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Assigning and Managing Keywords

Lesson 12 from: Lightroom® 4 Fundamentals

Laura Shoe

Assigning and Managing Keywords

Lesson 12 from: Lightroom® 4 Fundamentals

Laura Shoe

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Lesson Info

12. Assigning and Managing Keywords

Next Lesson: Keywording Q&A

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Pre-Show Banter

07:02
2

9:00 am - Introduction: Why Lightroom®?

13:23
3

The Lightroom Library Catalog

16:42
4

Staying Organized

15:00
5

Backing Up Your Library

11:12
6

Importing Your Photos

34:20
7

Preferences & Settings

28:57
8

Settings Q&A

10:49
9

Reorganizing Files and Folders

33:25
10

Using Views and Labels to Evaluate Photos

45:00
11

Filtering and Stacking Photos

13:37
12

Assigning and Managing Keywords

31:42
13

Keywording Q&A

12:43
14

The Metadata Panel

14:38
15

Searching for Photos

20:54
16

Creating a Collection

15:25

Day 2

17

Day 2 Pre-Show Banter

09:09
18

The Map Module: Assigning Locations

43:33
19

The Develop Module

11:37
20

Fixing Your Photos: Histograms and Cropping

22:02
21

Fixing Your Photos: Spot Removal Tool

33:25
22

11:30 am - Upgrading to Lightroom® 4

12:14
23

11:45 am - Basic Developing in Lightroom® 3 & 4

21:29
24

Basic Developing Part 2

19:43
25

Color Adjustments

23:36
26

Tone Curve Panel

18:59
27

Making Subtle Adjustments

13:22
28

Lens Corrections

10:54
29

Local Adjustments: Partial B&W

13:03
30

Local Adjustments: Portrait Touch Up

26:05
31

Additional Local Adjustments

09:55
32

Graduated Filter

24:24
33

Bonus: Day 3 Preview

01:19

Day 3

34

Day 3 Pre-Show Banter

12:44
35

Bonus: Recap of the Develop Module

08:44
36

Virtual Copies

08:58
37

B&W and Creative Effects

20:50
38

Noise Reduction

12:23
39

Sharpening

18:33
40

Sharpening for Portraits

08:46
41

Syncing Changes to Multiple Photos

17:53
42

Autosync

21:09
43

Creating and Using Presets

15:53
44

11:45 am - Lightroom® and Photoshop

22:49
45

Sharing Your Work

08:42
46

Exporting for Web

16:59
47

Exporting for Print

26:06
48

Workflow Recap

40:50
49

Thanks + Credits

07:02
50

3:00 pm - Lightroom® 4: Publishing

20:52
51

3:30 pm - Lightroom® 4: Video Editing

12:38
52

3:45 pm - Lightroom® 4: Book Module

19:36

Lesson Info

Assigning and Managing Keywords

Now I'm ready to go on and start key wording the photos. So, you know, this is one of those pay now or pay later kind of activities. It's like who wants to take time to keyword photos? I want to go develop the photos. But when I do that, of course I pay later when it takes me forever, toe actually find my photos because I've got a sift through so much so doing. Even a little bit of key wording can really pay off. So we're still in our Let me just remind people that we're still in our Victoria folder. We're working with our Victoria photo shoot that we just finished. So we're gonna keyword by using the key wording panel on the right side. Here. Do you see how it takes me forever to scroll through my panels on this side? And I've got lots of panels here showing that I just don't need to see right now. I can take charge of this by right. Clicking on any panel doesn't matter. But on this right hand side and saying solo mode, So solo mode. When I collapse a panel so quick develop, I'm gonna...

