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Keywording Part 3

Lesson 17 from: Post-Processing for Outdoor and Travel Photographers

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

17. Keywording Part 3

Lesson Info

Keywording Part 3

let's look a little bit more keyword in just a couple things where it's like if you spent the time to do that what are some of the other features that might take advantage of it once you've put your time in and in a few little oddities so do you remember we discussed that there's a feature called collections in light room where it's like a virtual folder and you can drag pictures into a collection and it doesn't move them on your hard drive just remembers where they are so when you click on that collection it can show you those images again regardless of where they reside so I could have a collection called textures and those textures could be from dozens or even hundreds of folders on my hard drive and so could be nice then there was also a type of collection called a smart collection in the smart collection is similar to a saved search well if you've keyword id a good number of your pictures why not take advantage of those keywords that you've put in to automatically have some collec...

tions populated for you for instance I have a collection called best of ben and that's if anybody will ever want to see like a portfolio of my photography what might I want to show them well this particular portfolio of images is automatically generate I didn't have to drag this image into that particular collection because these images are once that are based on a search and it's a really simple search let's take a look at what it is if I come over here to collections remember to create a collection there's just a plus sign up to the right of the word collections and there were three kinds there's a collection set which is the one that looks like a shoe box and there and it can only contain other collections just a container for collections and then there was a normal collection which is the kind where you have to manually drag your pictures into it to populate that collection with anything and then finally there's a smart collection smart collection is what we're going to be using here and I have one here called best of ben and their fifty five photos in it well let's look at what the search is it's a really simple one I'm just going to double click on the name of that collection which will show me the settings that are uh used to create it and if you look all it is is searching for key words and it has to contain a key word called best of men so now any image in my entire collection of photos if I ever go to the keyword panel and I just start typing the word best it will say hey you've used that before it'll start to auto complete it in the best of ben and if I just take a picture with best event it'll show up in that collection that's really simple in them that's one of those key words that I would have the checkbox turn on or turned off that says export with image or whatever the name of the he burned once I'd have that turned off this is only for my internal use I don't need it like attached if it gives us if the photo is given to a stock photo company or for some other use so anyway that's pretty simple but the problem with that is you might end up taking way too many images with best of them and then you think the way have to manage those images is by removing that key word to get something out of that this particular collection we could make it more sophisticated than that let's say that when I go to best of ben I see there are fifty five pictures that match that search and I think that's too many I want my best too bad to be a really narrow down and really the best even though I have fifty five inches tagged with that over time that number will just keep going up is I find more images I think are worthy well I'm gonna double click on that collection and let's add to it let's go over here and hit the plus sign near the right side and say why don't we make it so not only does it have to have the key word of best of ben but let's narrow it down to things that have a rating that are greater than or equal to at least three stars and therefore if I change the radio my pictures it's going to change how many show up within this search result does that make sense so it's got to be both that key word and is greater than were equal to three so right now we have fifty five images in the collection when I click save you see it just went down to fifty instead if I want a narrow it further I double click on it again and I say well fine let's go to four stars or higher and I see the number fifty I click save and now we're down to forty seven and I could continue narrowing that down if I find that there's still too many images then now I'm down to thirty six now if that's not enough I could double click again and I could say maybe come in here and put in something else I could come in and search for a different key word within here if I wanted teo gets under uh other metadata is where you find key words and maybe I want to put something else like I don't know I just come up with something like absolute best or or whatever it is I think would be a nice thing to tag on my pictures with keywords have it automatically populate this we're just lower the star ratings and some of these images they start going away so I have this set up to automatically create all sorts of portfolios I have portfolios based on subject matter and if I open this up well here if I want a portfolio of abandoned image is all we have to do is one click like that and here are some images that are abandoned if I double click let's see what my searching is for this this is different it's not the best of men which is like my absolute best this is searching for something that's been tagged with the word portfolio best of ben is like the absolutely absolute best of my portfolio not like the entire not the more broad one so portfolio I also have a label attached my picture you could have a different colors that you assigned to a picture and they have names well I have one called done it has to be an image that's finished has to have a certain rating and have the keyword of abandoned that this might not make sense to us faras what you need to use to use for your portfolio but the main thing is you can see that based on one particular keyword and then a little bit more to narrow it down so it doesn't find everything with that key word I could have it automatically generate this portfolio so I have a bunch of these in here and go to architecture and it automatically populated those because it had the key word of architecture all he did was the exact same kind of of smart collection over and over again and just change one word which is the key word is searching for and suddenly I have portfolios with all these particular uh subjects and if I don't have them populated all I need to do is in the future when I go and take a picture with one of those key words and it matches those search search uh what do you call it that the steps that I had in there it will automatically show up populate these I have the same thing based on locations so right now for africa there's only one image that is worthy of this I do have a good number from route sixty six from glacier national park that kind of stuff but as I rate things with higher ratings and tag mohr images these will get populated I just need to take my pictures and then you could also have one newest images if I double click on this all this is okay all this is the captured date was in the last six months is so it had the same general things portfolio and whatever system it is to do that and I just said hey it's new within the last six months well I've been sitting in a fixed location for a while so I don't have as many finished images I mainly just have this one which is a light painting of a pickup truck so anyway I find those to be very useful once you get key words you can incorporate them into your um into your smart collections now there are a few things you gotta look out for that might mess you up and let's see if I can find one that might mess me up I think if I go in here and shoes huh let's just see if I can find something that's got a few uh images innit you're going to find that sometimes there are images that are unexpected if I'm searching for uh for instance the word stream and I have something tagged with air stream and the brand of the trailer it might start showing up in some of those searches so you have to be careful also you'll find that sometimes you will have um multiple images showing out that you don't want to for instance if you ever create what's known as a virtual copy I don't know if we've gotten into that much but you can right click on any image and make a virtual copy and you could take that virtual copy make it black and white crop it a different way or whatever you want but any time you make a virtual copy it takes on the key words that were originally assigned to the original picture so suddenly