Keywords & Keyword list
Ever since I installed 2019.5 keywords are a mess and 2019.6 hasn't cured the problem.
One of many problems: A keyword that I put into a hierarchy (e.g. FRANCE and PARIS) by dragging them over the top of one another (dragging and dropping PARIS over FRANCE) will reappear separated after some time or after a restart.
I know that the keywords are stored with each image individually, but the keyword list (containing also keywords not assigned to any image because these images were deleted from the system) is in a separate file. I would like to remove this file so that ON1 has to recreate it. I have done it before but don't remember were this file is located and what it is called. Id' appreciate if somebody could help me there.
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Does double-clicking on any of the France or Paris entries in the Keyword List find the file for you?
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The keywords and stored in the database, EXIF and on1 files and could also be embedded in the photo file if it's supported. Even if you found a single list and deleted it, On1 will re-create the list from all of those sources.
One thing I haven't tried is to export the keyword list, edit it and re-import the list. I don't know if re-importing overwrites what's there or adds to it. If it overwrites, possibly importing a blank list could clear it. Its something you could experiment with.
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@Brian. Yes, double-clicking works as expected, except when the keyword is orphaned of course.
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To find where the file is on your system you can right/control-click the image in the browser and choose the command Show in Finder/Explorer or Reveal in Folders from the contextual menu.
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Rick, I'l try it with importing a blank list.
I know that my keywords list is a compete mess, many keywords are both hierarchically and individually attached to photos. Many keywords are orphans. And that's what I want to get rid of by emptying the keywords list so that ON1 has to rebuild it based on the keywords of the photos.
I know that the keywords list is contained in a single file, but I forgot its name and location. I have deleted it several times under 2019.5.0 -
The keywording is simply a mess, they are all held in the database so can only be searched in catalogued folders. But ... the application searches all disks for keywords in images as well as those you enter yourself.
So you have no control over the keywords and it makes a mess of the keywords list.
The application should only apply keywords you enter and only to catalogued folders so they can be searched.
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Rick, I have tried importing a blank keywords list. To no useful avail, since the it doesn't overwrite the existing list, it seems to merge with it.
So I'm still trying to delete the existing list in order to fore ON1 to recreate it from scratch.Keywording really is a mess. I have literally spent tens of hours to put keywords that appear outside the hierarchies back into the hierarchy by dragging them over the top keyword. After a while they reappear separated again.
During the process, ON1 almost always stops responding, sometimes for tens of minutes until I force ON1 to abort.
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Bernd, I went through all this with my keywords too. I spent many hours over several days cleaning them up and reporting my findings to ON1. What I found is that keywords that had been embedded into the image files are not being affected by the changes made to the keyword list. The hierarchical structure changes are not being updated in images that have that keyword embedded. ON1's databases get updated but the next time that image's metadata gets scanned the original keywords come back. To make things worse, repeatedly moving the same keyword onto its parent corrupted ON1's data as well.
To permanently clean things up I had to identify the image files containing the individual keywords and manually make edits to the Keywords pane in the file's metadata then use the Amend Metadata command to write the changes back to the file. It was a major PITA and I didn't get them all.
2019.6 has improved things but it still needs more work.
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Brian, many thanks for your helpful albeit painful explanation. Now at least I understand where the problems come from. I guess I will have to scan through some 15'000 photos manually ...
Can the embedded keywords be changed inside ON1 or did you use a separate app?
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I made them in ON1, in the Metadata pane's Keywords. There are a couple of tricks I discovered along the way.
- RAW files cannot save keywords so they can be eliminated from any searching. DNG's, psd, tiff, jpeg all can have them.
- If you can find images by double-clicking in the Keyword List, be sure to go to that image's folder and turn off Filters before editing them otherwise as soon as you remove the searched keyword the image will be removed from the filtered list and you won't be able to save those changes to the file.
It is painful. I did it as much to research the issues so I could report them to the engineers as I did for myself and cleaning up the mess. I'm still finding the occasional problem.
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Also, to clear ON1's databases has anyone tried simply clicking the first entry in the Keyword List then shift-clicking the last entry and deleting them en masse. I'm sure it would take forever but turning off cataloging first would probably help. Turning it back on after the delete will force an update for a new keyword list.
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Thanks a lot. Very helpful indeed. I will give it a try, at least I will not lose any more time in trying to figure out what the mechanics in the background are.
I appreciate your help.
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Brian: " has anyone tried simply clicking the first entry in the Keyword List then shift-clicking the last entry and deleting them en masse."
I have tried on a small subset, but the result is not what I want. If you delete the selected keywords, this will not only delete them from the list but also from the photos (sidecars), so you'll end up with no more keywords assigned to your photos at all.0 -
Bernd, where are you deleting those keywords? If you delete from the Metadata pane, yes all keywords will be deleted, but if you select 'Remove keyword' from the keyword list it should only affect that keyword.
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Rick, the Remove Keyword command removes it from selected images but leaves it in the keyword list. Delete Keyword is the only way to remove one from the list and as Bernd pointed out that is also supposed to delete them from the images' metadata as well.
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Ok, but I just tried that on a number of images and it doesn't remove all keywords, just the one that was selected, which is correct.
I also set 3 different keywords on 3 different images. Then selected those images and all 3 keywords in the list and removed them all at the same time. Again it removed all 3 keywords without changing any other keywords on the photos.
