Keyword hierarchy

Hello.

Since it's my first post here, I'm starting with two words of presentation. I'm a software engineer and amateur photographer. After having been used Lightroom for ten years, in these days I'm working to switch to Capture One (I must say I've actually already switched, just trying things around to make sure there are no showstoppers in my workflow before buying the license). My laptop runs on MacOS Sierra.

Now, while it seems I've been able to learn the image editing features of C1 in a few days, I still have some troubles with other stuff. I know there are less features related to DAM than in LR: at the moment I plan to have a "transition period" in which I'll use both pieces of software, LR for DAM (e.g. for things such as geotagging that are completely missing from C1) and C1 for editing. This could last for several months, so I am not blocked and at the same time I can evaluate other solutions (for instance, C1 might release or at least announce new DAM features, or I could find another DAM application that works and can be integrated with C1).

Exchanging metadata by means of XMP seems to work: I can e.g. set colours or keywords on any applications and the other get synced (LR manually, C1 automatically).

But I have a problem with hierarchical keywords. For instance, let's assume these hierarchies

a > b > c > d
e > f > g

If I have a photo tagged 'd' in LR the information in the XMP just contains:

<rdf:li>a|b|c|d</rdf:li>

If I add 'g' in LR, just another element appears in the XMP. But if I add 'g' in C1 and then sync LR, I see that I not only have:

<rdf:li>e|f|g</rdf:li>

but:

     <rdf:li>e</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>e|f</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>e|f|g</rdf:li>

That is, the photo is tagged not only with the 'leaf' of the hierarchy I selected, but also with all the keywords at intermediate levels. They appear when I sync the metadata in LR.

In fact, if I look at the 'Catalog Keywords' in C1, I not only see the hierarchic tree as expected, but keywords at every intermediate level also appear at the root. That is, instead of having only:

a
+--b
    +--c
        +--d

I see

a
+--b
    +--c
        +--d
b
c
d

This is a serious problem, because I have multiple leaf keywords with the same name but different meaning, because they are in different branches (this happens e.g. with scientific names for animals or plants, or name of places with the same name but in different municipalities, etc...).

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, or what I can do to fix this problem.

Thanks.

Michael Naylor

2017年11月19日 19:04

The fix for this is simple: 1) go back to LR, 2) try Media Pro and go back to LR, 3) try PhotoSupreme and then go back to LR, etc, etc. Unfortunately, most photographers aren't interested in managing their digital assets. This is why no new DAM applications have been written for over a decade. All current incarnations are hacked evolutions that may have added a few new features, but haven't addressed the underlying code base. Hierarchical keywords are relatively new. Regrettably, Adobe's LR is the least worst available today. There are a few companies, promising to release something "soon", but its unlikely any of them will have thought to employ a database specialist. If you find something better, that doesn't crash every five minutes, please let me know.

Stephen Christy

2017年11月19日 21:58

You are not alone in battling with hierarchical keywords in moving from Lightroom to Capture One. I am a new (now licensed) user of Capture One who moved from Lightroom and I, too, have noted discrepancies in the way in which Capture One treats hierarchical keywords.

I use Photo Mechanic to ingest, cull, label and keyword photos because I've not found anything faster or more efficient than that. To ensure that everything worked as smoothly as possible I first ensured that all hierarchical keywords were properly set up in Capture One then exported the list and imported that into Photo Mechanic. However, if I apply an hierarchical keyword (e.g., a > b > c) in Photo Mechanic then, notwithstanding that the identical hierarchy exists in Capture One, when the photo is imported into Capture One instead of the relevant Capture One hierarchical keywords appearing (a b c) I see, literally, "a > b > c" (i.e., the relevant keywords split by the Photo Mechanic hierarchical keyword separator).

(I hope this is clear. It's infernally difficult to explain in words!)

I've not yet discovered how to work around that particular problem.

Stephen

コメント