The Dreaded Keywording Task

Here's another topic many photographers dread. ; However, with today's workflow tools, this is really easy to do. ; I use Aperture so I know it best. I am assuming Lightroom also does this. ; There are other tools geared towards this work too.

Easiest way to add keywords is when you import or ingest (ie., bring the photos from your camera or memory cards onto your computer for processing) your photos. ; I add captions, keywords, copyright and location information. ; Here's an article on how it's done in Aperture: Always Add Keywords on Imports.

For me keywording is a two step process. The captions and keywords I add on import are general. ; Here's an example. ; After a whole day spent in the Magic Kingdom, the keyword list would be like this: travel, vacation, orlando, florida, walt disney world, magic kingdom. ; The caption is also very general. ; If you have a more specific subject, your keywords and captions can be such.

In the second step, I use Aperture's batch tool to append more specific keywords. ; Say I took 50 photos of Space Mountain in Tommorrowland. ; I would add the keywords tomorrowland, neon, ride, roller coaster, space mountain, thrill, white and so on. ; With the batch tool I can add those to all 50 photos at one time. ; Yes, this step takes time but saves a lot more time for me later when I need to see all my Space Mountain photos or if I want to find all my photos with neon lighting. ; I do the same for captions and this is when I really work on them.

Let me note here that before I do the second step, I have already gone through and rejected those photos that are out of focus, bad exposure, bad composition or are photos that don't make my standards, etc. ; So, that cuts down on the time it takes to do the second step.

I do the same for all my photos and my flickr photostream is one place that benefits. ; I only have to tweak a few things before uploading to flickr as the keywords are turned into tags and the captions are already there. ; I do need to add a title which is the Headline field in Aperture. ; Aperture already has the technical metadata. ; I use FlickrExport for Aperture (highly recommended) which lets me select flickr groups to add the photos to.

Hmmm...I think I just wrote up my photography post for my blog. ; ;D

 

Sounds like a blog post to me! ; I have never bothered to keyword the images on my computer since I file them by location already. ; I do keyword my images on my online galleries, but right now I'm keywording them manually, which is a pain in the butt.

 

Not sure about pbase but, when I upload to Smugmug, the keywords show up under each photo and can be selected or searched on. ;

Sometimes location is not enough. I'll add keywords for events like birthdays, fireworks, shows, concerts, relationships, etc. ; Emotions like laughing, pouting, sad and happy can come in handy. It depends on how detailed one wants to be.

 

This is one of the things I want to look into with Aperture 3, but I have to ask: How often do you really search thru your images to justify using as many keywords as it looks like you input?

Erich

 

For me, a lot because of the blogs that I write for. ; AllEars, especially, as I am always looking for photos to go with the weekly photos we post and articles I write. ; From my family, I get requests for holiday and birthdays and such, too.

It is a personal decision about how much detail you want to use. ; If keeping them in Aperture libraries, albums and folders is enough then maybe you need very few keywords. ; I would encourage enough to describe the general subject and location.

 

I do keyword, but I do not go overboard with specifics about the photo. ; I also use collections and collection sets within Lightroom which I find very useful for categorizing my photos.

 

I'm actually in the process of switching over to Smugmug, but since I've never keyworded my images I'm doing it all manually for now. ; At least they give you the option of adding them to multiple photos at the same time.

 

I need to start applying keywords, and I need to go back and do it to my photo archive. ; But I've been hesitating because I need to figure out a method for it.

I mean how many keywords do I want? ; I figure it'd be best to keep the total number of keywords down to try to keep it more usable.

For example, let's say I'm dealing with a picture of a tiger taken in Animal Kingdom. ; How do I tag it? ; Tiger is obvious enough, but what else? ; Animal_Kingdom also is fairly obvious... does it get a Disney_World tag too? ; Amusement_Park? ; Do I tag along taxonomic categories and give it a felidae tag?

I definitely need to do this, I've been looking for either specific images or images along general subject lines lately and all I can do at the moment is page through entire directories of photographs. ; I'll be the first to admit that this is not ideal. ; But besides figuring out how I'll be using keywords, I need to understand the rest of the organizational tools available in Lightroom so I know which tool is best used for what purpose.

 

My biggest thing with keyword anything more than a very generic is just so time consuming. ; I realize it may be a drop in the bucket compared to some of you guys but right now my library is around 63,000 photos (of which half are sports and if I have to tag each player.... yowza!)

