Still confused about @keywords and thesaurus

[CollieDog]

Hi!
I've finally got around to start using IMatch 5 after purchasing a license months ago.

I'm having trouble understanding the difference between keywords, @keywords, and the thesaurus.

This is my situation.
Last year, I organized hundreds of folders of photos using Lightroom 5. I modified an open-source controlled vocabulary list to create a hierarchical keyword list which I used to tag (assign keywords) to hundreds of photos. Metadata was stored as sidecar files. I later exported this hierarchical keyword list from Lightroom 5 as a .txt file and imported it into IMatch. It imported properly and appeared as the Thesaurus in IMatch.

When I imported my photo folders into IMatch, the program imported the photo metadata from sidecar files. The keywords I had previously assigned in Lightroom now appear in IMatch in the "Categories" tab as @keywords.  The thing I don't understand is why the hierarchy of the keywords is broken? Some of the hierarchical categories are intact, but most are "broken".

My question is why are the @keywords in Categories are not in exactly the same hierarchy as the Thesaurus? In Lightroom I created a hierarchical list and assigned keywords to photos based on that list. Thus I'm having trouble figuring out why its not the same in IMatch.

Also, when I add a new keyword to a photo, it appears in both @keywords in Categories and gets propogated into the Thesaurs. This is nice, but confuses me more as to the reasons for why the hierarchies in @keywords in Categories got all jumbled up.

In the attached photos, you can see that the Categories @keywords and the Thesaurus hierarchical lists do not match. How can I fix this? Do I have to painstakingly go through the @keywords and reorder them into the same categories as those in the Thesaurus?

A final question is when IMatch indexed all my photos (keywords in metadata sidecar added in Lightroom), and used this sidecar data to create @keywords in the Categories panel, then what is the use of the Thesaurus? It seems redundant.

I know that Mario had very good reasons for designing things like this. Please help me figure this out
Once I get this clear, I'll get back to my cataloguing.

Thanks!










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[Mario]

Thesaurus: A universal feature which allows you to store text for all metadata. If you create thesaurus entries for keywords, you can directly access them in the keyword panel and assign them to you files.

@Keywords: This special category hierarchy mirrors the keywords in your files. This is a data-driven category which looks at the keywords in your files, and then re-creates them as categories. A convenient way to see and navigate files by the keywords they contain.

Keyword Panel: This is where you view, add and remove keywords to your files.

My question is why are the @keywords in Categories are not in exactly the same hierarchy as the Thesaurus?

The hierarchy of your thesaurus is independent from the keywords in your files. You can have 10,000 keywords in your thesaurus, but only 700 in your files. The thesaurus is designed to handle things like controlled vocabularies, where you setup or import large keyword sets, and then pick from them for your files.

Also, when I add a new keyword to a photo, it appears in both @keywords in Categories and gets propogated into the Thesaurs.

When you add keywords in the Keyword Panel you can (optionally) set the option that imports new keywords into the thesaurus. You don't need to do that if you don't want. See the Keyword Panel help topic and the Thesaurus help topic for detailed info.

In the attached photos, you can see that the Categories @keywords and the Thesaurus hierarchical lists do not match. How can I fix this? Do I have to painstakingly go through the @keywords and reorder them into the same categories as those in the Thesaurus?

As said above, the thesaurus is not linked to the keywords in your files. Making changes in the thesaurus just changes the thesaurus, it does not go out and change keywords (or other metadata) in your files. There is no need to synchronize the thesaurus and the keywords in your files. The special @Keyword categories shows you the keywords in your files, which can be totally different from your thesaurus. It all depends on which keywords you add to your files and how you setup your thesaurus. You don't even need a thesaurus to add or change keywords in your files. It just saves a lot of typing if you have one.

'Hope that helps. More on all that in the IMatch help. The Keyword Panel and Thesaurus and @Keyword help topics should answer all your questions completely.

[DigPeter]

I regard thesaurus as a list to help assign keywords to a file.  Not all items in the list are necessarily assigned, but are there for future use.  @Keywords in Category View only shows those keywords which are actually assigned and written back to files.  So from your attachments it appears that you have 22 files assigned as "Child", but none assigned as "Adult".   The great benefit of using thesaurus to assign keywords is that it saves a lot of typing and ensures consistency of spelling, by avoiding typing errors.

[Ferdinand]

I've tried to read this a couple of times, but I'm not sure I follow your problem entirely.

But I have a hunch that what is causing you problems is the Group option.  When you import a thesaurus with some nodes/elements in upper case, IMatch may mark these as Group.  You can read in the help file what this means in more detail, but in essence these nodes only exist in the thesaurus as an organisational device and do not get written to the files at all, and so do not appear in @Keywords.  So they are designed to cause a discrepancy between the thesaurus and @Keywords.  (There is a weaker form of Group called Exclude, which is also in the help file.)

It seems to me that some of your thesaurus nodes have been marked as Group.  You can see these as the nodes with the square brackets [ ] around the little square in the thesaurus manager and the square is brown rather than blue.

How to fix?  Well, you could go and edit every such node to turn Group off (tedious).  Or you could delete the thesaurus and reimport it and this time *uncheck* the box that you (and I  ) ignored the first time "Mark elements in UPPER CASE as Group level".

I think that this will solve your problem, or at least a large part of it.

IMatch keywords should be fully compatible with LR so long as you don't use Group or Exclude.  Actually Group (should you decide to use it at some stage) won't really cause a problem, but Exclude is not fully compatible with LR, although you can still use it if you know what to watch out for.