Adapting a streamlined workflow is one of the most important aspects of post-processing work. Among these, proper keywording ranks high on the priority list, and this is especially so for stock/microstock photographers or users who plan to catalogue their images in an organised way for better and efficient searches.
In the past, I have searched high and low for an easy and straight-forward method to add IPTC data. In short, I settled for Lightroom in the end after trying out various freeware programs. I’m in no way affiliated, but one great thing about this software is that you can import your files from your memory cards or hark disk and have it embed metadata (eg copyright information, title, description, keywords etc) on the fly.
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Other independent programs either have to be used separately from my workflow, meaning that separate programs had to be loaded for importing, keywording and editing, or there were obvious bugs that rudely disrupts the user experience, while Lightroom combines these 3 processes into one effortlessly.
For instance, Nikon ViewNX 2 had a weird bug where all of a sudden, text entered into the keyword field cannot be added to the keyword list or removed in any way, not even after restarting or reinstalling the program! The only solution I found through the hard way was to create another Windows user account and delete the old one, but note that the same problem may arise again any time while using the software.
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Yes, there are indeed freeware out there which perform their role well, but another gripe I have about such programs is with regards to their user-unfriendliness. For a user like me who keywords and adds titles and descriptions on a very frequent basis, I strongly prefer an intuitive user interface such as allowing the direct entry of keywords through typing and hitting “Enter” instead of having to selecting individual words from a dropdown list, the ability to copy and paste metadata from one image to another, and the separating of keywords with industry standardised spaces/commas. Another convenient feature of Lightroom keywording function is the ability to see at one glance the keywords that are common among multiple selected images. Asterisks beside the keywords mean that some images do not have those keywords.
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Lightroom not only solves the user-unfriendliness issue for me, but also allows me to create keyword sets to group related words of a certain subject together such as Architecture, Food, Landscape, Portraits so that I can just click those keywords to add them to the image (or multiple images) instead of having to retype the same thing repeatedly! After the presets are created, you can select them from the dropdown list and assign the keywords to the image (or images) either by clicking on them or holding down the “Alt” key (for PC) and pressing the corresponding numeral on the keypad (1-9).
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Another useful feature of Lightroom is that it will suggest further keywords to add to the image based on certain criteria in the metadata such as the time of capture in relation to other images and existing keywords. This greatly helps to add more related content to the images and may also help to remind the user about keywords which may have slipped his mind
I have yet to come across anything which integrates the essential steps of my workflow so seamlessly and effortlessly. If you have not tried Lightroom, give it a try for yourself and see if it fits into your workflow. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions!