Using new iPad instead of MacBook on the road

Are you using the keywords that you create for “external” uses (I.e loading the images to Stock agencies, etc) or are the keywords for your own personal use “searching/finding” images? If it’s the former, I see no work around for you other than to do what you are doing.

But, if you are using keywords for the latter only, have you tried the search functions in the LR ecosystem? They are actually quite good these days and, if good enough for you, would save you a bunch of time with keywording.

Just a thought.

Best wishes.

@jaberg: If your workaround works for you that's just fine I suppose, but it sounds pretty cumbersome - no offence, it's the shortcoming of the tools that make it that way, I understand that. But for me, probably I will stay with my MacBook. But especially when traveling by plane, taking both my iPad (for reading mainly) and my MacBook with me as I do right now is becoming a royal PITA, with all the restrictions re. carry-on luggage and so on.

As a last resort, I could imagine changing my workflow like this: Use the iPad just as a backup for the memory cards, and the keywords in LR for iPad as a scratch book or external memory, transferring them to LrC by hand at home. On the other hand, that's quite a price to pay for not having to lug around the MacBook in addition to the iPad.

Funny thing, I just checked if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence: There is Capture One with keywording that is similar to LrC, and there is Capture One for iPad, but - surprise, surprise - the latter doesn't seem to be offering keywords at all.

Personal use. Are you talking about ML-based content search? I sometimes have very specific keywords for unspecific images, intimate landscapes, as Eliot Porter called them. I always thought that geotagging would be a good substitute, at least then in connection with ML, but I haven't found a reliable solution for geotagging my images on basis of the camera (manufacturer) I use.

One more idea for you…..

Could you use the “caption” field in LRM as the place that you put keywords? The caption field does sync.

You still can’t batch them in LRM, but you could add all your keywords there (maybe?) and then back in LRC you could find the image with the caption/keywords, select the next 50-100 that need the same keywords, copy/past to the keyword filed and apply to all 50-100 images.

Kinda of a PITA, honestly, but I thought I would mention it.

I don’t know what ‘ML’ is. Apologies.

I am speaking to the internal search functions in Lightroom where you can select a whole bunch of attributes and also type in Freeform text……. The caption field is also searchable this way…. Which is maybe one reason to add “keywords” to the caption field.

I don’t mean to be changing around your whole work flow. Not my place. Just trying to give you some ideas. But, my tap is dry at this point.

Good luck!

ML = machine learning. Which is to say, not describing the image at all but letting the machine tag it for you, and then being able to search in that description. But I have a lot of images that I wouldn't expect a machine to identify correctly without at least GPS coordinates. Although nowadays there are systems that are much better in this than man.

No problem, I'm open for ideas to think out of the box, thanks for those!

A good idea, in principle. However, in the linked discussion, there even was an Adobe employee, and still nothing happened in 4 years. As I understand, the problem is that the keyword model in LrC is much more sophisticated than in the rest of Creative Cloud, and they have no idea how to map the latter to the former in a way that makes sense. This is probably also the reason why there is a single synchronisation from LrC to CC, from the more complex to the simple model.

No offense taken. All workflows are a series of compromises. Mine works for me, and isn't any great burden. You do you boo.

My primary source is also an Adobe employee…with some responsibility for monitoring and tabulating those forums. No action/solution to date is not indicative of the future…and you want the upvotes on any post making your request to increase the pressure and improve the incentive for the tech team.

Registering your complaint there might get you tangible results. Making it here will only gain you sympathetic likes.

For what this is worth in terms of your planning and workflow adjustments: I attend a quarterly Lightroom users group meeting here. It's led by Adobe Engineers and the Community Relations Specialist (unsure of his exact, current title) I channeled earlier. My distinct impression, formed over the past 4-5 years, is that Adobe's roadmap is aiming towards adding features to the Lightroom and LR Mobile codebase. Eventually, "Classic" as we know it will cease development. Again, this is an impression — not a straight from the horse's mouth statement like my suggestion to use the support forums.

Others have raised before the suspicion that Adobe will eventually cease development of LrC, even back when Lr came out and the former Lr became LrC. Up to now, Adobe has added features like there's no tomorrow. In any case, as soon as LrC is no more, I'm also, an Adobe customer no more that is, and I've been for 25 years now. I consider Lr to be pretty much unbearable.

In any case, with registering my complaint with Adobe you probably have a point, thanks - will do that. Maybe I can also simply second an already existing complaint, have done that before.