collapse this by clicking on the downward triangle and when I open actually made back up here. Quick develop is open. When I opened key wording now, quick developed collapses. So when I open a panel, all the other panels collapse. So right, click on a panel name, say, solo mode, and, uh, that will That will keep this scrolling to a minimum. I don't need the hissed a gram right now. We'll talk about that tomorrow. So I'm gonna open up the key wording panel. And this is where we can assign keywords and view keywords on our photos so we'll scroll back up in the in the grid here to the first photo. And with this photo selected, I can see that it's got a keyword of Victoria. So that keyword was applied in the import dialog. So I applied Victoria. So all of the photos, So each one I click on, I'll see Victoria over here in key wording. So let's add some additional keywords. I'm gonna go ahead and add the key word garden to this photo, so I'll click in the box here, put a comma and type garden, and then all that will hit. Enter or return to seal in that keyword. Okay, now, of course, there's more than one photo of garden here, right? We really don't need to do them one at a time. So just like when we assigned flags, we can assign several at once. So let's I'm gonna collapse. The filmstrip collapsed the left panel. Weaken Seymour. That way, let's select all of the photos. Or let's just select this, trying to think if you guys have him in the same order I do at this point, let's do this down in the sword order. Go back to file name and then let's go ahead and school to the top. Now here's here's the thing Todo I want a keyword. Just my picks or don't want a keyword the rejects that I was afraid to get rid of his Well, well, that depends on how important those rejects are to me. Generally, I'm just gonna keyword the picks for the sake of example. I think I'll go ahead and keyword everything just so that we have somewhere photos to keyword. But I wouldn't wouldn't always father on that. Okay, so this first photo with key worded with garden, we can now select all of the other photos by doing click command, click to select other garden photos Come down through these and there's so many here. But now an alternative. I could have done it edit, select all and then command clicked on the ones that were not of a garden toe un select them. But let's go ahead and type in here comma garden and all of these photos get the key work yard could enter that sealed in and else go back up to the top and let's go ahead and choose all of the statue photos. So I got this This photo, Actually, I've got a several Siris of photos here. So command, click on the other statues and I'm almost done here. Okay, select all the statue photos at Statue into the keywords. Now, frankly, because I'm working on this demo and a lot of these rejects a great out. The only reason I'm key wording the rejects is if they have more photos to keyword, but because they're great out, this probably kind of hard to see on screen. So I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna do command a and I'm gonna do P for pick so that they're not great out anymore so that folks can see them. Okay, so I've done garden. I've done statue. I've got some of blurred trees here, so I'm gonna go ahead and select these blurred trees. Click command, click. And then I'm gonna put in the keywords trees. I'm also gonna put Blur, so it's just kind of a photography technique as a keyword. Now, what keywords should use for your photos, I would say anything that that's gonna help you find them. How's that for never useful. Um, really? When you look at your foot, when? When you're thinking about finding a photo, what terms would you associate with it? Okay, so this photo on the wall to me, this is the Oregon coast. In my mind, it's the Oregon coast, and it's a blue beach reflection. So I'm gonna have blue and beach. And reflection is key words because they're gonna help me narrow down from my Oregon coast photos to get to that one. Okay. Trying to think what I have back here. So I've got a Chicago for Evanston, Illinois photo. I put Evanston, and this is the L in Chicago. And that's how I'm gonna think of it. So those are the key words that I would add to the photo. So for each of you is gonna vary. If I have an abstract, it could be a a peeling paint on plywood. But that's not how I think of the photo. I think of it as an abstract of grass and sky. So those air Maura appropriate keywords for me because that's what I'm gonna go start sort, you know, sorting my library through my library to find. But I recommend that you start with maybe just a handful of key words some people can get. You know, you get so excited about key wording that you a sign, a lot of adjectives and saying things like that. But I find that people tend to get burned out pretty quickly. They get exhausted, right? So they stop key wording rather than just starting out small and growing from there. Now, of course, if you're a stock photographer, you know much more about key wording than Ideo. And you're assigning maybe hundreds of keywords to a photo. But for most of us, you know, just a handful can be enough to find photos based on the keywords now, I added Victoria as a keyword location as a key word. I've always done this, I would add, Victoria, I would add British Columbia on top of that Canada. On top of that, I would create a hierarchy, and I'll show you how to create a hierarchy. But I have to say that if you have light room for you don't have to keyword with location anymore. You certainly still can. But you're going to see tomorrow morning that the map module can assign that information for you automatically. If your camera assigns GPS location to your photos, then the map module can automatically translate that into country, state and city. If your camera doesn't assign that information, you could drag photos to the map to say where they are, and then light room can automatically add that location information. So it's kind of a choice that you have