Can I import key words at a top level?

[ncartwright]

I am trying to import my keywords from Lightroom as top level keywords in photo supreme. These are based on the controlled vocabulary keywords however on import, the keywords appear under Lightroom if imported form a Lightroom export or Controlled Vocabulary if imported straight from the Controlled vocabulary file. This is not what I require as I want these keywords to appear in Photo supreme as top level keywords. How do I therefore import keywords ensuring they appear in the correct place in the keyword structure?

Neil

[vlad]

Hi Neil, I'm not sure what you mean by "top level keywords". Catalog labels (which are roughly the PSU-specific concept for keywords) always appear under top-level categories. No flat keywords (dc:subject) are written in the metadata for the top-level categories themselves - just for the labels underneath. The hierarchical label structure in PSU is reflected in the hierarchical keyword structure (lr:HierarchicalSubject), assuming you also store hierarchical keywords inside the metadata (as recommended).

[mccross]

I think you can drag the top level categories you want out from under e.g. "Controlled Vocabulary" and drop it at the top level. For example I had "Camera" as a top level in some other software and then various cameras I have used under that. After this procedure "Camera" is listed with the default top level labels "People, Objects ..... " (see screen capture). As vlad says, these top levels are not written out to the metadata, at least with the settings I have.

[ncartwright]

OK I will try and be clearer. My images have been keyworded in Lightroom and the hieratical keyword structure I use in Lightroom is based upon an original import from a controlled vocabulary text file. I now wish to use Photo Supreme to take over this function (at this point I will refer to keywords as Catalogue labels when talking about Photo Supreme). When the images were imported into Photo Supreme a Catalogue label structure was created representing the hierarchical keyword structure stored in the images. I now need to import the keywords from the original Controlled Vocabulary file that have not yet been used to ensure I can continue to use the full controlled vocabulary for assigning Catalogue labels for new images. If I import the keyword structure from the Controlled Vocabulary text file into Photo Supreme they appear as a separate set of Catalogue labels with Controlled Vocabulary as the Catalogue label at the top of the imported hierarchy. This is of no use to me what so ever as the structure of the single controlled vocabulary I use has now been compromised. Additionally if I try and move any of this imported structure into the original Catalogue Label structure I can not as the imported Catalogue label structure will not merge with the original structure so I end up with duplicate Catalogue labels appearing. This creates a situation where using Photo Supreme to take over Keywording of my images a total non starter meaning I will have to continue to use Lightroom as the only way forward or use yet another programme to perform the keywording of my images.

The behaviour of Photo Supreme appears to be unique amongst DAM applications in this respect as I have used or tried many DAM applications in the past and all to date have been capable of importing hierarchical keyword structures from a file and successfully merging them into the existing structure. I was hoping that being able to use Photo Supreme as my DAM application would decrease any reliance on Lightroom especially as IDImager had always been my favourite DAM application but it now looks like this is not going to be possible unless I ditch the controlled vocabulary I have been using and relying on for many years.

Neil

[Mike Buckley]

Neil,

I'll begin by stating that I'm confident that Photo Supreme will accomplish your needs. If I understand you correctly, there are a couple ways you can accomplish everything without incurring the duplicate entries.

One method is to start with an empty Photo Supreme catalog. Then import the controlled vocabulary directly. Then import your image files.

However, I believe the safer method just in case you have altered the hierarchy of the controlled vocabulary is to start with an empty catalog. Then export your catalog from Lightroom and import it into Photo Supreme. Then import your image files.

[vlad]

Hi Neil,

If I import the keyword structure from the Controlled Vocabulary text file into Photo Supreme they appear as a separate set of Catalogue labels with Controlled Vocabulary as the Catalogue label at the top of the imported hierarchy. This is of no use to me what so ever as the structure of the single controlled vocabulary I use has now been compromised. Additionally if I try and move any of this imported structure into the original Catalogue Label structure I can not as the imported Catalogue label structure will not merge with the original structure so I end up with duplicate Catalogue labels appearing.

I'm thinking here may be the key: how exactly do you perform the structure moving (merging)? Is it possible to provide sample descriptions (or, even better, screenshots) of the two structures before and after the merging? (I understand your two label structures may be very large, but I am obviously suggesting to reduce the problem as much as possible - for example, describe or show us a case where only label gets duplicated rather than merged, as desired.)

it now looks like this is not going to be possible unless I ditch the controlled vocabulary I have been using and relying on for many years

Not so fast! To me, it sounds that what you're trying to achieve should be doable in PSU, although I don't have direct experience with importing and merging a controlled vocabulary. But someone with more experience might be able to guide you, especially if you provide an example of what and how you're attempting to merge.


EDIT: I've just seen that Mike (aka "someone with more experience") had already responded. I hope his advice guides you on the right track.

[ncartwright]

Thanks for the advice. It looks like mike's method will achieve what I need. This is a bit cumbersome so perhaps a future improvement for Photo Supreme could be to look at how external Keyword structure could be successfully imported and merged with an existing structure as this would add to one of Photo Supremes' strengths in being easy to transfer to.

I will look to following the advice today and hopefully get myself fully up and running.

Neil

[ncartwright]

OK I tried what Mike suggested but unfortunately this did not work. If I import the keyword structure from the Lightroom text file it sits under a top level Catalogue Label of Lightroom Keywords. There does not appear to be any way of moving this structure up one level to get around the fact that they are all sitting under this to level Catalogue label. I can move the structure into one of the default Catalogue labels provided (which you do not seem to be able to delete forcing you to have unwanted Catalogue labels in your structure) but can not more the entire structure up one level from within Lightroom Keywords.

Neil

[Mike Buckley]

Neil,

The screenshot shown below displays the highest level of my hierarchy. By choice, I'm using Supreme's "Events" and "People" categories. The third category is the highest level of the controlled vocabulary that I purchased and imported into Supreme. I thought such top-level categories would meet your needs though I might have misunderstood. I would need to see a screenshot of the highest level of your hierarchy to understand the details that you find objectionable.

[Mke]

I can move the structure into one of the default Catalogue labels provided (which you do not seem to be able to delete forcing you to have unwanted Catalogue labels in your structure) but can not more the entire structure up one level from within Lightroom Keywords.

I'm trying to remember how I solved this; I think that I ended up creating new top-level labels, then moving the catalog across in several pieces (which was helped by having very few top-level labels). I was able to delete a couple of unwanted default labels too (or maybe just renamed them?) but don't recall how/whether doing so was a problem...

[vlad]

Neil, keep in mind that the top level nodes are always Label Categories (containers, if you will) rather than plain labels. You could move labels and entire label trees around, but not the top categories. These can only be deleted and removed.

[ncartwright]

Thanks to all that have tried to help to date.

I have spent some time today looking at the behaviour of Photo Supreme and comparing this to the behaviour of Daminion as I have this on my PC today and it represents the behaviour I have seen in other DAM applications I have tried or used in the past.

To do this I started by importing the Keyword text file exported from Lightroom, a large batch of images already in a Lightroom catalogue which I know have been keyworded in Lightroom and in some cases in different applications and Imported these into both Daminion and Photo Supreme. It did not make any difference if I imported the Keywords or images first in both cases the initial result was the same in both instances. Additionally in Photo Supreme I asked it to import the Lightroom Catalogue I was using.

The original Lightroom keyword structure looked like this:

Ligthroom Keyword structure

LR.jpg (47.57 KiB) Viewed 9967 times

The Daminion structure like this:

Original Daminion structure

Daminion structure upon import.jpg (70.47 KiB) Viewed 9967 times

And the Photo Supreme structure like this:

Photo Supreme structure upon import

PS structure on import.jpg (62.96 KiB) Viewed 9967 times

Looking at these structures and concentrating on "CATEGORIES" for this example, the first thing to note is that both applications had an issue with the fact that the imported keywords from the text file had square brackets around some top level categories where as the same categories imported directly from the images or the Lightroom catalogue import with Photo supreme) do not. This seems to be a function of Lightroom which results in an non-ideal situation in both applications.

The second point we can see here is that Daminion has merged the imported keyword hierarchy from the text file with the existing hierarchy from the imported image keywords which is normal behaviour for all other DAM applications I have tried. Photo Supreme has put this imported Hierarchy under a top level category of "Lightroom". So with Daminion the only issue I now have is the keywords with square brackets around them where as in Photo Supreme I now have the imported Keyword Hierarchy nested under a top level Category of "Lightroom", so I have effectively got a repeat of my keyword hierarchy nested within a new category within the original hierarchy. This is not a good situation.

Additionally if I now whished to import additional keywords in Daminion it would simply merge these into the existing structure in Photo Supreme the imported keywords will always be sitting one level down.

Next I looked at correcting the structures, so again using "CATEGORIES" to illustrate:

In Daminion I renamed the "[CATEGORIES]" category to "CATEGORIES" to remove the brackets. At this point Daminion asked me if I wanted to merge the renamed category with the existing top level one, selecting yes resulted in a structure that looked like this:

daminion corrected.jpg (54.55 KiB) Viewed 9967 times

Continuing to do this for all the other categories with square brackets resulted in a perfectly merged hierarchy structure so success!

