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Posts Tagged ‘Keywording’

3 Photo Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost

03 Jul

The post 3 Photo Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.

Most dictionaries don’t recognize “keyword” as a verb, yet keywording is seen as an arduous task by many photographers. Despite the mundanity, if you want to find specific photos amid a large collection, it helps to keyword them. This article looks at three keywording tools that will hasten the work for little or no cost.

Three Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost

Manual vs automated

The main benefit of laboriously keywording every image yourself is accuracy. You know every word you enter applies to that photo. Or, you have a good-faith belief that it does. Good keywording often involves research, especially if you’re keywording with the aim of selling or licensing photos.

Semi-automated

One way to speed up keywording is with the quick keyword lists you find in all software with built-in DAM (digital asset management). Such lists normally need building first, but they cut out typing and thinking time once installed. A similar system is used in paid-for keyword tools.

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate - keywording - quick keyword lists

An ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate quick keyword list, which you can expand if necessary to include many keywords. I also have an organized keyword list under construction.

Automated

An even faster way to keyword is by using image recognition software. This populates keyword fields quickly. The main drawback is having to remove a few words from most photos. That’s not a bad trade-off when it works well, since deleting words is less taxing than adding them. You’ll still need to add a few keywords yourself, because software like this tends to identify subjects generically.

Three keyword tools for little or no cost

Keyword software ranges from expensive to free. It can be standalone, plugin, SaaS or web-based without charge. You’re unlikely to want to pay for keywording unless there’s a chance of return on investment. Below are three keywording tools that have little or no effect on your bank balance but which might save you time.

Any Vision Lightroom Plugin

The Any Vision Lightroom Plugin uses Google Cloud Vision technology to recognize the content of photos and populate the LR keyword field accordingly. It’s clever stuff. You can try the same technology out here on image files under 4 MB in size. Google Cloud Vision is the engine behind Google image search. The plugin is available on trial for the first 50 images, after which you must buy a license for whatever price you can afford or deem suitable.

Does it work? I’ve found it to be useful for everyday photos, and it even recognizes a few iconic buildings (e.g. Flatiron building). Yes, I have to cut out a few keywords, but I keep more than I delete. It’s not so good with plant portraits, as it tends to fill the keyword field with the names of various lookalike flowers. But once you know its weak spots, it’s good to have on board.

Any Vision Lightroom plugin

Any Vision impressed me by identifying the location of this photo (Lyons-la-Forêt), though I’ll still need to add and subtract a few words.

To get Any Vision working after the trial, you must obtain a Google Cloud Key. That’s linked to your Google billing account, but unless you keyword over 1,000 photos a month, you won’t be charged a thing. Bear in mind you won’t need to analyze every image (i.e. you can copy and paste).

IMS Keyworder

The online IMS Keyworder tool is simple to use. Just enter one or two keywords that best sum up the content of your picture, hit enter and click on relevant photos to create more keywords. The keywords that appear are ranked for their popularity with microstock searchers – customers that look for and download photos. This gives you a clue as to how vital a keyword is to your image.

IMS Keyworder - free image keywording tool

IMS Keyworder shows you how popular search terms with microstock buyers. You can also see how often each keyword appears among your selection.

Other handy IMS features include the ability to bring up a list of synonyms and create templates. You can also embed keywords, descriptions, and captions directly into JPEGs on your PC. This online software is free with the option of making a voluntary payment to the developer.

Xpiks Keyworder

Xpiks is a good open-source program that, like IMS, draws its keyword suggestions from microstock photo libraries. You still need the Internet to use it, but the software exists on your hard drive. And that makes it more versatile since you can add keywords to bigger file formats in the absence of bandwidth restrictions.

Among the useful features of Xpiks are XMP/IPTC/EXIF metadata editing, translation, autocomplete, search facility, spellcheck and, of course, keyword suggestions. If you happen to contribute to microstock libraries, you can also upload photos straight from Xpiks.

Three Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost - Xpiks keyword program

A photo of Mont Blanc in Xpiks with 30+ keywords sourced from several similar microstock photos.