 

My pics are imported into Lightroom. ; LR allows you to apply as many keywords as you want as you import the pics. Once imported I go through them and apply any additional keywords. ; I also let LR back them up to a second external drive and then I manually back them up to a third external drive.

 

I did use this for my blog today. ; Not much different than the OP but I did add a new link for those who use Aperture 3 which might be of interest so I will duplicate here: Keyword Control Bar in Aperture 3

 

Bleh.. I started doing this last night. ; I just do not organize! ; It's not what I do. ; I'm at my best when I'm gloriously disorganized.

Or maybe I just have no organizational skills.

Whatever the case.. ugh. ; This just brings up more and more questions. ; How do I label housecat pictures? ; Simply "cat"? ; Should I be more specific and say domestic cat, and leave cat as a generic term to be applied to all felines? ; Do I bother looking up the specific species of a crab picture, or am I happy going with simply "crab" for it's label?


I've been suspecting that something existed, so I did a google search for it. ; Yep, various people have compiled massive lists of keywords for various animal groupings, like I found one for mammals of North America, another for undersea life for underwater photographers. ; They're all being offered for sale, though, and as none I've found so far are really appropriate for my subject range I guess I'm making my own. ; I did learn about the concept of keyword synonyms, though, from one of the sites selling their own set.

This makes things even more complicated, now it seems I can use synonyms to achieve something similar to what I was planning to do with hierarchies. ; But basically, the idea is that you can have, say, a keyword for dog, and add synonyms for canine and pet, and a search for any of those words will also bring up dog. ; So.. I could have a pet keyword that then leads hierarchically to a list of species commonly kept as pets, or I could have all those pet species have pet as a synonym.

Oy.. see, this is what I meant. ; I have to figure out how I want to do this before I do it. ; I think I'm still using taxonomic categories for my hierarchy, that makes the most sense to me, I might add feline as a synonym for the felidae family, I THINK that would then have everything in keywords categorized under that show up when I used feline as a search term.

The question is, what do I do with "cat"? ; Do I leave it as a generic term for domestic cats, or do I repurpose it as a generic feline reference? ; I think I'm leaving it as a generic for domestic, in the same way that dog will remain as a domestic dog reference. ; With the way I tend to think I normally use feline or felid to refer generally to all cat type critters, cat is more my category for the standard domestic cat variety. ; But then again, maybe I should just use house cat for that concept. ; Ugh.

See, THIS is why I let twenty five thousand pictures build up without keywording them. ; It raises too darned many questions at first.

 

Dan, you truly have a dizzying intellect to quote one of my favorite movies. ; I would say you are over thinking this. ; Remember, it's easy to add keywords later if you want to change up. ; I do it all the time. ;

If you are going to call a lion and a housecat both a cat, then describe your housecat as a cat, domestic, housecat. ; If the cat is a specific breed like Maine Coon add that. ; Color is an important cat trait, too. You can find a lists of breeds and colors at the Cat Fancier's Association website.

If later on, you want to add feline to all 'cat' photos, you do a search on 'cat', select all photos and add the keyword 'feline' to all of them.

My point is to start keywording as I feel it makes things easier down the road and today's photo management programs make it easy to do so.

 

Dan, that is exactly why I decided to start keywording only new images, and not go back to the old ones. That way I can make it up as I go instead of trying to bite it off in one big chunk.

Erich

 

I do like how you can apparently manipulate keywords after they're assigned. ; I'm not sure if I can change them, maybe I can.. but I can definitely reorganize them, so I could, say, create a new category "leopard" and drop "snow leopard" in under it, giving all my snow leopard shots a leopard tag as well without having to deal with each individual one.

I'm working on it. ; Slowly.

I think now my biggest enemy is doing the job only half way. ; I keep going through a directory and tagging the easy ones. ; Frog is easy enough to label, I don't mind not getting the specific species, it's one of several very similar looking species, but there's a heron of some variety that I need to look up, so I skipped over it telling myself I'd find a positive ID later. ; And then the directory ends up only half done.

Maybe I do need to stay with less detailed tags for now just to get a feel for the process. ; So long as I at least have a method to my vagueness I can go in and add detail later.

 

I've gone from zero tags to meaningless tags- I need to find that balance between the two.

 

Scott Bourne posted this article about metadata today.

Three Reasons Why Every Photographer should Care about Metadata and Three Metadata Tips