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Hierarchical Key Words

Jim MSP
I am working on optimizing my work flow with CO 7, and I am looking for information on how to move hierarchical key words from Catalog to Catalog.

Basically, I now have a master catalog of "all photos" . It is rather large, over 900MB per MP, though 12G in actual file size on the hard drive. I now have a rather complete, for me, and organized set of hierarchical key words, and many of the photos are properly key worded. But it is a slow beast when I want to incorporate new photos, or change key words, or save the file, etc.

To work faster, I am trying to use a new smaller catalog of new photos which I can pick and choose which photos I want to work on in a CO 7 session. Later, I intend to import this smaller catalog and all its photos back into the "all photo" catalog.

Now for my question - I want to be consistent with key wording. Does anybody know a easy or straightforward way to get my complete set of hierarchical key words into the new, small catalog?

The one way I know will work is to take one photo, eg a dummy photo, and give it all the hierarchical key words and save them in a side car file. Then import this one photo into the new catalog. But this seems like such a brute force and inelegant way of doing it.

Any ideas before I try the brute force approach?
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Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • Paul Silk
    Hi Jim, The easiest way I have found is to "save as" your catalog to create a duplicate under a different name, then remove the folders from it. This will leave you a empty catalog with the hierarchical keywords intact.

    The only other way I know is to create a empty catalog and drag a image from the bottom rung of each hierarchical key word set from your catalog to the empty one.

    Its a shame there is now way to export and import it like there is in Lightroom.
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  • Jim MSP
    Hi Paul,
    Thanks for the quick response.

    I have actually done the first method, but it seemed, as I recall, that I ended up with an unoptimized catalog, ie, bigger than it should have been for an empty catalog. But it did work.

    The problem with the brute force method I talked about is that it won't handle new entries well.

    On further thought, I might try the "toss folder" route, as I have a fairly simple folder structure.
    Then I'll let MP run in the background for a while and see what happens. I think it might have some background optimization routines.
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  • Jim MSP
    Well, in the end I opted for the "remove all folder" route. which worked pretty well. I know have a simple "blank" catalog that I can use for a master catalog every time I make a major new photo shoot. I can then import this back into my "all photos" catalog and get any and all new keywords imported as well. The downside is that I will need to generate a new "blank" catalog after every major photo shoot if I add new keywords.

    Now, ideally, I'd like to get my Lightroom Catalogs looking the same, as I use LR about 20 % of the time. But the best way to probably communicate between the two is with a "master photo" which all the Hierarchical Key Words in a sidecar file.
    I may be stuck generating this master photo anyway.
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  • Robert Edwards
    From the old iView days a user called 'Old Toad' suggested using a keyword "mule". Basically it's a donor JPEG that you put all your keywords in then import it into your new catalog. Once catalogued you can remove the Keyword mule from the new catalog and its' keywords remain.
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  • Jim MSP
    [quote="roberte" wrote:
    From the old iView days a user called 'Old Toad' suggested using a keyword "mule". Basically it's a donor JPEG that you put all your keywords in then import it into your new catalog. Once catalogued you can remove the Keyword mule from the new catalog and its' keywords remain.


    Yes, thanks. That's exactly what I am doing with what I call the master photo.
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  • Paul Silk
    It works very well Jim. I created a blank jpeg file in PS and used that. I

    http://www.pbase.com/paulsilkphotography/image/148997698.jpg

    And imported it into a new empty catalog
    http://www.pbase.com/paulsilkphotography/image/148997699.jpg

    I would recommend keeping this file seperate so it is easy to get at, I would also not delete it but keep it in every catalog used. Why, well for the simple reason that every time you add a new keyword or hierarchy you add it also to this master file,this will then save you having to remember to add new keywords to any other new catalog you create with it.

    Also by keeping this master image in every catalog you can update the other catalog's hierachical structure regardless of which catalog it was entered in (provided you have synced the annotations) simply by importing keywords from this master image favouring catalog.
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  • Jim MSP
    [quote="Paul Silk" wrote:
    It works very well Jim. ......
    I would recommend keeping this file seperate so it is easy to get at, I would also not delete it but keep it in every catalog used. Why, well for the simple reason that every time you add a new keyword or hierarchy you add it also to this master file,this will then save you having to remember to add new keywords to any other new catalog you create with it.

    Also by keeping this master image in every catalog you can update the other catalog's hierachical structure regardless of which catalog it was entered in (provided you have synced the annotations) simply by importing keywords from this master image favouring catalog.


    Hi Paul,
    Yes, I did this last night as well, and put the "master keyword" photo in its own sub folder. It certainly works well with MP. And it works well with a couple of other subset catalogs I created from the "all photos) catalog.

    I like your reasoning behind keeping it in every catalog. I was debating on this, but I think it will be the better workflow. We'll see.

    Anyway, I also tried it with Lightroom. It carries the keyword structure quite well into a new catalog, but it won't modify the structure on older files that already had a sidecar with them - even if I updated them from MP. Not a big deal, as I see my use of LR decreasing with the capabilities of the newest CO 7.
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  • Douglas Kurn
    I've just found this thread on the forum and this is exactly what I am looking to do, but I am struggling to find a quick and easy way to apply all keywords to one image, short of drilling down to the bottom of each set of nested keywords and applying the bottom keyword to the master file. Please tell me I'm wrong and there is a quicker way!

    Thanks
    Doug
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  • Jim MSP
    [quote="Douglas2" wrote:
    I've just found this thread on the forum and this is exactly what I am looking to do, but I am struggling to find a quick and easy way to apply all keywords to one image, short of drilling down to the bottom of each set of nested keywords and applying the bottom keyword to the master file. Please tell me I'm wrong and there is a quicker way!

    Thanks
    Doug


    No quicker way that I found. I just sat down and went at it with brute force.

    However, at this point, I'm not really satisfied with my approach. Other software that I use, including Lightroom, PSE, hdr and panoramic, have seemed to messed up the hierarchical structure at times, giving me partial structures.
    And when I have added new key words, I have not always added them to my master photo, so I have fallen behind in that as well. Likewise, I sometimes have difficulty remembering where a new keyword should go in the hierarchical list.
    But since I still want to minimize my catalogs, I'm about ready to accept a "semi- hierarchical " approach.
    The good news is that MP searches this kind of a structure very well as long as you search in the flat keyword list.
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