Other keywording tools

Among the other third-party keywording tools I’m aware of (free or not) are the following:

  • Akiwi – online drag and drop image recognition, free
  • Excire – Lightroom plugin with AI technology that lets you search without keywords, 99€ one-time cost
  • fotoKeyword Harvester – by Cradoc fotosoftware, long-established company, not free
  • Keyword Perfect – by A2ZKeywording.com, responsive developer, not free
  • Keywords Ready – online image recognition technology with 50-image monthly limit, free
  • Microstock Keyword Tool – online tool that harvests keywords from microstock photos, free
  • MyKeyworder – image recognition Lightroom & WordPress plugin, small donation to remove restrictions
Three Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost

Akiwi has a cleanly designed webpage that is simple to use. Image recognition helps you find a maximum of 15 keywords per image.

Keywording tips

If you break keyword lists up into categories and sub-categories, you’ll have the basis of a methodical keywording system. The problem with adding words randomly without any system is one of consistency: you’ll rarely end up with the same set of words twice. And that may force you into trying multiple search terms later when it comes to finding pictures. Even if you use keywording tools to help you, it’s handy to have your own lists of words to add on top.

Excire Lightroom plugin

Excire recognizes content but adds keywords sparingly. It’s a paid-for Lightroom add-on that can search your library to some extent without keywords.

The number of keywords you should add is open to debate, especially if you’re licensing photos for publication. You don’t want to waste picture researchers’ time with loosely related words, but you also don’t want to make photos invisible through minimalism. The same applies for your own purposes. About 10-25 keywords often suffices. Some photos might need more. It’s wise to stick to common words where possible. Long or formal words are less likely to be used in search terms.

Keywords Ready - free keywording tool

The 50-image limit of Keywords Ready is limiting for prolific photographers, but this is free software. It gave me a good selection of words for this photo, save for one or two exceptions (I wouldn’t add “material property”).

Final say

I hope this article has led you to some useful keywording tools. If you get to the stage where you have thousands of untagged pictures, modern AI software will help you narrow down a search. Paid-for keywording software tends to be more methodical than the free stuff. It usually includes a large lexicon of categorized words. But free or inexpensive programs will help you get the work done and make your library searchable.

Have you used any of these? What are your thoughts? Or do you use other keywording tools? Share with us in the comments below.

 

photo keywording tools

The post 3 Photo Keywording Tools for Little or No Cost appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.


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The Power of Keywording in Lightroom

12 May

I have to admit, I did not know about keywords in Lightroom, or their powerful uses, until a couple of years ago. During one of Julieanne Kost’s tutorials, I heard the terms and saw it being used in a very practical sense – a way to add specific descriptors to images in a catalog. I was intrigued and the more I researched them, the more I realized what an amazing and awesome tool was available right at my finger tips.

Descriptive and Specific Keywords assigned to an image in Lightroom

Descriptive and Specific Keywords assigned to an image in Lightroom

In the simplest sense, Keywords in Lightroom are a way to describe key elements about a photograph. Just as the basic wikipedia definition of the term, keywords add description to an image and when used in conjunction with filters, are a great way to find specific images quickly in a large catalog. Keywords also provide a way for others to find your images on the web. Keywords get attached to images as part of the image metadata when an image is exported from Lightroom. These keywords in the metadata then act as an identifier and show up in internet searches when people search for certain words and phrases. If your images have your logo, watermark, or some other identifier, that is a another way for people to get exposed to your work.

Keywords can be found in the Library module in Lightroom. There are three panels related to keywords – Keywording, Keyword Suggestions and Keyword List. Each of these can be expanded or collapsed using the triangle looking arrow (see below image).

Keyword Panel in Lightroom's Library Module

Keyword Panel in Lightroom’s Library Module

Keyword List

Keyword List basically indexes all the keywords that you have setup in your catalog. To add a word to the Keyword List, click on the “+” symbol on the left hand side of the panel and a dialog box opens up. You can enter in the information (e.g. the name of the keyword, synonyms, etc.) and once you click okay, a keyword will be added to your list. Some of my keywords are Location, Time of Year, Seasons, Time of Day, Clients and Subjects.

