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Add Keywords

Lesson 4 from: Beginner Workflows in Lightroom

Tim Grey

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Lesson Info

4. Add Keywords

Lesson Info

Add Keywords

now keywords to me provide to basic benefits. Number one is enabling me to locate an image later. That's pretty straightforward. If I'm looking for a picture of the Space Needle, then I might use the keyword space needle. But also key words provide a secondary benefit once you found an image reminding yourself, What is that? Now? In the case of the Space Needle, one might argue that you're not likely to forget that. That is the Space Needle. It's a pretty iconic structure. I think most everybody knows what the Space Needle is, especially if you've ever been to Seattle. But what about this one? Not quite as obvious. Sure, if you're from Seattle, you know that this is the Experience Music Project. But for someone else, it sort of abstract. It is not obviously any particular building. It's just a detail shots, so you might not know what that is. And so you find this image so I like this, But what is it? And so that's that second roll of keywords is to remind yourself of what a particular ...

subject or area waas. Now, how much time do you want to spend Key wording. Your images For me, it is none. I do not want tohave to keyword my images. I wish that someone else could just come to my photos and no everywhere I was and what I was shooting and what I was thinking and just add keywords. Based on all of those details, I don't have that luxury, So I'm the one who has to do it when I'm looking for a photo or when I see a photo and I don't remember what that subject waas. Then how much time do I wish I had spent key wording, an infinite amount of time. So I'll leave it to you to figure out how much time is an appropriate amount of time. But at the very least, I encourage the keyword key subjects or your favorite images and try to anticipate what sort of information are you gonna want to know about a photo and what sorts of subjects their images are you likely to be looking for. So here, for example, I might add Experience Music Project as a key words. I'll just type project comma e M P. Those will be to individual keywords because, you know, if your Seattle local then you're gonna call E M P. You're not gonna That's just It's too many long words. So it's called the MP, right? So there to keywords added to identify the subject, I might also include the keyword sky and reflections and color and blue and what we call that kind of purple and orange And what have you all sorts of possibilities again, you need to think about for your own purposes. What are you generally looking for in your images? Are you just looking for the subject matter? Are you looking for a particular species of bird? Well, then, that's a key piece of information about one at. Are you also looking for more conceptual things for primary colors and for key concepts and, you know, happy versus sad. You need to think about how you're looking for your photos, how you're thinking about your photos to define what makes sense for you. Conceptually, then the process of adding the keywords is easy. Except then I come over here to this image, and once again, that's part of the Experience music project. So I got type them all again. Eventually, you're gonna start sitting like I don't wanna have to type these all over again. There are several different ways we can approach this. There's a keyword list so we can turn on a check box. We can use a painter, but we can also select multiple images at one time. Here is somewhere that you need to be very, very careful in light room. If, for example, let's switch to the Space Needle. There's a picture of the space needle, and there's a picture of the space Neil and they're and they're so I'm selecting multiple images of the Space Needle, and I can accomplish that in two ways. Depending on the particular images, I can click on the first image and then hold the shift key and click on the last image, and all of the images in between will be selected. Or if I need to turn on individual images that aren't all next to each other, I can use the control key on Windows or the command key on Macintosh and click on additional thumbnails to turn them off or on, so I can toggle the selection off or on as needed and select multiple images. However, if I add the keyword space needle Let's go ahead and do that space needle. Then we go to how many images have I just added the keyword space Needle 11? Because from light rooms perspective, I'm on Lee working with a single image right now because right now I'm in the loop view. I'm looking at a single image, even though down below on the filmstrip Aiken, see multiple images and Aiken see that those multiple images are selected from light rooms. Perspective. I'm only working with a single image. So if I switch to this image of the space needle, you'll see the space needle keyword was not added. This would I call the light room loop view snafu? Because in the loop view, you're gonna need a lot of problems if you've selected multiple images and you think you're assigning attributes to multiple images. The fix is easy, though. Just switch to the grid view in the grid view. If you have multiple images selected, you can update multiple images at one time, so I'll go ahead now and just add that keyword again. Space needle. There we go. Notice we have that auto complete press enter to apply, and now if I go among those multiple images, you'll see that all of them indeed have that keyword aside so we can work with multiple images all the same time just by using the grid view to select. And because of this behavior, I highly recommend that if you're going to select multiple images in order to assign metadata to multiple images to update multiple images, use the grid view to actually select the images in the first place. Try to get out of the habit of using the filmstrip to select multiple photos, because then you might fall victim to that light room loop view snafu. So select multiple images in the grid view, and then we can assign keywords. There's certainly other metadata values, so I could also add Seattle Washington as the location where I could add a title or caption to these images or other metadata values. For me personally, keywords usually suffice. I kind of use keywords for all of those various purposes so you can see here, for example, I've added Seattle and Washington and Space Needle and whatever other keywords I feel are appropriate for these images. Instead of adding the city name in metadata in the state in metadata for me. Personally, I generally just use keywords for those multiple purposes. But that's just me. It's up to you to define a work. Well, that makes the most sense for you personally.

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Ratings and Reviews

Pamela Richardson
 

I enjoyed Tim's friendly and professional style of presentation. I appreciated that he was methodical in his approach, and was very clear in his explanations of every step that he was taking. It is quite clear that he has extensive experience in teaching. He presented at a good pace so that I was able to make notes and absorb the information. I have used Photoshop since August 2015, but I have steered clear of Lightroom. I had been afraid to use Lightroom because I was confused about the process of switching back and forth among Bridge, Lightroom and Photoshop. I have been doing extensive photo editing using other software since 2002, but am new to the Adobe products. After watching Tim's class, I have gained enough confidence to start using Lightroom, because I now understand that it is very powerful, can be used to process raw files, and has excellent tools for creating both panoramas and HDR photos (that are still raw which is great!), and more. I learned a great deal from this course, and would highly recommend it! I am very grateful to Creative Live for providing Photoshop Week 2016, and also grateful to the many amazingly talented and knowledgeable presenters for graciously sharing their knowledge and experience.

Brenda
 

This is a great class to help get you started. Tim is a great presenter. Would love Creative Live to have Tim back to teach.

user-58ff4e
 

Thank you so much for your straight forward and comprehensive lessons. I am new to LR and have been waiting to import my photos until I watched this lesson. Now, I feel like I can move ahead with confidence.

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