How to import hierarchical keyword list from Lightroom 5 and other questions

[CollieDog]

Hi everyone. I just began using IMatch 5 and am duly impressed! Congratulations to Mario for this impressive application. How on earth anyone could produce such a complex program alone is beyond my understanding!

Several weeks ago, I began using Lightroom 5 to create a hierarchical keyword list based on several open sourced controlled-vocabulary lists. Once I had modified the lists and added my own categories, I began assigning keywords to photos in Lightroom.

However, now I want to rely on IMatch 5 exclusively for adding keywords and organizing my data.
My questions are:

1. How can I import into IMatch 5 the hierarchical keyword list that I created in Lightroom 5. Lightroom 5 has the ability to export this list (Metadata -- Export Keywords), but I have not been able to find a way to import it into IMatch 5.

2. I did a small experiment by assigning a keyword to a photo in IMatch 5 and then opening Lightroom. For some reason, even when I click "Synchronize Folder" and "Scan for Metadata Updates", Lightroom was not able to "see" the new keyword that I assigned to the photo. Any idea why this happened?

3. Should I be using keywords or IMatch categories? Or should I be using both methods to catalogue and sort my photos? My research photos document rituals and customs in rural north China and so metadata like location, event, when it took place, type of ritual (including details shown in ritual), people are important.

4. In the Media and Folder view, What is the best way to differentiate my RAW files from my "developed" .jpegs that I have created in PhotoNinja, Lightroom or Aftershot Pro?  I find the following folder structure most logical for my needs:

2013  (top-most category)
   2013_01_Jan_23 Meeting in Beijing
         2013_01_Jan_23 Lightroom 5 edits

   2013_03_Mar_19 Village research trip #1
          2013_03_Mar_19 PhotoNinja edits

How do other experienced users quickly locate only their RAW or only their edited/developed .jpegs?

My apologies for my "green" questions, and I truly AM reading the IMatch 5 help file and sifting through the old forum messages too . I hope I can get up-to-speed and begin using IMatch to begin keywording and sorting my collection.

[Mario]

1. Different versions of LR used different export formats. There is no standard or anything.
Since I don't own LR file I cannot tell which format Adobe now has come up with. In the previous versions they used a tab-indented format which is supported by the thesaurus import in IMatch (the .TXT format). The IMatch help for the thesaurus explains the supported import formats and shows example. Open the file you export from LR and check if you see similarities. You can also attach your file here or send it to me.

2. By default IMatch does not write-back metadata immediately to the file. Did you click on the pen icon for this file to update the data in the file? Or used Commands > Metadata Write-back > ...

3. Depends. Search this community for @Keywords to find related discussions. If you work with LR or other Adobe products you have to use keywords to see your data in these applications. Using categories in IMatch can give you additional manual or automatic orders to further group and cluster your data. The cool thing is that the unique IMatch 5 @Keywords category seamlessly integrates both concepts - the simple and dumb keywords and the dynamic IMatch categories.

How do other experienced users quickly locate only their RAW or only their edited/developed .jpegs?

Check out the File Relations topic in the IMatch help.

[Ferdinand]

4.  While there are many approaches to folder organisation, and so there's no consensus, the approach you've adopted is fairly common and is roughly what I use.

One thing you need to bear in mind with IMatch is that categories, and now keywords, free you from the" tyranny of folders".  So while folders gives you one view on your collection, categories give you many more, and are much more flexible.  I'm not saying that folders are unimportant, although there are some here who think so, rather I think that they're just a basic starting point.

[ChrisMatch]

3. Should I be using keywords or IMatch categories? Or should I be using both methods to catalogue and sort my photos? My research photos document rituals and customs in rural north China and so metadata like location, event, when it took place, type of ritual (including details shown in ritual), people are important

You may have a look at my post here: https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=235.0 which should help you decide.

[CollieDog]

Thanks to everyone for your helpful replies!

I imported several folders of images to test. The images had XML sidecar files that contained keywords that I assigned in Lightroom 5.

I exported my Lightroom hierarchical keywords, did some editing in a text editor, and then opened the IMatch Thesaurus Manager and imported them. The Thesaurus Manager displayed the list properly, and the same hierarchical list appeared in the Keyword Panel. The list appeared in Categories as well.

As far as I can tell (after reading https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=70.0 and doing some simple experiments), IMatch 5 does not seem to be "aware of" the connections between my hierarchical keyword  list and the keywords in the XML files.

If I re-arrange the hierarchical order of keywords in the Keyword Panel, will IMatch 5 automatically rescan the images to update the changes in metadata? Do I have to run "Import from Database" in order to allow IMatch to "connect" the keywords in XML sidecars to the hierarchical list that imported from Lightroom?

Thanks for your patience! I look forward to using IMatch for all my keywording and move away from Lightroom ASAP for all DAM related tasks.

[Mario]

The Thesaurus Manager displayed the list properly, and the same hierarchical list appeared in the Keyword Panel. The list appeared in Categories as well.

That's two totally unrelated things! Understanding this is important:

• The thesaurus displays the keywords you have imported for your text file. This is totally unrelated to metadata contained in your images.
  
• The @Keywords category is produced by looking at the actual keywords in your files.

When you change text in the thesaurus, these changes have no impact on the metadata stored in your files. If you change or delete a keyword in your thesaurus, IMatch will not go out and delete or change that keyword in all your files. If this is what you expect. The thesaurus just allows you to setup lists of keywords, headlines, copyright statements or whatever to reuse them later in the Metadata and Keyword panels.

The @Keyword category shows you the keywords in your files. If you make changes here, e.g. removing a file from a child-category of @Keywords, IMatch will apply the same change to the actual keywords in the file.

Please see the extensive help topic on the @Keywords category and the Keyword Panel to see what tools IMatch offers you to work with your keywords. Start by not assuming that IMatch works like LR in this regard.

[BenAW]

For me the main drawback of keywords is that for every change in your keyword structure (or eg correcting a spelling mistake) you have to write the changes back into the affected images.
I used to write part of my category structure as keywords into IPTC, but am not sure yet if and how I will do that with IM5.

For folders I like a simple approach. For my 19.000+ images I have currently 12 folders, each ~4 GB big. (making it possible to write one folder to a single DVD). Only scanned films and slides have a subfolder under Scanned Images for each roll of film.
"Developed" images go into a dedicated folder, also ~4GB in size before creating a new one.
Using Versioning I can "connect" all main images with the developed ones in their dedicated folder, making this a quick process.

To find your raws or developed jpgs, use a filter.

So I use mainly categories for all my images, and will probably only write some keywords like Country, City, Location, Copyright etc. into the images itself.