Keywords In Lightroom. Janine explains her process

Using Keywords in Lightroom correctly can not only save you a tonne of time but it makes it so much easier to sort and find images quickly and easily to match the categories of most photographic competitions too. Janine explains her best practices and a few quick tips.
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[@PangolinWildlife]

What other keyword strategies have you used to good effect?

[@picturetaker607]

Great tips Janie, I bit the bullet and keyworded my photos a few months ago. A big bonus is my website host uses ketwords, So When I upload an image from lightroom the website distributes the image to the correct galleries!

[@GenreFilmsUK]

A really useful and informative video on how are tackling retrospective key wording. I’m about to scan 5 to 6 thousand photos to create a family archive and this has been extremely informative for me, giving me ideas on how to keyword them effectively.

[@Pompeyreddragon]

I love this video. I was aware you could 'tag' your photos in Lightroom but had no idea how. This is a brilliant guide to setting up and using keywords. Very clear and easy to follow.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Stu, so glad this video helped you out... maybe check the other modules from the course... cheers Janine

[@boatman222345]

Great introduction to keywording! I have about 90,000 keepers in my collection and about half of them are fully keyworded. The frustration I have is that I shoot a very wide variety of subjects and places over several days time.Thus a single digital "film roll" can be very time consuming to keyword. Let's see there are 6 images of bald eagles in Northeast Harbor, 7 mountain landscapes in Bar Harbor, 22 whitewater canoeing shots from Bangor, etc. Seldom do I have the luxury of highlighted large groups of images and applying bulk keywords. One trick I've developed over time is when I import my images the keyword "Not Keyworded" is automatically applied by my import preset. Then when working my way through dozens of different sorts of images when I finish a set I unclick "Not Keyworded" and because "Not Keyworded" is set in my keyword filter bar those images not containing it are automatically removed from grid view. This prevents me from repeating myself and works well to reduce errors.

[@grantw7]

I am new to Lightroom and yours is the first instruction I am watching. You are a very good teacher (I'm a retired one so I know good teaching :)). You are very easy to follow and I'm fortunate that you are my first instructor!! I discovered Excire last week so when I started to set up my keywording Excire had already done the "heavy lifting" and all I have to do now is add keywords the program would never know about - it didn't know the exact region where I took the shot or keyworded what was in the main part of the picture but I wanted further descriptors of background areas. With 90% of the pictures already keyworded by Excire, doing the last 10% makes the task easy! Now on to the next lesson........

[@PangolinWildlife]

Thank you so much - check out the full course here www.academy.pangolinphoto.com/ cheers Janine

[@raylander6329]

Excellent keywording video for lightroom, Janine; thank you for that; Guts said you have this 11 videos on lightroom and I should learn from it. I did not use lightroom before, and downloaded it now, and learn bit by bit. PS our recent trip to Botswana with Pangolin was exceptional, Guts was the ultimate host and both my wife and I were very impressed; I think we learned a lot. Thank you again everyone, at Pangolin Photo Safaris!!!

[@ghislainedenul4693]

I believe that key-wording is essential but, as Janine says, you have to do it every time you import your images. During lockdown I key-worded thousands of fotos , time consuming, but it was worth the effort. Thanks Janine

[@PangolinWildlife]

Thanks for sharing! Glad you made good use of the time.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Ghislaine... so great to hear from you. Well done - a big high five to you - Janine

[@carrieryan2679]

So helpful. Thank you.

[@CarolineOrdHume]

Excellent tips. I have been using keywords for my images and location keywords but I didn't think of adding in the behaviours etc so I think I will start doing that now. I don't mind going back over my images to do that even if it does take ages because I always come across images that have improved with age! Thank you for zooming into the lightroom screen so we could see what you were referring to better!

[@PangolinWildlife]

Glad it helped Caroline. Thanks for watching.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Caroline, thanks so much for your amazing feedback... sounds like you have great discipline - Janine

[@keithpinn152]

Hi Janine: I enjoyed your video. I have been key-wording my LR Catalogue of over 200,000 images for years. I use Excire Foto to keyword the images which runs in the back-ground of LR, and then I go back and add my personal location keyword information to the image. I really enjoy key-wording so I really don't mind the time that it takes. I use the hierarchical approach to key-wording along with synonyms so this helps out greatly. Cheers, Keith

[@kmacfly59]

Another very informative video Janine, I always keyword my images as soon as I import into Lightroom. After watching your video I think I need to add more keywords to make my searches easier. Thanks for this!!

