Keywords & Tags

[davida31228700]

Hi

I'm running Lightroom CC on Windows 10.

I'm a little confused regarding Lightroom keywords & their relationship to Windows 10 File Explorer file tags.

Many of my photos, when viewed in File Explorer, show tags. These tags contain the same information as the photo's Keywords when viewed in Lightroom.

However, some of the photos in File Explorer show no tags even though they show Keywords in Lightroom.

Is there any relationship between LR Keywords & File Explorer tags?

If not, is it possible to add File Explorer tags from within Lightroom, and how?

[davida31228700]

Further to the above: If I view a photo (that has keywords assigned in Lightroom) in Bridge it shows that there are no keywords assigned!

[davida31228700 · Accepted solution]

OK, solved (I think).

Adding a keyword via Lightroom does nothing outside of Lightroom whereas adding keywords with Bridge writes tags to the file which are viewable with File Explorer.

Mmm... I'm not convinced I have the full picture but it works for now.

[ManiacJoe]

You are going in the right direction.

Lightroom calls them keywords, Explorer calls them tags.

Lightroom never writes to the original files.

When you add keywords to an image, those keywords are associated to the image from inside the catalog (database).

When you export your edits into a new image file, the keywords will be added to that new file so that Explorer and other apps can see the keywords/tags in that new file.

[dj_paige]

davida31228700 wrote:

OK, solved (I think).

Adding a keyword via Lightroom does nothing outside of Lightroom whereas adding keywords with Bridge writes tags to the file which are viewable with File Explorer.

Mmm... I'm not convinced I have the full picture but it works for now.

In Lightroom, you can ask the keywords (aka tags) to be written to the photo files themselves (or in the case of RAW photos, to a sidecar xmp file), by selecting the command Metadata->Save Metadata to File. There is also an option that causes Lightroom to automatically write the metadata to the files (or sidecar .xmp files in the case of RAW).