It all (this procedure anyway) looks good to me.
Just want to know how Bernd is losing ALL keywords during this operation.
Unless you're trying to remove from the list WITHOUT removing from the file. Don't bother trying, On1 doesn't work that way.
Edited: I did some more tests with embedded metadata. Removing or Deleting a keyword does not remove it from the file if it's embedded, but if you remove it and then Re-embed the data it will be re-written without the deleted keyword. It's the only way I see to remove those keywords that are embedded.
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The main issue is that it won't matter if you delete from the catalog, ON1 will still go back and scan all disks not just those in the catalog and add them back.
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That's why you have to find the file that have them embedded. Then you can manually edit the metadata keywords and re-embed the changes.
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The question is why should it scan uncataloged folders as you can't search those folders. It is simply badly thought out, I can't think of any professional RAW editor that does that, not even Lightroom or Capture One act like that.
The worst thing is we have no choice to turn it off.
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My opinion is that you can only manipulate one RAW file at a time so it you batch delete or change the keyword the program does one RAW file and then cannot continue further. I have also found RAW files that cannot be changed at all, the .xmp an .on1 files have to be deleted (how many of these in all the thousands of files are like this) then keywords reinserted. Most of my keywords are inherited from other programs most using / to show hierarchy while ON1 uses < for example address/23 and ON1 address<23, ON1 cannot search for address/23 so you must change hundreds one at a time (not that I want them appearing anyway since the whole idea is not to have thousands of keywords in a straight line and having to scroll down then up again over and over). I have many more problems I could mention, I would have thought this was the easiest part to program.
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Here is the metadata of a jpg. It has the "keywords" (named Hierarchical Subject) Australia and Australia>Cottesloe embedded, but in fact there is no keyword embedded (the line "Keywords" is missing).
In ON1, the keywords are australia, cottesloe supposedly stored in the sidecar. Screenshot see next comment.
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Sorry, can't upload the screenshot, exceeds 2 MB.
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I don't know if this will help anyone or not, but I'll try to explain how I fixed this problem...
I've been re-arranging my keywords lately and among other problems, I finally found one problem that was mentioned here, a keyword that won't delete.
I have a keyword 'Rose'. When Searching for the text, Rose, I find 124, but when searching for keywords I find 104. I dragged Rose to be under the keyword 'Flower'. Of the 124 photos, 104 of them changed to Flower>Rose. Double-clicking Rose found no images. If I select all cataloged photos, The Rose keyword shows that it's being used 20 times even though no photos are found. I can't delete Rose, every time I try, it keeps coming back. So if I can't find it, how do I fix it? This is what I did...
- Search for all 124 photos with text 'Rose'
- Add a new keyword (I chose 'Fault') to all 124
- Search for all photos with Flowers>Rose (104)
- Remove Fault from all 104
- Now search for all photos with Fault which should also have Rose. Finally, I have the 20 photos.
- Using Fault, select all and remove Rose
- Add Flower>Rose
- Remove Fault
- Finally, the Rose keyword can be deleted
Viewing the metadata of those 20 photos, all had the Rose keyword, but can't be searched by that keyword for some reason.
I checked to see if Rose was embedded and it's wasn't.After all that, I've fixed all of 20 photos!
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The basis of all this is that the Keywording system is seriously flawed and certainly doesnt help with productivity insofar as we have to constantly look for ways to make it work ... unlike other appliucations that treat keywording professionally.
From Support:
"As you add cataloged folders or browse through folders of uncataloged photos inside ON1 Photo RAW 2019, any keywords you have added—to any photo—are stored in an internal database."
A workaround/solution would be to delete the unwanted keywords from the keyword list and associated images.
However if the unwanted keywords are embedded in the images you might need to manually delete them from the metadata field and update it once it has no keywords by clicking Photo -> Embed metadata. This will embed the new metadata that has no keywords.This is an unbelievable implementation where you have absolutely no control over keywords and you can't search uncataloged folders anyway.
ON1 wont recognize this as a bug and have no will to correct it so we have control over our own keywording.
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Sorry Don, but I don't see it as a bug.
You CAN search un-cataloged folders if they are the active folder. That's why there is the 'Search Cataloged Folders' button, so you can switch modes. I don't see the point of having keywords assigned to photos if you can't use them. With On1, you can still select any un-cataloged folder and search for something, but that only works if On1 knows what the keyword is, so, by default it collects a list of ALL known keywords. I know you don't want this huge list of words to deal with, but this makes sense to me.
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I am just a little confused with what you say as I just searched the pictures folder for all the keywords picked up and it doesn't find any.
Recently I had exported, from the catalog, 150+ images with hierarchical keywords, then browsed them in the browser because it is color managed and it reread all the keywords as level 1.
I only see keywords as something that are allocated in the process of importing or editing images. The crippling thing about this is that you do not have an option and my keyword list now has over 69 duplicated entries.
In any other type of implementation you have control and you can either synch to XML or load keywords as required ... and other apps actually load the hierarchy ...
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Don, I'm not saying that On1s keywording doesn't have problems, just saying that collecting keywords outside of catalogues doesn't sound like a bug to me.
It doesn't matter how the keywords were added, weather inside of On1 or from another program, On1 still needs to know what they are in order to use them, that's just how it's implemented here, but I agree that if there was an option to collect all keywords or just use On1s set, it would help a lot.
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