Within these parent keywords, I have child keywords like name of the client, the four seasons of the year, type of photography, etc. To add a child keyword to a parent keyword, select the parent keyword and then select the “+” symbol. The same dialog box opens up except this time the keyword will be added to the parent keyword. Depending on the image, I select the relevant keywords and they get added to the keyword metadata for that specific image.

DPS Article on Keywords in LR by Memorable Jaunts - Adding Keywords to the Keyword List

Clicking on the “+” on the left of the Keyword List panel is a way to add new keywords and keyword categories.

Keyword Set

Keyword Set is a great way to setup a pre-qualified set of keywords. This is very helpful if you photograph different genres. I have three distinct set of keywords – Memorable Jaunts Wedding Photos, Memorable Jaunts Family Photos and Memorable Jaunts Outdoor Nature Photos. Each set has related keywords assigned to it. If I am working on a wedding gallery for a client, I can choose Wedding Photos and then have a shortlist of preassigned keywords to attach to specific images in that gallery. My wedding photos keyword set has words like bride, groom, candid, posed, family, wedding party, etc.

Keyword Suggestions

Keyword Suggestions are Lightroom’s way of anticipating what your keyword needs are. These suggestions are based on the latest, most frequently used keywords. If your keyword list is long like mine, you can use this to quickly assign keywords to images especially if you tend to work with similar type of images.

DPS Article on Keywords in LR by Memorable Jaunts - Assigning Keywords to images

Keywords Suggestions are based on the most recently used and frequently used keywords.

Once you assign keywords to a particular image in a galley, you can use Sync Metadata and assign the same keywords to all the images within that gallery, especially if they are all along the same lines – same session, same people, and same genre.

A few tips to keep in mind

#1 – Keyword lists can grow very quickly

It is important to take the time upfront to assign keywords to all images within your catalog. This makes sorting and filtering images based on specific keywords much easier.

#2 – Try not to add keywords on the fly

Ensure that keywords are always added using the appropriate hierarchy. For example, if you have four seasons – Fall, Summer, Winter and Spring under “Seasons” parent keyword group, resist the temptation to add Summer Equinox or Early Fall to a specific image without adding it to the “Seasons” parent keyword group. If you add a keyword that is not on the keyword list, Lightroom will add it as an orphaned keyword to your list. Soon you will have many adhoc keywords that don’t really belong to any specific category or group. Along the same lines, maintain your keywords – delete the keywords that you no longer use and no longer assign to any image.

#3 – Keywords can also be imported and exported from Lightroom

LR saves keywords as a txt document. What this means is that you can create your keyword list in a normal text editor, save the file as a “.txt” file and then import it into your catalog. You can also share your keywords list between computers, say your desktop at home and the laptop you use in the field.

#4 – Create a base keyword of your name or the name of your business and assign that to all your images

Remember that keywords gets stored as metadata information for images. This ensures that your name or business information is always present on each and every one of your images.

Another powerful advantage of assigning keywords to your images is the ability to search or filter images in your catalog based on specific keywords. When you filter in Lightroom, choose the Text option and the drop-down box to select Keywords, then start entering specific keywords. Lightroom will start sorting images based on the keyword until you find all the image that have that corresponding keyword in their metadata.

DPS Article on Keywords in LR by Memorable Jaunts - Filering using keywords - Searchable by keyword

Selecting Keywords as part of search criteria ensures the ability to get specific results based on exact keywords

DPS Article on Keywords in LR by Memorable Jaunts - Filering using keywords

Using keywords to sort through all images in a catalog

Regardless of whether your catalog is small or large, it is worth the time and the effort to assign appropriate and relevant keywords to all your images. This makes future management and maintenance of your catalog much easier and efficient.

Tell us in the comments below how you use keywords?

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The post The Power of Keywording in Lightroom by Karthika Gupta appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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A2Z Keywording launches Keyword Perfect 2.0 software

30 Oct

A2Z Keywording has announced the Keyword Perfect 2.0 Image Tagging Studio automated image tagging software. It enables photographers to keyword each image for stock or archival purposes by selecting a number of pre-defined or user-generated tags, thus promising better access to potential buyers. The software is available for an introductory launch price of 9.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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