      
(I actually had a couple of other trees, but this is enough to demonstrate how they actually work.)   

And it turns out synonyms don't work quite like I expected them to, and are, honestly, so limited I question their value.

Test1:  Tag a photo with the keyword Cyan. Only Cyan gets applied to the metadata, not any of the words associated with it (Blue, Colors, Azure). Searching, I can find the image by searching on Cyan, or Colors. But NOT by searching on Blue.

Test2: Tag a photo with the keyword Blue. Only Blue gets applied to the metadata, not Cyan, or Azure. When searching, I can find it by searching on Blue, or any of it's synonyms (Cyan, Azure), or Colors.

Test3:  Tag one photo with Cyan, and another with Blue. Searching with Cyan gets me both images, as does searching with Colors. Searching on Blue gets me only the image tagged with Blue.

Test 4: Tag a photo with the word Colors (and nothing else). I find it by searching ONLY on colors, not Blue, Cyan, or Azure.

Test 5:  Tag a photo with the word Red (and nothing else). I find it by searching on Red, or Colors, but not Pink or Rose.

Test 6:  Tag a photo with the word Pink (and nothing else). I find it by searching on Pink, Red or Colors.

Test 7: Tag one photo with Orange->Color, and a second image with Orange->Fruit (this nomenclature seems backwards to me, btw.  It's really Fruit-Orange and Color-Orange, but whatever...) Searching on Orange finds both images. Searching on Color finds only one, searching on Fruit finds only the other.

I had expected synonyms to work the other way, I think. So that if I searched on Blue I'd get all images tagged with Blue, but also those tagged with Azure and Cyan.

So kikashi is partially correct. Synonyms do affect only search, and not tagging (assignment). Searching on a term that is a synonym will find images tagged with the main word. (e.g., search on Azure and you'll find Blue).  

But the statement that you'll find "any image which bears that keyword or any keyword BELOW it in the hierarchy" is backwards. You'll actually find images using the keyword, it's alias, or any word ABOVE it in the hierarchy. So if an image is tagged with Red, you can find it by searching on Red or Colors, but not Pink. If the image is tagged with pink, you can find it with Colors, Red or Pink, but not Salmon.

The worst limitation of using synonyms is that when you're tagging an image, LR3 isn't smart enough to know the synonyms exist. So if I tag an image with the word Azure, LR3 doesn't substitute Blue, or use the synonym where it already exists in the hierarchy.  
It creates a new, top level entry named Azure.  

It does seem like it would be useful to be able to enter Red as a search term and find Pink and Rose, too. The way it's implemented now forces you to enter the term you're most likely to use (Blue, for example) at the bottom of the hierarchy, and the least used words above. Or to use synonyms, and hope you never get confused an enter a synonym as a keyword instead of the word it refers to.

It seems to me it's more useful to just use Azure as another keyword beneath Blue in the hierarchy. At least that way if I tag an image with Azure, I'm not creating a new entry in the Keyword list. I'm not sure I see much value in synonyms as they're currently implemented, but if someone has some examples of how synonyms benefit them I'd be delighted to see them.

[john beardsworth]

Uses of synonyms..... Species' scientific or common names, foreign language equivalents. Basically anything that you wouldn't want to enter directly or have as a search term. Last time I looked, though, you can search them using smart collections, which reflects the concept that synonyms get applied upon export from Lightroom.

Frankly I think people waste far too much time fussing over keyword hierarchies. Lightroom's implementation is about as advanced as any in its class (pretty sure you can't even do synonyms in Aperture or MediaPro), but in general I feel hierarchies are more trouble than they're worth. Create a few specific ones if you want, but be prepared for them to be broken if your workflow ever includes other software, other people, other computers. Instead I'd point you to the Keyword Sets feature, encourage you to create more Metadata Presets, and use synonyms as ways to maximise the number of relevant keywords you apply to each image. For hierarchies supposed role finding pictures, I'd point you to Smart Collections and to using the Filter Panel.

John

[Jeremy Roussak]

So kikashi is partially correct. Synonyms do affect only search, and not tagging (assignment). Searching on a term that is a synonym will find images tagged with the main word. (e.g., search on Azure and you'll find Blue).  

But the statement that you'll find "any image which bears that keyword or any keyword BELOW it in the hierarchy" is backwards. You'll actually find images using the keyword, it's alias, or any word ABOVE it in the hierarchy. So if an image is tagged with Red, you can find it by searching on Red or Colors, but not Pink. If the image is tagged with pink, you can find it with Colors, Red or Pink, but not Salmon.

Re-read my post. You'll find that behaviour is exactly what I described.

Jeremy

[meyerweb]

My apologies, you are correct.  Somehow I read your post the opposite of what you actually said.

[John Cothron]

Uses of synonyms..... Species' scientific or common names, foreign language equivalents. Basically anything that you wouldn't want to enter directly or have as a search term. Last time I looked, though, you can search them using smart collections, which reflects the concept that synonyms get applied upon export from Lightroom.

Frankly I think people waste far too much time fussing over keyword hierarchies. Lightroom's implementation is about as advanced as any in its class (pretty sure you can't even do synonyms in Aperture or MediaPro), but in general I feel hierarchies are more trouble than they're worth. Create a few specific ones if you want, but be prepared for them to be broken if your workflow ever includes other software, other people, other computers. Instead I'd point you to the Keyword Sets feature, encourage you to create more Metadata Presets, and use synonyms as ways to maximise the number of relevant keywords you apply to each image. For hierarchies supposed role finding pictures, I'd point you to Smart Collections and to using the Filter Panel.

John

I use them to make keywording faster (as well as to export synonyms).  Other than that I wouldn't have a use for the heirarchy.

Incidentally, I'm using your Big Note plugin as a work-around for the Flickr/Alamy conflict in the way they use captions.  It does very well.

[Tony Jay]

In answer to original post:

Once your hierarchies are in place and you have a photo that you would like to keyword then type the keyword you would like to use in the filter keywords box just above your keyword list and hierarchy.
If the word you have typed is present in the keyword hierarchy then this will appear in the keyword list along with its hierarchy. The rest of the keyword hierarchy magically disappears.
If the word is represented more than once in different hierarchies then all the occurrences will be visible. The word you will want to use will be apparent by the hierarchy all of which will be on view.
If you click on the appropriate word then that keyword and its hierarchy will be added to the list of keywords.

There is a further issue to be pursued here. If in the construction of the hierarchy you exercised the option not to tick the keyword tag option - 'include on export' - on certain keywords then those actual keywords will not be included on exporting the file. Any other words in the hierarchy with that keyword tag option ticked will be included on export.
Keywords with keyword tag option - 'include on export' - not ticked are still available within your system for searches.


Hope this helps

Tony Jay