jwestman Loc: Grand Rapids, MI

Dear Jesus,

Thanks for asking this question! The answers were very helpful to me. It is a question that I've been meaning to ask. Happy Holidays! j

Hammer Loc: London UK

Its the old story of over complexity resulting from the need/desire to analyse as much as possible .

The more you "keyword" the more complex it will get and this will defeat the object of the exercise on the first place.

tinplater Loc: Scottsdale, AZ

My opinion is distinctly different, the more keywords you have the easier it is to retrieve a specific image out of thousands of potential retrievals. In my case nothing to do with the need/desire to analyse, but rather a need for fast efficient selection.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Jerry, I would use keywords such as cars but apply that to the image. Instead I have keywords under cars such as Convertibles, Hot Rods, Vintage, Classic, Muscle, Antique, etc. Never apply the keyword 'Cars' to the image but apply one of the others. If you want see every car in your catalog, then you can either click on the right side of the keyword 'Cars' in the right hand keyword list, or go to the Text Library Filter and type 'Cars'. Every car will show up in your thumbnail grid view.

To be honest, I don't collect that many car pictures so I use the Keyword 'Vehicles" and under that I have Auto Show 2007, Belmont Shore Car Show, Fab Ford Show, Fire Trucks, My Vehicles, Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, Other Jeeps, Rod Run Temecula 2009, Volkswagen Bus.

But under some of those keywords, I have more keywords such as under Fab Ford Show I have Fab Ford 2009 and Fab Ford 2011. Under My Vehicles I have CJ7, CRF-450R, El Camino, F-150, GL-1500, GL-1800, Honda Civic Hybrid, Jeep Project Pics, Kendon, Misc, Motorhome, Rancher, Rubicon, Unigo. Under My Vehicles, CJ7 I have a bunch of different keywords such as Carter BBD, Diagrams, Jeep Bumper for ideas, JeepsRus, Mics Production Pics, Misc Jeep Stuff, My axle and lift project, My bumper project, My CJ7 Misc pics, My CPS project, My engine project, My Genright fender project, My hand throttle project, My locker project, My OBA project, My shackle project, My shock tower project.

Keep in mind, many pictures have have more than one keyword applied to them. For instance, if I'm taking pictures or mountains in Yellowstone and there's a wolf in the foreground, I would give it the keyword of Animal/wolf; Scenes/Mountains; Places/Yellowstone;

Under the keyword Animal, I have many different animal keywords; under Scenes I have many other keywords such as Beach, Mountains, Valleys, Trees, ect.; Under the keyword Places I have the keywords, of such places that I've gone. I have a Camping, Camera Stuff, Events, Fashion Photography, Funeral, Galapagos Islands and many more main Keywords in my list. You can always change them after you have created them too. If you misspell or just simply want to change a keyword, just right click on the keyword and go to rename. If you don't like a certain keyword nested under another and you want to change it, just drag and drop it.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Nope, not Mexican. Reminds me of a joke. Every day driving to work, a man saw a small sign by the side of the road: "Have a problem? Jesus can help," and there was a phone number. One day, out of curiosity, he called and got a recording, "Jesus Gonzales, gardening, home repairs, problems solved."

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Okay, that makes sense. So an image would never be assigned the word at the top of the hierarchy. I just tried that kind of clicking, and I see that I get images in all the subcategories. Thanks.

I've found what I have to be careful of is clicking in the wrong place at the wrong time and deleting keywords from images.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

yes, I can see that. I can have People, Family, Billy, Tommy, etc., etc. Of course if I want to find a picture of a family member, then it has to be keyed.

Joanna27 Loc: Lakewood Ca

Sounds good to me. I'm still struggling. :)

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Jerry, you need to ask yourself some base questions such as, what are the common attributes when you ask yourself, "now where is that photo of ???" (family, car, truck, fall colors, mountains, lake etc.)

Pick your top answers and use them as your base keywords. Expand from there.

You could also incorporate the collections by setting up smart collections for each main keyword. As an example, make a smart collection for all photos with the keyword "family". This will help to find a family photo that does not contain any specific keyword such as wife, daughter, Karen etc. in the sense that you won't have to look through all the car and truck photos. Unless of course the wife is in a truck.

Now that you have all the family photos together you can use the paintbrush tool with keyword selected and paint in specific keywords to each photo such as wife, daughter. etc. Very fast.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I don't go over or under walls anymore. Borrowing out of Dannemora cured me of that. :D

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks. That sounds good. I haven't used the paintbrush for that yet.

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

I personally keep my files organized outside of Lightroom by Year, then by the name of the shoot and date in the folder name and I export to an Edited folder under that. So on a Windows machine it would look like 2015\MillsPond Sunrise12-1-2015\EditedMillsPondSunrise12-1-2015 and so on for each shoot during the year. I keyword as I import into Lightroom and use the location and the dominant subjects in the shoot, as well as any thing else memorable. Even if I totally blow up my catalog and lose all of my keywords, at least my organization on the hard drive gives me a chance of finding things. And yes, I do backup the catalog every time I exit Lightroom, but as a computer guy I am paranoid with good reason. Hope this helps some, Jerry. You're a good guy, but I've never confused you with Jesus.

papakatz45 Loc: South Florida-West Palm Beach

He ask for suggestions. Not your nastiness.

blackest Loc: Ireland

You misspelt jerry :) maybe animal vegetable mineral might make a start.
Earth wind and fire ...

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Are you sure about the Mexican thing? Just trying out a new keyword.