certainly for light from three users like to users. I would, you know, if it were me, I would use Location is a key word. I know there's a software out there that will recognize faces, so if you put anti and on enough photos, you know when you're identifying people, eventually it'll start recognizing those people. That's really scary to me. But so is light room ever going towards that or have anything like that? It doesn't now. I mean, I think elements has face recognition. I haven't used it, but it seems to me that I have heard that about elements, but I don't know if it's coming toe like her burnout. It certainly would be convenient. Sure. Okay, so let me show you one more way to assign keywords. And then we get into hierarchies, hierarchies and organizing keywords. But let me just take one little pause here and just check check my notes here, making sure I'm setting up the rest of the afternoon with these keywords. Okay, so you can select photos and type in keywords using the keyword panel. There's probably five different ways to assign keywords in light room, and I'm not gonna cover all of them. Um, this thinkers six, But but I do kind of like this other tool. I like them all, but we don't have time for the ball down here in the toolbar. We have a patron can. So if I click on this painter can. Now, if you don't see the painter can in the toolbar, then you need to go to the right here, click on this downward triangle and choose painter from the from the list. But normally that one, that one is up. So if I choose the patron can, let's have the key word reflection. Now what I'm gonna dio is with the paint can chosen. I have this box here at the bottom to type in keywords, so I'll type in reflection and I'll hit. Enter. It's kind of sealed in there and now with notice that your mouse is now the paint can. So now I can find my reflection photos and I can just click, click, click, keep going down find anymore. I guess that's get more now. There's no there's no penalty for clicking twice. If you weren't sure if you got it the first time Now, in light from three. If you click a second time, it removes the key word light room. Or maybe that's like to Yeah, I think it was like from two. It would remove it if you clicked it a second time with light from three and light room four. If you want to remove it, you have a choice to either come to the key wording box here and removing it or holding the all ski down the oath. Can the PC the option key on the mouse. T get the eraser tool to click to remove. So alter option click removes the key word click, click, Click assigns the key word. Okay, let me zoom back out here Now why is it a paint can tagging? Exactly. So you know, it's like the Adobe team has a sense of humor. You know, I didn't know that either. Okay, let's do that again. Let's assign the keyword. Um Oh, let's see. Let's assign the key word. Hadley Castle. So what? This Come down here, Um, to the to the box here for the painter tool and type in that I don't care if you type something else. That and hit, Enter, handle. Zoom back out here. And then, of course. What if you've been there or not, you may not even know which ones are from the castle, but this one right here make some males bigger. So, um, here's one from the castle here, so click click click click, and there's some others distributed that looks like university there. Course I had to look up on the Web where I couldn't remember where I've been here. But that one's at the castle too, so that could be a very convenient way of doing it as well. Now, I want us to give a few more keywords to these justice set them up for Are searching for our photos. Example. So I want you to give nature toe all of the nature photos. Now, what I would suggest is that you select all so edit select older command day and then find the ones that air, not nature. First put the paint can away click back in the dock here to put the paint can away. So I just clicked back here. I docked it, okay, and then I'm going to zoom back out. Okay, so we have selected all of them selected, and then you're gonna hold the commander control key down as you de select those that are not nature. A little bit subjective. That's all right. Doesn't matter. We just have to have that key word in our catalogue. Yeah, and then I'll click in the box over here. And a lad. Nature. Yeah, I can't type. And the last thing I want you to dio is to go back to the reflection photos and using either technique, I want you to add the keyword trees to the reflection photos there were of trees. So what I'm doing is just click on the first command click on the next. I could get the paint tool, and I've got them all selected. Come over to the keyword a panel, comma trees. All right. And hopefully that sets us up to actually find something. Will research later? Yeah, I notice there's an asterisk by some of the words right there. Yeah, thanks for for bringing that up. So I'm gonna zoom in here on the key wording panel. I have a bunch of photos selected. Let me get exactly in the right place. I have a bunch of photos selected, and the keyword garden has an asterisk next to it. So what that means is that of the photos that I have selected. Some of them have the garden keyword and some of them don't. So maybe four out of five have garden assigned some subset of those five photos I have selected has the garden keyword. Now, if I scroll down to see what I have what all I have selected. In fact, all the ones I have selected are of the garden. So I missed the garden keyword on one photo so I could go figure out which photo that waas. But since they're all selected, I can simply come to garden here and delete the asterisk. And now it's actually applied. So all of them. All right. Any other questions on this is the paint can used for anything else? Absolutely. I tend to think of it mostly for key words, but you can apply other settings as well. So if I click on the paint can we're painting with keywords, But you could also paint with color labels, flag stars, um, meta data settings, meeting developed settings, etcetera. So much broader application from, uh, is it Suggs Kensho. Can you explain nested keywords so that you can get more with one click, for example? Yeah, that's exactly where I'm going next. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Okay, so we'll go into that now if you scroll down below your keyword a panel on the right hand side. You've got a keyword list panel and you probably you have all my photos in there. You probably have a list of keywords now in your catalogue that you don't want. But you've got him. Also, you had to get rid later. But you can imagine this keyword list has a list of every keyword used at any point on any photo in your catalog. So when you have 50,000 photos, you've taken the time the keyword them you're gonna end up with a list that scrolls on forever here. So the keyword list is used to manage keywords in your library. It's used to find keywords, but you can create hierarchies. And one of the advantages of hierarchies is just to help you keep this list managed, for example, you could have people and then within people you could have clients and then within clients, you could have individual names, you know, and a same level list of clients. You could have family and then individual names within that. And when you're not using people keywords, you could actually collapse that portion of this keyword list. Now, the other advantage that the questioner alluded to is, Let's say I've set this up for people down to my family members. When I assigned John to a photo, it will automatically assign higher levels in the hierarchy. So it will assign family, um, and then people to that photo as well. Another great example for this is location, you know, again, light room four. I'm not, you know, so into it as I as I have been in the past. But if you keyword with location, you can assign Victoria and have it automatically assigned British, Columbia, Canada, North America to your photos at the same time, so you can save a lot of time with it as well. So let's take a look at how you would actually set that up. Let's do it for location. So let's see, in my keyword list. I already have Victoria at 39 photos here. If I zoom in here, got Victoria here in list and I want to If, as I scroll up way, way up, I can also see that I actually have British Columbia. In my catalogue here, you didn't see me, a sign that it must have come in on a photo that I imported. So let's put Victoria into British Columbia. What? We're gonna do this? You guys have that as well? Okay. Oh, good. Well, that let me just delete mine, and, um says I spelled Colombia wrong there. Anyway, it's the wrong wrong part of the world, so I'm just going to delete it. So what I did waas I right, clicked on. I'm going to right click on British Columbia here, and I'm gonna say delete. And it's going to delete the keyword not only from the list, but from that one photo that had that key word, which is fine with me. It's not leading the photo so that we get to start from scratch. We have Victoria on our photos, but now we need British Columbia. Now, I could select photos and add British Columbia, but I can just in isolation, create keywords, um, without assigning them to photos just so that they're ready for the future. So we'll do that with British Columbia at the top of the key word list panel. We're going to click on this plus, and let's call this British Columbia, try to spell it correctly this time. And for now I'm not gonna go into this, so I'm just gonna say, keep these. Keep these box checked. At this point, I wouldn't add to selected photos. I don't even know what I have selected out in the filmstrip right now, so I certainly don't want to do that. So we'll just say create. Now. I have British Columbia here in my keyword list. It's not on any photos yet, but that's perfectly fine. I'm going to scroll down, find Victoria. It's gonna be a long way to drag, but I'm going to take Victoria and I'm gonna click and drag it up, and hopefully it's gonna scroll nicely. Come on. There we go. And I'm gonna drop it right on British Columbia. And now it's collapsed. So I have this sideways triangle, so it's hiding Victoria, but I can click on the downward triangle to see it now. So now Victoria is within British Columbia, and hopefully I got the geography, right. That is correct. All right. Yeah, a couple of questions on that. All right. Kind of random, but, um, MD wine. Can we distinguish with name Victoria from the place? Victoria, if you're creating that hierarchy, you would put the same Victoria keyword in different hierarchies. Yes, you could have Victoria in a peoples in a people hierarchy, maybe in a names subcategory of people and then also in a location hierarchy. Cool. Um, and I guess it would be the same from liking. CL asks if you have four guys named John in the same family. What I usually do when I'm key wording specific people is I do last name space first name so that that automatically will distinguish individuals. And also by putting last name before first name and the key word list. Things are going to sort alphabetically. So I'd much rather search, you know, by last name, and then find the first name just another, trying to understand the way this works from Debit 72 by moving Victoria into British Columbia. Did that automatically add British Columbia to the photos that were already tagged Victoria? Exactly. So that's exactly where I was going to go next. You know, which is like a perfect you guys just like way. I mean, it's like half my work is done in this class by saying right click, and the other half is five, but is by addressing the question, So Okay, um, so Victoria was already assigned to this group of photos. Now I noticed that I'm sorry. I'm getting distracted because my mouse is this painter can this painter can will follow you around, okay. And you'll accidentally click, Can be assigning, you know, keywords. So you've got to remember, unlike what I, you know, learn from my mistake. When you're done, put it away. Click