6 Replies Latest reply: Mar 8, 2008 11:57 AM by (Jeff_Swayze) RSS

    Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?

    hrh gracie Community Member
      IN LR, I have keyword hierarchy:

      event
      holiday
      thanksgiving
      christmas

      hot air balloon
      albuquerque 2006
      faribault 2004

      and I have images assigned..... Looking at an image, the keyword tags pane may look like thanksgiving>holiday. BUT, it DOESN'T have the whole hierarchy thanksgiving>holiday>event. How come? AND, I may also have assigned albuquerque 2006 to the image. But THAT one may look like (in the whole alphabetical list) albuquerque 2006, xxx, yyy, event, eee>fff, hot air balloon, qqq and so on.......

      Can SOMEBODY give me the explanation of what its doing, and HOW to get all this stuff to actually show up as hierarchies? I'm looking on line, in the LR manual, AND in a LR book I've got, and I can't find how this works ANYWHERE..... <strangled scream of annoyance>
        • 1. Re: Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?
          WinstonInBoise-bcPume Community Member
          It seems as though "thanksgiving" appears twice in your KW list. Showing the parent of the one assigned is sufficient to differentiate it from the other one.

          If "albuquerque 2006" is unique, it doesn't need to show any more.

          Winston Mitchell
          Boise, Idaho.
          • 2. Re: Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?
            PeteB2407 Community Member
            In the keyword tag pane click the dropdown next to 'keyword tags' and and select 'keywords parents' rather than 'Enter keywords'.
            • 3. Re: Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?
              hrh gracie Community Member
              I have LR set to show "keywords and containing keywords", but it still doesn't show the whole hierrchy.

              Winston, are you saying that even though the hierarchy is
              thanksgiving>holiday>event that LR just displays thanksgiving>holiday to make that particular keyword (thanksgiving) unique? I just checked the exported keyword list and the word "thanksgiving" only appears once in the entire keyword list.

              Let me try a different example... In location I have a bunch of spots in Yellowstone in Wyoming in the USA...

              location
              usa
              wyoming
              yellowstone
              old faithful
              lamarr valley
              morraine park
              sprague lake

              SO, if I have an image of an elk in the lamarr valley, how should the keywords show up? I thought it should show up in the keyword pane as

              lamarr valley>yellowstone>wyoming>usa>location

              and none of the parents should show up anywhere else in the keyword list since they're strictly part of this specific hierarchy... So, how does LR think it should work? On my system, right now, it looks like this instead:

              lamarr valley, location, wyoming, yellowstone

              and its very difficult to identify the hierarchy from the keyword list.
              • 4. Re: Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?
                WinstonInBoise-bcPume Community Member
                The hierarchy can be seen in the left panel.

                I only use the "Enter Keywords" option. With this option, I would expect to see "elk, lamarr valley"

                Winston Mitchell
                Boise, Idaho
                • 5. Re: Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?
                  Community Member
                  Yes, the Keyword Tags panel on the left is the place to see the full hierarchy. I only posted this because "Lamar Valley" excites me like few other words can in my old age.
                  • 6. Re: Can somebody explain keyword hierarchies?
                    Community Member
                    From my experience, the only time I get a hierarchy (ie, xxx > yyy) showing up in the Keyword Tags pane is if there are more than one "yyy" keywords in my list. For example, I just created this hierarchy:

                    AAA
                    BBB
                    CCC
                    AAB
                    CCC

                    When I assigned
                    b CCC
                    to a photo, I got a pop-up showing the options
                    b CCC > AAA
                    and
                    b CCC > AAB
                    . Instead of choosing, I deleted
                    b > AAA
                    and hit enter. The keyword assigned to the photo was
                    b CCC > AAA
                    .

                    Next I assigned
                    b BBB
                    to the photo, and the new keyword list was
                    b BBB, CCC > AAA
                    . When I go to the "Keywords and containing keywords" view, I get
                    b AAA, BBB, CCC > AAA
                    (because
                    b CCC
                    doesn't fully describe the keyword)

                    To address your initial question directly, I don't think you will ever see your full hierarchy unless your keyword is only one level deep, and it is a duplicate of another keyword. The only reason you see a hierarchy (>) in the Keyword Tags section is to differentiate two identical keywords.

                    One more thing, it's typically not advised to use locations as keywords. That's what the Location metadata is for. I suppose if you have multiple levels
                    i below
                    the "Location" level (your lakes, for instance) you'll need to create keywords. But for most applications, the Metadata takes care of that, which helps to minimize clutter in your keyword list.