Lightroom Class: Keywording Designer Kits and Batch Renaming

Wow - hope you all had a fabulous weekend converting PNG files and importing into Lightroom.  If you finished your entire catalog or made any progress, will you share in the comments of this post?  I love hearing about progress...

This week we are moving right along into keywords.  Keywords are one of my favorite things in Lightroom.  If you setup your preferences the way I taught you, Lightroom will write them INSIDE your files which tags your files in a way that if they were proverbially dumped upside down into your hard drive and scattered everywhere, you could quickly categorize them and put them in their places again.  How cool is that?

Today we are going to tackle the VERY BASICS of keywording.  This is the foundation of the entire supply system - keywording by Designer and Kit.  It involves keywords, moving files and you may even possibly want to wait to start until you read my next post on importing a keyword list (I'm just trying to make your life easier). 

Another thing I added to this video - what to do if a Designer names all their files the same without kits in the filename.  Don't worry I explain it better in the video. :)

So here you go - the video on how to start keywording your supplies in Lightroom.

Comments

[Clskip]

Well I have finished importing, converting & importing the leftovers. I learned what to when you accidentally import to the folder where the catalog is, how to delete a catalog and start over & even how to add instead of move. Boy howdy! I'm glad computers don't intimidate me anymore! You're instructions have been great. I can't wait until this weekend to start keywording.

[Wendy T.]

Hi Kayla!
What do you do about collabs? specifically, blog hop/blog train collabs? do you make the store a designer and then have the kit under that store? or do you break up the kit and have it under each designer? Thanks!

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

Glad it is working for you - I love that you figured all that out on your own - you amaze me! Have fun with the keywords! :)

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

I detail it out in this post - http://www.digiscrap101.com/2011/03/lightroom-class-qa.html

Hope that helps!

[Carlaskipper]

Hi Kayla - I've run into an UGH! while importing & would like to know if there's a LR solution. When moving my keyworded kits into the main designer folders occasionally I run into the "same" name issue for some kit items (not every item in a kit but maybe one or two elements). No worries, I pull back the entire kit and rename using the folder name as part of the file name, then move it to the main designer folder. No problem... until I realized the UGH! During the conversion process from .png to .tif, those items are put into a folder named TIFF instead the kit folder. Last night I discovered that those items when using the rename process, are renamed with TIFF as the folder name instead of the kit folder name. So, now the items are keyworded however, the manic side of me says WELL POOH! I have elements that have TIFF as part of the file name instead of the kit name.

So I know how I can fix this in Bridge or Finder but if I fix it there how do I get the new file names into LR. Or is there a way to fix this in LR similar to how you'd do it in Bridge? My concern is that if I fix things outside LR, I won't get all of the new names imported and end up with missing stuff that I don't know is missing. LOL Or do I just buck up & get over it already???? UGH! I think I woke up HYPER! Thank you for your help!!!! Have a FAB weekend!
-c-

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

Great question - I know exactly what to do - Im writing you a post right now with screenshots. :)

[Carlaskipper]

WOO HOO!!! You so totally R-O-C-K!!!
-c-

[Carlaskipper]

Well OH POOH! again. I found a designer folder that has 609 items in it BUT the designer keyword has 611 items. Is there any way to find what those two items are? I haven't finished keywording everything and I did try clicking on each designer folder to see what designer keywords were checked but nothing had two designers. hmmmm
-c-

[Kimberly]

Hi Kayla!

Wow! Thanks for the amazing instructions! I have found even after renaming duplicates (that were kicked out while trying to move items from subfolders into the main folder)I can't move those items either as a group or individually into the main folder. Any idea what I could be doing wrong? I don't get an error message, it just won't allow me to move them.

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated!!

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

My first guess would be to make sure you are in Library mode. Press the G key on your keyboard. If you still can't click and drag files to a folder, I would make a call to Adobe Tech Support - http://www.adobe.com/support/photoshoplightroom/

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

Just finished the post - you can find it here: http://www.digiscrap101.com/2011/03/lightroom-qa-file-renaming-after-conversion.html

Happy Renaming! :)

[yekcal]

I'm DONE! I've organized my entire Digiscrap folder, processed all my PNGs into TIFs, and finished importing the last of the files into LR! WOO HOO! :)

So excited to finally keyword because then I can start digiscrapping!

Thank you for all of the instructions. They have been incredibly helpful!

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

Thanks for letting us know! So glad the tutorials have been helpful. You go! :)

Sent from my iPhone

[Peggy]

I am taking a lot longer for this because I had my files under kits, but not designers, so before I import I'm finding the designer in the TOU file and applying it as a keyword (also the kit name as a keyword) to each file in Bridge. Hopefully when in Lightroom I can gather all the designer kits together with these keywords.

I have my files under a main Scrapbooking Resources directory and then many under subfolders such as "Autumn, Heritage, Christmas, etc. It took me all day yesterday just to finish Christmas. After I get done with the catagory folders there are scads more folders in the Scrapbooking directory, listed by kit names.

I stopped buying or downloading freebies a few months ago since what I have is so overwhelming it takes too much time looking through it.

I definitely need to do some deleting after I get into lightroom! But it is exciting just to be on my way.

A big cheer for Kayla!

[Charlene Walberg]

Kayla, a question - are brushes put into lightroom? I ask because when I was copying things through lightroom, it looked like it missed all my brushes?
Love everything so far!

[Kayla Lamoreaux]

One of the drawbacks of Lightroom - it doesn't organize brushes. I use Brush Pilot to find mine and I know there are others for the PC. hth!