62 Messages
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1.8K Points
Sat, Mar 17, 2012 7:53 PM
Solved
Lightroom: Keyword options no longer available in LR4
When one has a keyword hierarchy:
In LR3, one could skip a level in selecting which keywords are exported. For example in the hierarchy A, B, C (where A is top parent) one could set A=Include on export, B=Do not include on Export + Export Containing, and C=Include on Export + Export Containing. In this way, on a photo with only keyword "C", on export we'd have A and C but not B.
In LR4 all my LR3 keywords that had this pattern were changed during catalog conversion and I can no longer set this pattern. Turning off "Include on Export" now turns off "Export Containing" and "Export Synonyms" rather than leaving them alone as in LR3.
This is a HUGE problem for me as I have my entire keyword hierarchy (over 3,000 KW's) designed to allow skipping levels. In addition, I have cases where the actual Keyword is for my workflow and convience but but the synonym is what I want exported (not the actual KW) which I can also no longer seem to do.
See screen shots below

In LR3, one could skip a level in selecting which keywords are exported. For example in the hierarchy A, B, C (where A is top parent) one could set A=Include on export, B=Do not include on Export + Export Containing, and C=Include on Export + Export Containing. In this way, on a photo with only keyword "C", on export we'd have A and C but not B.
In LR4 all my LR3 keywords that had this pattern were changed during catalog conversion and I can no longer set this pattern. Turning off "Include on Export" now turns off "Export Containing" and "Export Synonyms" rather than leaving them alone as in LR3.
This is a HUGE problem for me as I have my entire keyword hierarchy (over 3,000 KW's) designed to allow skipping levels. In addition, I have cases where the actual Keyword is for my workflow and convience but but the synonym is what I want exported (not the actual KW) which I can also no longer seem to do.
See screen shots below
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benjamin_warde
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477 Messages
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10.7K Points
8 years ago
Thanks,
Ben
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john_verne
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8.5K Points
9 years ago
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dan_1844859
62 Messages
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1.8K Points
9 years ago
Not only that, but now I'm faced with hours of work just to get back to a state where the same keywords are exported for an image in LR4 as were exported for the same image in LR3 - and to get to maintain that state will probably require clicking several keywords up the hirerarchy chain whereas in LR3 I only had to click the lowest level keyword and the parent took care of themselves (some included, some not).
What is really infuriating is that when you toggle "include in export" off, LR4 saves the settings of the other two someplace before it unchecks them. Then replaces puts them back if you once again if you check the "Include on export". I'm sure the fix is really quite simple - just dont clear those two check boxes when the top one is turned off. All the rest of the code should still work the same.
For me, this is a giant leap backwards in ease of use, funtionality, and usefulness.
Dan
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ole_j_rgen_liodden
15 Messages
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196 Points
9 years ago
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ole_j_rgen_liodden
15 Messages
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196 Points
9 years ago
In LR 3 this was not a problem, so maybe this is a bug??
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Keyword Tag Option problem.
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benjamin_warde
Employee
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477 Messages
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10.7K Points
9 years ago
Thanks,
Ben
10
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dan_1844859
62 Messages
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1.8K Points
9 years ago
It seems that during the converson of my LR3 catalog to LR4, it changed things such that I don't get the same kewords exported in LR4 that I did in LR3. This is a huge issue for me that was not apparent during the LR4 Beta. I have over 2500 keywords in my KW List, all are very well organized and used on over 24,000 images. So, I am pretty upset that Adobe decided to change the rules and alter which Keywords export for any particular photo.
Here's what they did. In LR3, it was entirely possible to have "Export Containing Keywords" and/or "Export Synonyms" turned on (checked) while "Include on Export" was turned off (unchecked). This is a great feature and I used it regularly in two situations. One situation is where I have a multilevel hierarchy and I want to not export one or more of the keywords in mid hierarchy. For Example, in the hierarchy: "Location -> North America -> United States -> Western States -> California -> San Francisco", If I have a photo tagged with KW "San Francisco", on export in LR3 I'd get keywords "San Francisco", "California", "CA" (synonym of California), "United States", "USA" (syn of United States) and "North America". I would not get "Western States" (or it's synonyms) or "Location". After converting to LR4, this image only gets "San Francisco", "California" and "CA". It no longer exports "United States", "USA" or "North America".