I then looked how to achieve this is Photo Supreme:

The first issue is I cannot move one of the sub-categories from under "Lightroom" up one level so even if I rename the "[CATEGORIES]" example to remove the brackets I still cannot achieve a correct realignment of my hierarchy. Next I took the approach of moving the next level down in the hierarchy under "Lightroom / [CATEGORIES]" into the top level "CATEGORIES" category. (At this point I am wishing I had not decided to use "CATEGORIES" for the example!).

The result was as follows:

ps duplicated.jpg (22.43 KiB) Viewed 9967 times

Although all the sub categories moved I now have duplicates sitting under the top level "CATEGORIES" category.

So I will first apologise for the length of the post but hopefully it better illustrates what I am trying to achieve and the issues I face. My conclusions from this exercise are:

PS will not allow you to import keywords from a text file and merge them with the existing hierarchy.

PS appears to limit what the user can do when creating a hierarchy within it's catalogue and how a user can restructure the hierarchy.

This is a shame as the ability of PS to apply adjustments to RAW images made in Lightroom and Capture One looked like it would give me the final DAM solution I was after but the limitations around Keyword importing and organizing look to have prevented this being the case.

I am still hoping I am wrong so does anyone have any further suggestions?


Neil

[Mike Buckley]

in Photo Supreme I now have the imported Keyword Hierarchy nested under a top level Category of "Lightroom", so I have effectively got a repeat of my keyword hierarchy nested within a new category within the original hierarchy.

If I understand the situation properly (I may not), could you delete the top level "Lightroom Keywords" that displays no assigned photos and thus the entire hierarchy beneath that heading to solve your problem? Your screenshot understandably doesn't display enough stuff above that heading for me to know whether this would be a solution.

[vlad]

Mike,
I don't think your suggestion solves Neil's issue, because:
1) Even if there are no images assigned, the "Lightroom Keywords" hierarchy may contain useful labels that are not yet present in the hierarchies created by the image import (so the hierarchies must be properly merged, first).
2) It doesn't solve the problem of duplicate labels.

Neil,

1) It was indeed unfortunate to choose as an example "CATEGORIES", which in your case is a label, not a label category. (Yuck! I'm not a big fun of word overloading - or did you just want to test our attention? ) Still, I think I've managed to understand what's going on (wrong) in your scenario.

2) ...But first, a question: which preference do you have in Synchronize Settings -> Read settings -> Keywords processing? I forgot what's the default, but do you have "Merge keywords with existing Catalog Labels" selected? If not, I'm not surprised the image importing did not merge the labels even if you had already imported the Lighroom keyword hierarchy first.

3) ...And a 2nd question: are you aware that moving one or more labels (by drag-and-drop) relocates rather than merges the label(s)? Given that you already have duplicated labels in the first place (even if within different top-level categories), it seems to me that you need to apply label merging rather label relocation! These are *not* the same thing and you cannot use the terms loosely - that's why I was asking how did you exactly perform your label "merges" and "moves". (The later is not an official PSU term, that's why I think you only relocated your labels.)

4) Unfortunately, I have experimented a bit and it seems that the label merging in PSU does not support the correct merging of entire label hierarchies: you end up indeed with duplicated labels on the lower levels. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a bug (since the Quick Manual for Cataloging only mentions label merging very briefly), but I have submitted a Mantis ticket (as a feature request): http://mantis.idimager.com/view.php?id=2639

In conclusion, I can suggest you two things:

1) Get back to us with your Keyword processing setting. If it's not set to "Merge...", please set it as such, start with a brand-new (empty) catalog, import your keyword file and only subsequently import your images. Do the labels merge correctly now?
2) Add your comments to ticket #2639 in case you think that could be the key (or, at least: one key) to solving your situation, like I do. (Who knows, there's a non-zero chance it might be fast-tracked.)

Hope that helps,
Vlad

[Mike Buckley]

Mike,
I don't think your suggestion solves Neil's issue, because:
1) Even if there are no images assigned, the "Lightroom Keywords" hierarchy may contain useful labels that are not yet present in the hierarchies created by the image import (so the hierarchies must be properly merged, first).

If all of that is true, you're of course correct. The thing that I don't understand: If the hierarchy is imported first, if the images were cataloged using that hierarchy and only that hierarchy, if the images were then imported, why was a duplicate set of catalog labels created? My understanding is that that's not supposed to happen.