back on the doctor, put it away. You can also hit escape, and that will put away. OK, so what we're doing is we had already assigned Victoria, and I want to show you that all of the photos that had Victoria on them now also have British Columbia. So if I just select any one of these photos now it's it's actually showing you already right here in the keyword list that it's assigned that it's got the check mark. And then the dash dash indicates that it's also assigned, but let's scroll up to what we're used to working with, at least for the past 15 minutes, which is the key wording panel itself. Now it looks like I have lied to you. Here. You see how I have this photo and it's got Victoria on it, but not British Columbia. And I've got this panic going on inside of me like No, not really. I know what's going on. It's just not showing us at this point those higher levels in the hierarchy. It's just showing us keywords that we entered. Okay, right here at the top of the key wording panel. It says keyword tags enter keywords. So it's on Lee showing us keywords that we entered. If we click on this, drop down and we choose keywords and containing keywords, it will show you those as well. Now, the one downside of leaving this on keywords and containing keywords is you can't type in this box anymore. But that's kind of a small price to pay, because you know what? If you can't type in this big box, you can type in this little box right here, so, yeah, that's up to you. Okay. All right. So let's keep going without location. Example a little bit further, though. Um, let me, uh, soon back out here and we'll go to the keyword list panel. Let's right. Click. Can we do this? Let me see now. I guess it doesn't work that way. Let's create Canada now. Okay, so let's click on the plus next to keyword list here. So Canada and just leave those boxes. Checked that air by default, checked and click. Create. Oh, okay. What? You guys may not have gotten this message. I'm not sure, but if you already have Canada than say OK, did anybody else get that? Okay, Good. Good. So already have Canada. What to say? Candidate to Okay. Oh, here it is. Right here. Okay. So let me delete Canada too. So I have Canada. You guys just created Canada. Let's take British Columbia. Drag it down into Canada, and you can expand those if you want. And let's create one more. Let's create two more. Sorry. Let's create North America. So we'll click on the plus to the left of the keyword list. North America click rate, and then we'll drag Canada down into North America. Let's see, I need to delete this this, uh, other thing here. Okay, so we've got North America here. The last one we're gonna do is location. So North America is gonna be within location, so I'm gonna scroll back up, click on the plus to the left of keyword list type location. Now I tend to make these kind of master categories that really aren't meaningful keywords in themselves, all in caps. It's just my habit. So location doesn't really mean anything on a particular photo. It's kind of it is a key word technically, but it's more of, Ah, holder of keywords to me. So I'm gonna go ahead and type location and caps here, click, create, and then we can drag North America into a location. And, of course, we could go on all afternoon and the Web folks would be efficiently answering their emails. So you get the idea, though right now again, because I have Victoria assigned British, Columbia, Canada, North America and location have automatically been assigned to my photos. So with one photo selected scroll back up to the key wording panel and you'll see that you now have all of those keywords on your photos. If in fact, the top drop down says keywords and containing keywords. So that says that you're going to see all those photos. Are all those keywords now other types of hierarchies that might be useful? I'll give you some examples that I have. Maybe you guys here in the audience have others but types of photography. So within types of photography, I've got portrait's and landscapes and macro and other other types of photography techniques. People is another one. Um, what can you guys think of just different types of categories or hierarchies of keywords? That'll put you guys on the spot for a moment. Take a break. That's the Internet. Okay, We're all kind of tired here. 2 30 in the afternoon, I think. Membranes or branes. Oh, yeah, I go. Sometimes I'll have an emotional effect on something so, like sadness or loneliness or joy. So, you know, like my experience of the photo, not the literal subject matter. Exactly. So I have one called descriptors, and within their emotions is one. So, you know, colors is another cause. Sometimes when I think of a photo, it's about red, you know? So So it's nice to be able to categorize those

Class Materials

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Lightroom Day 1 Slides.pdf

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Favorite-Lightroom-Shortcuts.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Miguel Lecuyer
 

Great workshop! New to Lightroom and found it very helpful. Saved me a couple hundred dollars and time by not taking an evening LR class. Creative Live workshops match my learning style perfectly. Laura is awesome! My only complaint is maybe Laura can use a PC next time which is what she seems more comfortable using. Her shortcut mix-ups on a Mac were making me a bit dizzy :)

a Creativelive Student
 

I cannot express enough how impressed I was with Laura and this class. I learned more in the 3 days of this workshop than I did in all 6 weeks of a class I took online that cost three times as much. I left not only impressed by the class but MOST importantly - refreshed and energized to put my new knowledge to use! Thank you for that!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

Excellent workshop bar none. I learned more about Lightroom than I did from any other tutorial/workshp that I previously encountered. Thanks Laura!

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