In another example, I have a hierarchy for the age group of my models. My keywords are such that the age groups display in LR in ascending order. "00-01 Baby", "02-05 toddler", "06-12 Youth", "13-20 Teenager", Etc. Each of these has synonyms. For example, "00-01 Baby" has "baby", "child" and "Infant" as synonyms. "03-05 Toddler" has "toddler" and "Child", etc. I had it set in LR3 such that only the synonyms would export (not the actual KW name). So a photo with the "00-01 Baby" keyword would export with "Baby" and "Child". Now, after catalog conversion to LR4 I get no keywords exported for this hierarcy at all.
What happened is this. During catalog conversion if the "Include on Export" was unchecked in LR3 (as it was for "Western States" and all of my age groupings) the the conversion ignored the LR3 state of the other two check boxes and forced them to be unchecked.
These are only two examples but represent quite a few instances of the same problem, and to be honest, this is quite terrible. What makes it worse is that in LR4 there is now no way to skip a level in a hierarchy without having to remember to also assign the keyword just above the one I want to skip in additon to the one at the bottom of the hierarchy. And, I have no idea how to simulate my age group pattern where I need just the synonyms to export but not the keyword itself short of making all the synonyms into KW's and then having to assign several of them to each photo (and remember which onces go with each group).
Geez, I thought new releases were supposed to make workflow easier not harder. I guess I got that wrong. I sure do hope that Adobe sees the pain and aguish this has cuased and sees fit to not change these check boxes during catalog conversion and in LR4 itself remove the automatic uncheking and graying out of the "Export containing keywords" and "Export sysnonyms" when the "Include on Export" is unchecked. In the mean time, even though I really love the new Develop Module changes, and the Map module, this keywording problem out weighs those new features and I've gone back to LR3.
Dan
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
LR3 to LR4 Catalog conversion changes which keywords export on photos.
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dan_1844859
62 Messages
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1.8K Points
9 years ago
Thanks for your reply, but unfortunatly you got it wrong this time.
I can't imagine that you smart folks at Adobe can't figure out a way to word the 3 chhoices (check boxes) that make it clear what is going on and thus avoid the "Privacy" issue you allude to. Perhaps a warning pop up when you uncheck the "include on export" box while still having one or both of other check boxes turned on, Something like "Warning, you are excluding this keyword from export but your settings still allow synonyms and/or parent keywords to be exported. Click 'Continue' to leave the other two options as set, click 'clear' to turn off Export Synonyms and Export Containing Keywords" In this warning pop up you can even have text explaining your "privacy" concern That should not be too difficult compared to all the other wonderful things you've been able to program into LR.
If Adobe felt this "privacy" issue was so important that they just had to fix it, why didn't this change show up in one of the dot releases? After all privacy along with security has been a hot topic in the past several years and this capability you turned off in LR4 has probably been there since at least release 3.0 and perhaps even 2.0 or before. Evidently the "privacy" issue you refer is a pretty minor concern to let it stay in the code for so long before deciding all of a sudden to remove the functionality that a fair segment of your loyal users have come to rely on.
Don't just leave us hanging here with a cumbersome and time consuming workflow due to reduced functionality by marking this problem as "Not a Problem". This is a huge problem! Do the right thing and come up with a win-win sloution such as I suggest in the first paragraph that covers your privacy concern and at the same time allows us to use the functionality we've come to rely on
Dan
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jostein_ksne
8 Messages
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144 Points
9 years ago
The argument about hierarchical keywords being a "potential privacy concern" doesn't smell good. Taking a function away from users who know how to apply it, because less competent users screw up, is at best a lame defence. A good parallell would be the provision for metadata in Word documents, where the same liability has been present for more than a decade. Cases exist where sensitive data has leaked through this functionality too. Yet most users of those metadata would be outraged if Microsoft just removed the option for "potential privacy concerns".
If you guys made this decision intentionally, it surely must be rooted deeper than that. If you didn't, which I think is the case, the argument is a sorry signal to send. Defensive, non-committal, and seeding speculation rather than ending it.
