Structured keyword libraries

Tagging or keywording your images is useful for you to find your own images on your PC and to help other people find them when posted to Flickr, Smugmug etc.

Not to mention the importance of keywords in stock image libraries.

For more details, visit the keywords pages in the new tools section of the website.

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Keyword libraries in Bridge

Someone imported one of my Lightroom keyword libraries into Bridge, and it worked…

Well, almost.

It only loaded the English names because Bridge doesn’t have the same keyword capabilities as Lightroom.

So this got me thinking and I created versions of the libraries specifically for Bridge.

Thanks for the input Mono!

Bridge only allows one value per keyword (Lightroom allows multiple), so I added the scientific names as a separate ‘structure’.

OK, so it doesn’t automatically add the scientific name when you add the English name, but at least you don’t have to type it in!

You just have to tick the two boxes – one for the English name, one for the scientific.

Just think of it as education when you are looking up the correct scientific name in your field guide…

Enjoy!

Instructions to install can be found here.

Downloads can be found here.

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Installing keywords in Bridge

Its pretty easy to add a keyword library to Adobe Bridge.

Open the Keyword panel, then the panel’s menu and select ‘Import…’.

Navigate to and select the keyword file and press ‘Open’.

The keyword library will then magically appear in the panel!

I do not use Bridge, so if anyone has any further advice or ideas on managing keywords – let me know in the comments!

You can download my Adobe Bridge keywords libraries here.

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Download Bridge keyword libraries

Below are the download links for my currently available keyword libraries for Adobe Bridge. These have been tested on Bridge CS3 and CS4.

Installation instructions for Adobe Bridge can be found here.

I recommend that you only install one of these libraries in Bridge - installing more than one will introduce duplicate keywords. Whilst this will not cause any problems, it may lead to inconsistent keyword data across your images.

Current versions

British Birds

Flat list of species (no family keywords):

The British List (Bridge_British_List_Flat_20081104.zip)

With family hierarchy:

The British List by family (Bridge_British_List_Family_20081104.zip)

North American Birds

Flat list of species (no family keywords):

North American Birds (Bridge_USA_List_Flat_20081104.zip)

With family hierarchy:

North American Birds by family (Bridge_USA_List_Family_20081104.zip)

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Bird keywords in BreezeBrowser Pro

It turns out that my recently added keyword libraries for Adobe Bridge will do double duty – they should work in BreezeBrowser Pro too!

Installation

Installation is a bit of a hack – it replaces the demo keyword catalog that gets installed with the software (its actually a tiny selection from the “Controlled Vocabulary” - a $69/per year, general purpose keyword library with about 10,000 words in).

1. Close BreezeBrowser Pro

2. Open the Breezebrowser installation directory (e.g. c:\Program Files\BreezeSys\BreezeBrowserPro)

3. Copy the existing file “keywords.txt” to a safe place as a backup (e.g. My Documents)

4. Copy your downloaded species list for Bridge into the BreezeBrowserPro directory

5. Rename that file to “keywords.txt” (right click on the file and click rename, type “keywords.txt”, press return)

6. Start BreezeBrowser Pro

Usage

I only found this feature in BreezeBrowser Pro a couple of months ago when trying to find a simple keywording application.

1. Select the image(s) you want to add keywords to

2. Press CTRL+SHIFT+K to open the Keyword dialog (or Edit->Keywords menu)

3. Press the “Catalog…” button – this should open the bird species library. You can find specific words using the search box at the bottom.

Download the relevant library from the Adobe Bridge page (I’ll update that later to be less confusing).

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