Group level Keywords without opening Thesaurus

[jarraun]

Hi users,

Does anyone know how to group a level keyword, I mean this keyword won´t be shown in keywords lists but will be useful to organize them, without having to open the Thesaurus every time. This would be an enormous time saver for me. If it is not possible I will launch a feature request.

Have a good summer.

Javier

[Mario]

Group level keywords are used only sparingly. Most often you may have five: WHO; WHEN; WHAT etc.

The only place to manage group-level keywords is the Thesaurus Manager, all the logic is included there. I wonder why you need so many group-level keywords that you want to create them anywhere else 

Make sure you understand the implications of adding group-level keywords when IMatch has to flatten keywords, migrate between flat and hierarchical keywords and potential pitfalls when you work with multiple applications which display and edit keywords. Just saying...

[jarraun]

Hi Mario,

I´d like to know if the group level keywords, which don´t show in the keyword panel, will be shown when exporting keywords and hierarchical keywords be written into the classic IPTC keywords and XMP subject.
My settings for Keyword export are:

- Write hierarchical keywords
- Write path elements

It´s not that I use many group level keywords just two levels, very useful to keep the Thesaurus in the Keyword Panel organized and helpful for finding a keyword in the keyword panel when one have thousands of entries there

Thank you

[Ferdinand]

Group levels are well explained in the help file on the page about the universal thesaurus.  In short, the answer to your question is no.  From the help file:

"But maybe you consider WHERE to be merely a helper to bring some order into your thesaurus? Or you want to use the classic 5W's Who-What-When-Where-Why list at the top-level of your thesaurus? Perhaps you use a controlled vocabulary for scientific purposes which uses special elements to mark certain items or classification sections? In many cases you don't want to include such group/order levels in your hierarchical keywords.

This is where group levels come into play. When you enable this property for an element in the thesaurus, IMatch does not include this element anymore when producing keywords from thesaurus entries. "

You may also wish to read about "Exclude", which is an alternative to Group.

[jarraun]

Thanks Ferdinand,

I can´t test it at the moment, but it seems that it will be necessary to select "Group Level Keywords" and also "Exclude in flat keywords" options in the Thesaurus Elements Properties to avoid these keywords to be copied into the Flat IPTC and XMP keywords.

From the help file:

The difference between the group level property and the exclude in flat keywords property is when they are applied:

Group level elements are already excluded when a hierarchical keyword is assigned from the thesaurus. They don't show up in the Keyword Panel at all.
Excluded elements are skipped when IMatch copies hierarchical keywords into the flat IPTC and XMP keywords. They show up in the hierarchical keywords, but not in IPTC and XMP keywords.

[Ferdinand]

it seems that it will be necessary to select "Group Level Keywords" and also "Exclude in flat keywords" options in the Thesaurus Elements Properties to avoid these keywords to be copied into the Flat IPTC and XMP keywords.

Nope.  Group automatically implies Exclude.  Exclude means that the node is written to hierarchical keywords but not to flat keywords.  Group means that the node is not written to hierarchical keywords, and so since it's not there in the hierarchy it can't be written to flat keywords, so it is Excluded more more less automatically.  You will find in the thesaurus editor that if you enable Group then Exclude is disabled, as it's implied automatically.

Let's say in the thesaurus we have Where|France|Paris.  We mark Where as Group and France as Exclude.  Then we get the following keywords written:

Hierarchical:  France|Paris (since Where is Group it is not written to the hierarchy)
Flat:  Paris   (Where is not written for the same reason, and France is not written as a flat keyword because it was Excluded)

This is a little complex to explain and is best done with examples.  Which is what the help file does, although I concede that it needs to be read carefully.

[jarraun]

Thanks Ferdinand,

Very well explained. Help being very accurate sometimes can´t cover our ignorance, I´ll do some more tests.
I will live without the suggestion of my first post.

Javier

[Ferdinand]

Two additional comments. 

1.  If you use either Group or Exclude in the thesaurus, it's probably a good idea to ensure that "Lookup keywords via thesaurus" is enabled in Metadata preferences, so that IMatch can recognise that Group or Exclude have been used.

2.  I'd think very carefully about using Exclude.  This was a clever idea of Mario's in response to some hassling from beta testers much earlier in the testing (I plead guilty  ).  But it is an IMatch-only thing.  For example, in that Where|France|Paris example, if you send a RAW file to Lightroom with the keyword France|Paris then in the developed file will have France and Paris as flat keywords and when you import it IMatch will see that something has gone wrong with the Exclude and want to correct it.  It's manageable, so long as you look out for and expect it.  Group is safe because Group nodes are internal to IMatch.  I used a mixture of Group and Exclude and in hindsight I wish I had kept to Group.