I would like to request a better answer, please.
On the technical side, I can't help but wondering if the real reason is that the programming code needs a larger overhaul than Adobe wanted to shell out for in the update to version 4.
From looking at the syntax of controlled vocabularies (CVs) to be imported in Lightroom, I would say that it's rather fragile, using special ASCII characters and indentation to organise the terms. To restructure this to use XML, for example, would require a fair bit of programming. It may possibly also require a database restructuring, for all I know.
On the other hand, that's really where I wish Adobe would go. My wish, and call it a feature request if you like, is that Adobe could abandon its proprietary way of denoting keyword hierarchies all together and concentrate on the IPTC Dublin Core recommendations. In XMP files, keywords are duplicated (if the option "write keywords as LR hierarchy" is turned on) between the blocks containing Adobe's own system, and adhering to the Dublin Core.
Adobe could very well keep a proprietary structure, but shaped more akin to the dc: structure, with a syntax that could be enriched with tons of functionality through XML attributes, and a hierarchy established simply by nesting XML elements.
In particular, I dream of life cycle management of CVs. Take scientific classification of species for example. Most nature photographers would love to have a keyword hierarchy adhering to taxonomic classification. Scientists do however rearrange taxonomical hierarchies occasionally. Species may be transferred from one branch of the hierarchy to another, and receive new latin names to match. I imagine a way of managing metadata that can take such changes in a CV in its stride. Functionality like cross-referencing of terms, setting terms as deprecated to avoid assignment to new images while retaining them in old ones, and bulk reclassification. Maybe also a separate tool, akin to the Lens Profiling Tool, to manage the vocabularies separately.
But please don't answer this by just a "thank you for your thoughts". You really need to come forward with a better explanation for the current conundrum.
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dan_1844859
62 Messages
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1.8K Points
9 years ago
John says "......privacy is a valid concern. Users need to be able to quickly shut off exporting of such workflow or internal keywords, and fixing the bug has achieved that."
My Reply to John:
In LR3 users had an easy way to "quickly shut off exporting" by just unchecking three boxes in the same pop up rather than just one. I understand that there may have been some confusion whereby some uninformed users assumed that unchecking the "include on export" box stopped everything. I am not opposed to a change to eliminate this confusion or make the LR4 behaviour the default. However, eliminating confusion, or even making the default be "the more restrictive action" is a far cry from removing valuable functionality altogether.
In this thread we have seen suggestions that would satisfy both sides of this discussion. For example:
1) Provide a catalog preference such as "Allow 'export synonyms' and 'export containing' keywords to remain active on keywords when 'include on export' is deactivated' " (default = unchecked). This would protect the newbies who don't understand the options and just want to use the top check box while at the same time allow more experienced users to take full advantage of the funtionality from LR3
2) When turning off "Include on Export" on a keyword, pop up a warning dialog box if either of the other two options ("Export Synonyms" or "Export Containing") are turned on. In this new pop up, explain the risk and allow the user to either leave or turn off one or both of the other two options. Here again the default would be to "turn them off" (LR4 Behaviour) but allow them to stay on (LR3 Behaviour).
I can even live with the LR3 to LR4 catalog conversion opting for the LR4 behaviour but it would be nice to create some sort of log as to which KW's were affected so we could go back and fix them (once you provide a way to do so) - or, even better, give us an option when converting an LR3 catalog to LR4 as to which behaviour we desire.
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villmarksbilder
1 Message
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60 Points
9 years ago
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John_R_Ellis
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5.5K Messages
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97.5K Points
9 years ago
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...
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ole_j_rgen_liodden
15 Messages
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196 Points
9 years ago
More open SDK for keyword plugins is a very good idea John!
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jason_hochstadt
5 Messages
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144 Points
9 years ago
For tagging people, all of my keywords are set up as the full name of the person in the photo, but I obviously don't want to export that. I have just first names in the synonym list, and I'd like those to export, but that no longer works in LR4.
I think having a catalog setting, or some way to explicitly enable that functionality, would be a great way to protect people's privacy as the default behavior without completely breaking existing workflows.
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terry_deadwyler
1 Message
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82 Points
9 years ago
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Export Synonyms not working in LR 4.
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