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1. Re: Keywords in a stack?
I think you're stuck. Lightroom supplies stacks, but they are seemingly mostly there as a means to declutter a grid- or filmstrip- view. As far as I know there's no way to apply any change to all stack members with one gesture.
The best I can come up with is to shift-click on the number icon on a grid image of a closed stack. That will open the stack with all stack members selected, and you can apply keywords to all members at one go. I can't see a way to take it to a higher level, though, where you operate on groups of stacks.
Hal
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2. Re: Keywords in a stack?
I think I found a solution for the keywording.
I usually create a Smart Collection for my monthly copyright submissions. When in a Smart Collection, the images are not stacked or grouped even though they are still stacked in the original folder. I can add keywords to all similar images there, and they show up in the stacked images in their original locations.
On the other hand, I often shoot the same image several times and keep only one of the better ones. With HDR and Panos, I might only want to keep one set out of five sets of similar shots. If I click on a "Stacked" group of images and hit the Delete key, it only deletes the top photo from the stack instead of the entire stack of 3 to 5 images I want to cull.
All of this seems counter-intuitive to me. Once I group or stack them, I'd like to think of them as a unit and move, cull, or keyword as a group, similar to the way a group of objects works in Illustrator.
M Jackson
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3. Re: Keywords in a stack?
Just to add a bit to Hals response if you don't already know this. You can save a few keystrokes if you've already assigned keywords to the top of multiple stacks. Open and select them the ones with the same Keywords, go to the Keyword box and delete the "*" next to the Keyword you want assigned to all. Close and go to the next ones. All selected will have that keyword assigned.
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4. Re: Keywords in a stack?
dgluck1,
Yep, I know that one. And, I can expand the stack, select the first one, shift select the last one to select all of them and hit the Sync Metadata command (with Keywords checked). The additional images in the selection will be assigned the keywords of the initial image. Holding down the Alt Key while doing so is supposed to eliminate the intermediate window, but it doesn't work for me.
The problem I bumped into here is the fact I had done so much work initially creating all 100 stacks from the 360 images—only to find out I had potentially caused myself a lot more work assigning the same keywords to the various "similar" images. After seeing and understanding the problem, the best workflow would be to assign the keywords to similar images before stacking them into smaller groups.
Assigning the keywords in the Smart Collections saved the day, even if it is a back door fix.
Obviously, I am all ears if anyone else has suggestions to help me streamline the process.
Best regards,
Mike Jackson
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5. Re: Keywords in a stack?
Mike
Look up my Syncomatic plug-in. It syncs metadata from the top item to all the hidden items.
John
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6. Re: Keywords in a stack?
Hello JohnBeardy,
I bought your plug-in and loaded it. I believe it will work perfectly for the task of adding keywords to the stacks.
I didn't try it yet for this task, but let's say I have four stacks that are essentially the same. I know I can now use your program to add keywords to all the sub images in the stack, but can I select several similar stacks and apply the same keywords to all of them at the same time?
Is there a similar plug-in that will let me delete a stack (as a group), instead of just the top image in the stack?
M Jackson
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7. Re: Keywords in a stack?
Mike
Yes, it will handle those four stacks as you want, and the stacks don't need to be at all similar to each other. Each stack is handled individually. Essentially the Sync Stacks command runs through all the images you select and identifies those that are the top images of stacks. Next, for each of those top items, it reads their metadata, finds the other members of that stack, and updates them. It can work on all those hundreds of pictures in one go. Just try it on a test catalogue.
The way stacking affects metadata entry is a difficult design area. Some will only want to keyword or annotate the top item - they're using stacks to identify the best images of a burst and regard the other frames as worthless, and may even throw them away. LR's assignment of metadata to the top items works fine for that group. Others like us see the items hidden inside the stack as worth keeping, and worth applying metadata. But we wouldn't want all the images to have the same rating and typically the top ones might be worth a star or three, but not those items lower down in the stack. That's why I provided the choices in the Sync Stacks command.
I don't know of a deletion plug-in though. Without checking, I don't think the SDK allows one to delete files from the catalogue. You could always apply a colour like yellow to the stacks you want to delete, run Sync Stacks, and then filter on the yellows (maybe maintain a "to delete" smart collection) and periodically delete the yellows with the Alt/Option Shift Delete "shortcut".
Let me know how you get on.
John