you might have to images that look really similar showing up in a portfolio because they're just both happen to have the same set of key words well if that was happening I could come in here and if I found two of them I'm not sure if I will hear but I could click on one in I think over here and just removed the key words if I didn't want them on the virtual copy oftentimes I don't because I want only the original to show up I know that if you want to delete your key words by selecting here hitting the lead you have to have it over here on the right set to enter key words if it's one of the other two settings that air here than the field that shows up down there is not editable you can't click on it and change the tax then one other thing that can be a little frustrating depending on what you're doing is when you work with the key word list and you come in here and start drilling down to what it is you're trying to look for if I come in and choose something like arts and crafts and I do a search for it the number that you see right here will tell you all of the images that are tagged with a key word that's inside this one or the keyword itself but you might not get that number of images showing up when you click this arrow and I think that can be confusing about it is do you remember when we created stacks where we have the top image of the stack is the only thing showing up and we collapse all the other images so that they're kind of hidden underneath well when you click on that little arrow to have it tell you to show you every image that conforms to this key word it ignores the images that air in a collapsed stack so if you have a stack where you can't see the pictures that are anethe it's as if they don't exist when it comes to that search if you expand that um stack they will show up and so sometimes what I do is I'll have to come up here and she was all photographs at the top make sure I'm not filtering some scene every single photo in my library I could select all to literally select two hundred nineteen thousand images and over here in choose photo stacking it's getting a little bit tired exits two hundred nineteen thousand pictures it's thinking about and there is a choice in there if he never shows up to expand all stacks and therefore I would see all of them in that search result right there expand all stacks that would do it on my entire catalogue and therefore when I'm using those arrows it would find even images that are in a collapsed stack I find that both good and bad as faras the feature goes it's nice that I can make it so certain images don't show up in those searches but then other times I don't realize that and I just get confused because I um expected to show up I'll see the number of fifteen right next to the keyword I click the arrow next to it knowing five images show up it just doesn't make sense to me I don't realize that they're in a collapse stack so that's kind of an oddity of this then one final thing I'll mention about keywords before moving on I have a special folder that I call details that I find to be overly useful you might want to create something similar you might not call it details might have a different name but if I open this up all of the keywords in here are ones that do not export meaning there only for my internal use within light room and let's look at some of the ideas we can use first off we have submitted well some of uh makers of hardware used my images like their advertising in that type of stuff and I keep track of which images have I submitted to those corporations or which images have I submitted to a photo contest but wantto do that well if I want to keep track of them I could just add a keyword inside this parent called submit and therefore it's very easy to find the images keep track of them I have projects these would be the images that were used in a book that I wrote with a friend named jack davis called hot awhile it's an old book that you don't want it anymore it's out of date I can come over here into a prince I take pictures of people if I go and deliver a print to them after doing a light painting of their vehicle or whatever so here's a guy receiving hiss print of this vehicle that I like painted and so I always take a picture of it like that I have also within this licensed absolute license an image so I'll mark which one it is and if I open this it would tell you the invoice number because that's the key word tag legal things this is do I have a model release if I click that that's an actual picture of the model release and if I click on it I can figure out which images which folder of images have model releases and which don't or property releases this would be that same guy that was holding his print well he signed a a release for his vehicle so it's okay for me to use it in advertising and other things I also have in here someone's I'm testing and what that is is these air always sorted alphabetically if you use special characters at the beginning that will show up at the beginning and I have action needed and I'm just experimenting with this I'm not sure if I'm going to find it to be useful or not but what I like about it is if I put a special character at the beginning like an exclamation point then if I want to assign that anything I just click on whatever image it is I want and when I come in here if I can remember the special character for the category watch I'll just do an exclamation point it gives me the full list of what kind of actions might I need to incorporate with it so I don't have to remember them all I just need to remember the special character err and I can easily do that or I have one which is the pound symbol which is the status of the image I'm testing that to see if I like it so just know that you might find that to be useful to use some special characters at the beginning if you find you want to get fancy all right now we're completely done that I know of talking about keywords and things related to said things what I will say is if you want to get started I think it's worth the time I'm spending the next probably four months keyword ing the last like two decades of photos that I have but in the process what I'm doing is developing a system I mentioned the system when it came to ratings how I think and we didn't get all the way through that system you just got the basic part of it but not only would it be the rating system keyword ing system and their special search system and all that and it's going to end up being a book and so right now it's the first thing it will be will be an e book and that's what I am working on over the next four months or so if you would like to know when the e book is available which would show you exactly how the implement the entire system when its fleshed out in it would tell you how you start from a really terrible keyword list and get it organized or how do you start if you've never used them how much you want to structure it if you want to be notified when it's available feel free to send an email to this email address and just make the subject line book and if you send an email to that when the e book is close to being finished I'll send you an announcement that simply lets you know that about to release it it will also include at least I plan to include some videos that show me working with the key words so that you can not just read but also see it I think one quick final note from old red eye that I really like suggestion talking about smart collections it might be beneficial note the without keywords smart collection hey said I was or she was elated when they stumbled across it which is a great thing because it pulls up all the images that don't have any key words so that you can really easily just go in and and he was everything yeah what I like is the combination of that and a star rating because I don't end up key warding every image I only keyword the good ones and so if you search for key word is what is the key word is empty or keyword is I can't rember the wording whatever you just said meaning it does not have any key words at all and its rating it's three stars or above then that's means keyword these like crazy because these are my good images they're the ones I actually want to find because I don't want to sit there and keyword two hundred thousand images I'm sorry but I'll be dead before you know it's the matter of my three stars are above us what I keyword and one final question from ramada how you handle different languages in key warning suggestion earlier that maybe you use for example in english word as you know one key word and then set the dutch or japanese or spanish word as the citizen in them yes that your suggestion yes if there's certain countries like uh miramar or however you want to pronounce it out even when I'm there they pronounce it differently used to be known as burma and some other countries were referred to that so I put it in as a synonym and there's also the same thing and many other locations and for describing different objects that you might have a thing I put in the minutes is synonyms

