keyword program for folders?

I have not used any keywording program before, so I have no idea if this is a common feature or if I am wishing for the moon.

With a library of over a hundred thousand images, adding keywords to each one would be impossible. But what I would like to do is to attach keywords at the folder level. For example, I just got done spending an hour finding a particular beach sunrise that I took before my wife ran a marathon in Huntington.

The keywords "beach", "marathon", and "sunrise", attached to the folder level would have allowed me to find it in a matter of seconds.

Does anybody know of a windows-based, preferably standalone program that can do that for a reasonable price? ("Reasonable" is $50.00 or less, "Tolerable" is $100.00)

Rad

FWIW, currently running CS-5 64 bit on Windows 7

No, I don't know of any software that would do what you want and I don't think it would work well anyway. Keywording a folder with multiple keywords would mean that searching for a single keyword would still require you to search through a whole folder of (possibly) unrelated images. In addition, if you ever wanted to move some of the image (say for archiving) they would lose their keywords.

Also I don't think keywording your images would be quite as onerous as you think. Most keywording software allows you to bulk apply keywords. Hold Ctrl and click on an image, and another, another, another (or choose to select all) and you can then type keywords which will be applied to all the selected images. In addition software like Lightroom allows for hierarchical keywording which also helps to speed up the process. For example I have a category of keyword called Places. In that I have Continents > Asia > China > Hong Kong > Hong Kong Island > Central > St James' Cathedral. Any time I add St James' Cathedral to an image Lightroom automatically adds all the others - http://www.learn-to-lightroom.com/articles​/keyword-hierarchies/

Bridge?

medicdude wrote in post #16928020
Bridge?

That would be my best suggestion also. It will still require some tedious, manual work but I believe you would achieve the best most useful results for the long run. You can easily create your own folders and then I believe you may be able to batch-keyword the images in some fashion.

Hmm, pointing someone to "Bridge" is actually pointing them to Photoshop...

Since Photoshop Elements is within the OPs "tolerable" price range, then the question is does Elements have a full-featured version of Bridge? I don't know, because I haven't had Elements for several years. When I had/used Elements, though, you could do keywording, but I don't know that keywords for folders is available for Elements or with Bridge, and it's not available in Lightroom. In fact, I've never heard of using keywords with/for folders, so it may not be out there. But, as others have suggested, I can open a folder, and I can either Select All (Ctl A) or select a range of photos and apply a keyword to all the selected photos.

Sure, it takes time, but since my folders typically hold a single shoot (in a single place) I can apply a Place keyword to All photos, maybe other keywords as they would apply.

I had started keywording back when I began working with Lightroom, although it took me a while before I took on the task of keywording my pro-existing images, maybe 40,000 of them, but I just did it as I found some time, and I'm glad I did!

Tony the OP is already running CS5 on his machine, so already has Bridge on his computer. Which would make it the perfect zero cost option for him.

I think the real issue with using Bridge or any other standard file browser type system is doing the keyword search across folders/drives. This is usually much harder. With the number of images the OP is dealing with, and the fact that he is already using Adobe products, so is used to ACR for RAW processing I would suggest he look at Lightroom. It should just be within budget I think,not being from the US I'm not sure on US pricing. The LR database is actually really quick at sorting images, and by far more than just Keywords. There are plenty of options for bulk/batch application of keywords and you can even do it across multiple folders/drives. LR already pointed out LR keywords can be hierichical allowing a whole tree of keywords to be added at once, although I would suggest doing some reading up on this first, to ensure to start out using the system optimally.

Because LR uses the same RAW processing engine as ACR it will read the .xmp sidecar files that ACR uses to store edits so that they are accessible automatically when you import into the LR database system. Not only that but LR is by far the cheapest option to move to processing using Adobe's Process Version 2012. PV2012 is a significant improvement over PV2010 in ACR 6.x that is included with PSCS5. The handling of highlight detail is significantly better in PV2012 among a host of other improvements to the processing.

Alan

Ah, I missed that the OP has CS5, thanks Al!

I still don't see any ability to add keywords to folders. As has been said, it's easy and efficient to apply keywords to, say, all the files/pics in a folder, and then if, say, you wanted to move or copy pics to another folder the keywords would still be applied!

Talking about Lightroom, one thing it has as part of its "integrated" toolkit is "Collections", which can work side-by-side with keywords to speed up finding things, and as far as I know Bridge/Photoshop doesn't have Collections.

tonylong wrote in post #16929092
Talking about Lightroom, one thing it has as part of its "integrated" toolkit is "Collections", which can work side-by-side with keywords to speed up finding things, and as far as I know Bridge/Photoshop doesn't have Collections.

Collections and Smart Collections have been a part of Bridge since at least CS5. The Collections created in Bridge cannot see images that are on off-line drives however.

I will take a look to see how bridge works, maybe it will be the answer.

For what it's worth, the image in question is now posted here: https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1379688 (shameless plug)

I found it because I knew that I had posted THIS IMAGEfrom the same event. Once I found this on the forum, I was able to search my hard drive for the IMG_1234 number.

As it turns out it was in my 2010/Seattle/Grandpas Funeral folder. There were about 30 images on that card that were from just before my grandfather passing and me going to Seattle for the funeral. Even still, I don't know if I would have tagged the folder with beach and sunrise tags.

Rad

Radtech1 wrote in post #16929565
I will take a look to see how bridge works, maybe it will be the answer.

I think what you'll have to do in Bridge is click on each folder, select all the images in the foler, and apply the keywords.

D Thompson wrote in post #16929282
Collections and Smart Collections have been a part of Bridge since at least CS5. The Collections created in Bridge cannot see images that are on off-line drives however.

Ah, OK, it's been a few years since I really looked at the various features of Photoshop, so...then maybe a big plus about Lightroom regarding Collections is how well integrated the whole interface is, with Collections, Keywords and Folders all at your fingertips in the Library module...!

Radtech1 wrote in post #16929565
I will take a look to see how bridge works, maybe it will be the answer.

For what it's worth, the image in question is now posted here: https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1379688 (shameless plug)

I found it because I knew that I had posted THIS IMAGEfrom the same event. Once I found this on the forum, I was able to search my hard drive for the IMG_1234 number.

As it turns out it was in my 2010/Seattle/Grandpas Funeral folder. There were about 30 images on that card that were from just before my grandfather passing and me going to Seattle for the funeral. Even still, I don't know if I would have tagged the folder with beach and sunrise tags.

Rad

Well, your scenario certainly describes why Digital Asset Management (DAM) can really be meaningful to us who do any volume of photography!

I make sure that all my folders have distinct names (Date and Description) and also my files in those folders, typically I apply the folder name as the "base" of the file name since it typically identifies a particular shoot, and Lightroom (and other image "importers") will add a sequence number to each image file.

But then, I also use keywords and collections. So, I have three cross-working "identities", and because of that I can look for stuff either by just browsing folders or doing a keyword search, or, in Lightroom, by browsing collections!

tonylong wrote in post #16929743
so...then maybe a big plus about Lightroom regarding Collections is how well integrated the whole interface is, with Collections, Keywords and Folders all at your fingertips in the Library module...!

Not real difficult to find in Bridge either.

Yeah, as long as you know where to click! But sure, if you don't have LR and do have Bridge/CSx, you have all the tools you need and a lot more "stuff" than LR has!

Well knowing where and what to click is pretty good knowledge for any program.