[@cherylcranfield]

One of the best things you taught me to do. Specific photos are so quick to find now.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Delighted to hear it Cheryl. Hope you and Trevor have a wonderful Xmas....sorry its not in the Chobe this year....but December 2021 will be upon us in no time!!!!

[@PangolinWildlife]

You're very welcome! The more the better and as you add and use more keywords the easier they will also be suggested making the task quicker.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Keith, it is personal preference but it definitely helps me out a lot - Janine

[@petergottschling2597]

Thank you Janine. I started keywording with Lightroom 3 and it is so much fun to go back and critique my early work or review old wildlife pictures when I add new ones. I have about 38,000 I kept over the years. Your video showed me some new things also.

[@PangolinWildlife]

You are so welcome! Always nice to revisit old adventures though our image library.

[@kentaufderheide8454]

Great video. I keyword when I import. Takes a second to do and saves a lot of time trying to find photos. Thanks for the tip about being able to keyword in full-view by having the auto sync on. I never knew that and I thought I knew everything about Lightroom. LOL! Thanks!

[@PangolinWildlife]

Glad it was helpful!

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Kent, thanks so much for watching. For me keywording upon import is unfortunately too limited. Thereby I would be stuck with the location only rather than the specific subject or even behaviour or camera technique. But one can definitely safe some time - Janine

[@grahamclark2299]

Great video! I use the Lightroom keyword hierarchy quite a bit for locations. For example, I'd have Chester under Cheshire then Cheshire under England. Each time I type in Chester I automatically get Cheshire and England populated. Also I use synonyms in LR, for example I'd add pachyderm as a synonym for elephant so each time I type elephant I also get the synonyms applied. These 2 really sped up my keywording workflow :-)

[@PangolinWildlife]

Thanks for sharing! Great tip!

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi GC, that is some great advise. I need to be a bit careful with it as wildlife can have so many sub categories, same with the location as I get around and habitats and even areas can occurs in multiple countries - Janine

[@Stef1955]

Thanks!!!

[@MichaelIzner]

wow - key words - awesome tip. Thank you! Happy New year.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Glad it was helpful!

[@jss27560]

When I import the pictures for the day I usually do the general keywords like the location etc. next I go through the individual pictures and add more specific descriptions. What I would like to be able to do is to add multiply keywords at the same time like if I add elephant I would also like it to add things like the scientific names etc.

[@davearchbell9921]

Great Video. I do it like you with year and month and do my best to keyword on import. If my import is of 1 subject I will apply keywords on import ie Birds, location, type of bird. I'm also trying to catch up with past years.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Great tip!

[@AlanTow]

Thanks for the video! 👍

[@PangolinWildlife]

No problem 👍

[@patrickcloutier3305]

Thanks very much Janine! Again, very good video! I use collections to help in categorizing my pictures. And a little bit of key wording. But I realize with your video that I could do more with keywords to retrieve pictures according to various elements. I noted you keyword for categories such as subject (bird, mammals, persons...), action (behavior, ...), location, light conditions (golden hour, blue hour, night, bright...) , photo genre (wildlife, portrait, sport, nature, street....), photo techniques ( panning, long exposition, hi-key, Lo-key, silhouette...), Editing techniques, etc... Do you go through a specific category checklist?

[@PangolinWildlife]

Valid point.

[@PangolinWildlife]

@@ggivensjr very good point... for me collections are great temporary working tools but not good long term organisational help

[@PangolinWildlife]

HI Patrick, you can create checklists within lightroom but they are to specific and differentiate too much to standardize them in my eyes. I really just go with what comes to mind based on these main categories. You can also use hierarchically keywords where one keyword will trigger another keyword to pop up automatically. For instance if I would type Okavango Delta, Botswana would pop up - Janine

[@mustafakasapoglu]

Thanks, it was very helpful!..

[@PangolinWildlife]

You're welcome!

[@NikCan66]

Another tour de force from the oracle's of wildlife photography

[@PangolinWildlife]

Ta very much.

[@NikCan66]

@@PangolinWildlife thanks 😊

[@johngunning2123]

I may need to watch this a few times to fully digest this information.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Its not going anywhere. new LR course on its way soon too!

[@jackieboshoff2013]

Great video! But Eish, I wish I kens about keywording and collections and all these handy tips before. Now I have a gazillion images to go through and start keywording etc 🙈

[@PangolinWildlife]

You can do it!

[@johanmichiels5640]

Why not giving as set of basic key words as location and other which apply to the complete set when importing the images

[@PangolinWildlife]

Good point.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Johan, that works great for one or two keywords. However the rest is so specific that I have to add it individually anyway! - Janine

[@RogerZoul]

I tried it and I failed (I could not keep it up and now I have a zillion images), but thanks for the video, Janine.

[@PangolinWildlife]

You can do it!

[@PangolinWildlife]

Maybe one day you have the patience to come back to it - Janine

[@martink8080]

Can you suggest a good method to decide what kind of keywords to use? What about hierarchical keywords (Africa / Namibia / Etosha) where if Etosha is selected, the other two are automatically applied too? Do you keyword things like sunset, sunrise or do you use the time stamp? Do you keyword background objects like a distant animal or just the main subject? Agree that too often, keywording is the poor orphan in the photography process until you can't find that one special image.

[@martink8080]

@@ggivensjr Never had a problem with correcting misspelled keywords, my DAM software does the hard work of doing a bulk update. I am intrigued by the level of detail in your background tagging. Seems like a lot of work. When I return from vacation with 10k images, while the foreground or main subject might be similar in a long sequence, the backgrounds can change rapidly, especially when panning. Finding all the similar objects to tag would be too much work. Are your keywords "behavior>playing>slide>backyard" etc cascading with each one a subset of the previous or are they all on the same level with no relationship between them? So that if it was a sandbox instead of a slide, do you just change "slide"or the whole set? I always have difficulty deciding when a place becomes an object. For example, France / Paris are obviously places but then is the Eiffel tower a place or an object? I suppose that as long as one is consistent it doesn't really matter.

[@martink8080]

@@ggivensjr Ah, now I get it but how do you keep background and foreground keywords separate when the same thing can be in both. If there are lions in both the foreground and background, does it matter? Or is the top level "background" part of the keyword list? But then is the lion keyword part of the foreground? Not trying to be difficult, just want to understand how you do it? Janine?

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Martin, I use hierarchical keywords a lot as I need to know details. I need to know exact locations when looking for my images for galleries or competitions and same with species and family groups. It is a bit of work but it really pays of at the end... I agree with George that the biggest problem is misspellings ... it takes a bit of time to clean those up! I never name the secondary subject unless it is critical for the interaction as it becomes to much work then...

[@bigdtf1753]

Hi Janine, love your videos. My LRC doesn't search keywords in sub-folders when I select the parent folder. I have to select a sub-folder if I want to search in that folder. Am I missing something?

[@PangolinWildlife]

Have you seen our free courses? www.academy.pangolinphoto.com/

[@davidsherman3462]

Are you going to have a video about shooting the "Winter Star" on December 21, 2020? thank

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi David, what an amazing event. If you want to learn more about Astro Photography please check out the following tutorial which will help you get your camera settings right. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYK7qn1mqZh_iKs Unfortunately, none of us owns proper observatory equipment to view or photograph the spectacle at a closer distance and therefore it will be difficult to make an appropriate tutorial. cheerios Janine

[@jimbeam4092]

Tagging or adding keywords are comon methods to find items in a database. Apart of the capability to edit photos do you have any alternative to organize thousands of photos. Lightroom is quite expensive for nonprofessionals and one is dependent from a single sw company for years.

[@PangolinWildlife]

Hi Jim, check out my other modules for this lightroom course to see how I organise my images in Lightroom - cheers Janine

[@jrsdvd2]

Hello, I’m first comment, but I prefer using the Luminar for photos 🤣🤣

[@PangolinWildlife]

Good choice!

[@vanomaden]

die giraffe ... geil :-D

[@PangolinWildlife]

Yes!

[@StevenSchoolAlchemy]

Hello

[@AjaySingh-228]

nice mam

[@PangolinWildlife]

Thanks

[@AjaySingh-228]

@@PangolinWildlife You are welcome

[@NinhTran09]

👊🏻

[@PangolinWildlife]

Cheers.