Tagging photos efficiently in Lightroom (with help of Keyword sets and keyboard shortcuts)

One of the features of the Library module of the Adobe Lightroom is the possibility of tagging photos stored in the catalog. Tags, next to collections, are invaluable when a photo has to be found quickly. The issue with tags is that they require some discipline to maintain them and to ensure that all the photos are tagged properly. Probably the best way to keep the catalog well tagged is to apply the tags to the photos during import or just thereafter. Otherwise the number of untagged photos just grows over time. This article is about dealing with a lot of untagged photos in a catalog in a efficient way, by using only the keyboard and not to type keywords at all during tagging.

Find the untagged photos

When I started sorting out my photos my catalog contained about 70000 pictures. To find the photos that are untagged I created a Smart Collection first. To do so select the option New Smart Collection... from the menu Library.

In the window that will open you can create a set of rules for this collection. To select untagged photos use the settings as shown in the picture below:

Click Create. In the "Collections" left side bar a smart collection will appear called "Photos without tags". In my case it contained about 3000 pictures (I have blurred the rest of collections just for clarity of this explanation):

In the next step the contents of this smart collection have to be copied to a temporary collection (I'll explain the reason for that in a moment). The easiest way is:

1. to select all the photos in the smart collection

2. to create a collection (menu Library->New Collection). In my case I have named it "Temporary - without tags". I have selected the option "Include selected photos" to make this collection in one shot:

So at this stage I have my working collection where the actual tagging will take place:

Why did I create a regular collection, next to the Smart collection? The reason is that the Smart collections are calculated in a dynamic way. So after every manipulation of a photo being part of the smart collection Lightroom checks if the Smart Collection selection criteria still apply. If not, the photo is automatically removed. In our case it would mean that we could manipulate a tag only once per photo. Directly after confirmation of the tag, the photo would disappear from the collection. Sometimes there are more tags required, sometimes we just make a mistake. Sure, Ctrl-Z (Command-Z) would rescue the situation, but we want to work efficiently, eliminating unnecessary mouse clicks and keystrokes.

Tagging photos quickly, just with a keyboard

The key to speed-up tagging is not to use the mouse (or touchpad) nor to type the keywords during the tagging. It is possible in Lightroom to tag the photos just by using the cursor keys, the Alt (Option) key and the numerical keys. Here is how.

Keyword sets

Lightroom offers the simple tagging tool, called a Keyword set. It is visible in the right panel of the Library module:

You can create as many Keyword sets as you want. Each keyword set has a name (in this case Outdoor Photography) and can contain up to 9 keywords.

The nice thing is that Lightroom assigns a keyboard shortcut to each keyword in the active Keyword set. Just select a photo, press Alt (Option) key and observe the Keyword Set panel:

Notice the small numbers (from 1 to 9), that I circled with red. These are the keyboard shortcuts that you can use to tag the photo! So if I wanted to apply the keyword Spring to a photo, I just need to press Alt (Option) and 4 key to place a tag. So no typing the keyword, no searching it on the list. Just Alt-[number].

It gets even better. With the combination Alt (Option)-0 you can change the selected keyword set. Alt-0 moves forward on the list of sets, Shift-Alt-0 moves backward.

Adding multiple tags is straightforward: just take different number. Remove the selected tag is done by pressing Alt-[number] again (in other words Alt-[number] toggles the tag).

So, provided you have prepared meaningful sets, the tagging is very quick: Change the selected photo with a cursor key, press Alt-[number key] to place a tag. If you don't have the tag in the current set, select another with Alt-0 or Shift-Alt-0.

If your tags don't contain the keyword you need, I suggest to skip such photo just for now and move on. Your Smart collection that you have created for watching untagged photos will remember it. In practice after finishing of quick tagging the number of untagged photos will be small enough to tag them manually in a limited time.

Creating the Keyword sets is explained next.

How to create a keyword set

Use the menu Metadata->Keyword Set->Edit... In the dialog that will appear type the keywords that you want to use:

If you are modifying the set, just press Change. To create a new set click on the list Preset and select the option Save Current Settings as New Preset.

Type the name of the preset in the dialog window, press Create. Finally press Change. Your new set is ready to use.

 The efficiency of the method

When I started with this method I had about 7000 untagged photos. In 6 hours I was able to tag 4000 photos in a meaningful way. I believe, it is not bad al all.

On organizing the photo collection - take the notes about a photo location

When taking photos during a holidays, business trip, or in general at the locations I don't visit often I try to take notes about the photographed objects. There are different ways of doing so, but most of the time I use a GPS data logger that I keep switched on all the time during my photo walks. I use the GPS logger called AMOD GPS data logger. It is a standalone unit that registers every second the current GPS location in its internal memory, together with a timestamp of the registered position. The timestamp registered by the unit is very accurate, since it comes from the atomic clock of the GPS satellites. 

On the other hand the camera registers the time of capture of each photo. If the time of camera's internal clock is accurate as well, it is possible to assign GPS locations to the photos during postprocessing. The software just takes the time of capture and looks for the geolocation registered in the GPS log file with the timestamp closest to the time of capture. That is why it is important to keep the clock settings of the camera accurate. If the time in camera deviates from the actual time too much,  the locations of the photos will be shifted along the path one walked.

Having the location attached to the photo I can locate it back on the map and take more information about a place from the Internet.

On the technical side: I integrate GPS data with my photos in Lightroom (which has a dedicated Map panel for that purpose since version 4). Since Lightroom requires the GPS log data files in a .gpx format, I need to convert the original log stored by my GPS logger. I use the application called GPS Babel, that can convert pretty much everything to anything on the GPS area.

Of course the whole process of geotagging is much more simple if one uses the units dedicated for the specific camera (like Nikon GP-1 for most of the recent Nikon cameras). For me however the price of the Nikon unit is too much and the comfort of use doesn't compensate for the price difference ($199 for Nikon vs ~$60 for Amod).

And last but not least: nowadays we have a very wide choice of taking geolocations: from dedicated units to smartphones. Just take anything that suits your needs and budget.

When GPS is not enough

There are (rare) situations when a GPS data is just not enough to successfully memorize the information about the place. It happened to me lately, during my short holidays in Switzerland. On my way I took a snapshot of a lovely church:

And the registered geolocation indicated the place:

The thing is that even having the exact location, I couldn't find anything about this church in Google Maps! I have looked for the street name, churches in Geneva and yet got nothing specific. Thanks to my camera's high resolution I could read something from the church's information board:

Now I know that it Chapelle des Crets. Now I had the information I was looking for. But it was only thanks to the good circumstances: the presence of the information board in front of the church and the excellent quality of my camera and lens. Next time I might not be so lucky. Time to take some notes for the future

The lesson learned

1. It is worth to take some time and look at the additional information in the vicinity of the object like information boards, names. Just take a photo of such board and you don't even need to look at the GPS data,
2. Gather the information early after the trip, when the memory is fresh. The brain can recall much more details about visited places,
3. Use the photo metadata (EXIF fields like caption or description) to store the captured information.