Class Materials

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Handbook
Bonus Packet
Post Processing Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Photoracer
 

After catching parts of each of the three days, I knew that I would need to have access to this wealth of information. What is great about the program is the ability to stop and go back over something that is not fully understood...and be able to do that until confident enough to move on. I saw no "fluff" in the course, just great information imparted with a style that is makes it easy to understand. CreativeLive scored a big hit with this course! The bonus material is SO valuable, especially the presets. That saves an enormous amount of time for me. My appreciation of the power behind the software is becoming ever clearer. Thanks, Ben, for another outstanding presentation!

Shannon Beelman Photography
 

Ben has been amazing! He is a wealth of information on organizing images as well as great tips to make your travel images pop just a little more. I came into this class feeling like I had a good handle on lightroom and have come out with a better understanding of the power of the software to make artistic life easier. He covers tips, tricks and little known options that help make workflow smother. I have sat here watching as much of the free broadcast as I can and in this last week I have gotten control over years of images in my lightroom. This is one I know I will be buying soon.

johninblackhawk
 

Great class! Somehow, it was enjoyable not having Ben default to "curves for everything"! I don't think the title for this course did it justice, tho. This class was 90% Light Room and 10% Photoshop. I was very happy to discover that dynamic and equally as happy to purchase this course! If you are new to Light Room, this class is a MUST. Creative Live offers several LR classes but this is the one to own. Ben is working on his new book about Light Room Mastery - can't wait! In the meanwhile, I'll be watching Ben's thorough approach to LR in this video. So, don't let the title throw you a curve ball, if you are new to Light Room or a seasoned user, there's plenty of great information - delivered as only Ben can! Thanks CL for this great class!

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