Fixing Keyword Hierarchy in Lightroom

[kc]

Hi, I have 7,000 images that I've imported into Lightroom, from PhotoElement 3. The keywords in Lightroom are no longer in a hierarchy. My theory is that it was a result of the way I had the hierarchy in PhotoElements and/or how the keywords were written to the .jpg/.tif files via Elements. I'm trying to figure out how to fix 7000 images, but I can't seem to figure out how to store the hierarchy in the keyword field.

For example, I have a picture of my dog Casey and I. The hierarchy
    dogs
         Casey
         Shadow
    People
         me

When I manually enter:
   Casey > dogs, me > People
it ends up getting stored as
   Casey, me
And yet, I have a picture of my dog Shadow, whose keyword field looks like:
    Shadow > dogs
I think I created the "Shadow" tag using painter and/or via drag-n-drop. I tried creating a "Casey2" keyword and applying it to the photo using these methods. It still shows up as "Casey, Casey2, me" (not the "Casey, Casey2 > dogs, me" as I had hoped).

What is the proper format for keyword hierarchies? I would like to fix these once and have the data stored properly so the next move to software package "x" goes more smoothly (if possible).

Any suggestions, recommendations as to how to fix my keywords would be also greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
karen c (kc)

ps. I can see the xml in the jpg file, and it shows the hierachy, but it looks like it's a lightroom only feature. Hoping to verify it's a Lightroom specific tag, as opposed to an industry accepted tag?

   <lr:hierarchicalSubject>
    <rdf:Bag>
     <rdf:li>People|me</rdf:li>  <!-- shows hierarchy for people -->
     <rdf:li>dogs|Casey</rdf:li> <!--shows hierarchy for dogs -->
    </rdf:Bag>
   </lr:hierarchicalSubject>
   <dc:subject>
    <rdf:Bag>
     <rdf:li>Casey</rdf:li>  <!-- hierarchy of People/dogs lost! -->
     <rdf:li>People</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>dogs</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>me</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Bag>
   </dc:subject>

From the header, it looks like "hierarchicalSubject" is a Lightroom specific tag. I was hoping to confirm this.

<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 4.2-c020 1.124078, Tue Sep 11 2007 23:21:40        ">
 <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
    xmlns:lr="http://ns.adobe.com/lightroom/1.0/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"

[peterkrogh]

KC (name?)
Yes, that tag is a Lightroom tag (also shared by Bridge 2.0.1).  And not by anything else.
I don't know if there are any plans to create a migration from Elements, but it would be a nice thing for Adobe to do.
You could hack it:
Change the keyword Casey to
Dog Casey

Then you could manually make the hierarchy in Lightroom.
How hard would this be for you to do?  You might want to try it on a small sample just to gage the PIA factor.

Not sure what other avenue there are for data export in Elements. Do you know if there is a text export?

Peter

[kc]

Peter,
Thank you for the confirmation on the ligthroom xml tags, and ideas as to how to proceed. Lightroom does have an import from Elements feature that I used for the 1st catalog I created. It imported some of the hierarchy properly, but not all of it. I believe it struggled with some of the folders/subtags I used in Elements. I did that import using Lightroom 1.0. I have LR 1.3 now and wonder if I re-did the import if it would do it better.

My problem is I've since reorganized my folders using the bucket suggestion from your DAM book. While I've got the files backed up to a separate drive, I'd like to get them backed up to DVD. But I'd like to get the keywords fixed then do the dvd burns.

After reading your post, I went back into Elements. It has an option to "write tag info to files". I wonder if I had done that first, if I'd be in a better position right now. So, I'm going to go back to my old-non-bucket folder organization, so that Elements won't be broken. Maybe if it can write the tag info to the files, those files will come into Lightroom better. Several files do not have tags, and I don't understand that, as I thought I had created tags for everything, but now I'm second guessing myself.

If that doesn't work, the new plan "B" is to change folder/subtags to whatever imported properly on the 1st catalog. (I can't get into Elements right now to see which parent/child option I used that worked).

Thanks again for the help, and the DAM book - it's given me much needed direction
kc (nickname)

[kc]

As an FYI for anyone whom may read this in the future.

My plans have been "foiled" by one too many mistakes. In my efforts to find a solution, I some how corrupted the Elements catalog file. Sadly, the software that backed up my files, did NOT back up the Elements catalog file (major drag).

The PIA factor has just increased dramatically, as I now have to check the keywords on 7000 images (rats!). On the positive side, this will give me the "opportunity" to clean up my keywords (and listen to a lot of music).

In case anyone ends up going down this bumpy road I find myself on, here's what I wish I had done:
-make sure all software files are backed up
  in my case, the photos were backed up, but the Elements catalog file was not.
  [step on soapbox]
  As a software developer, I'm extremely disappointed that computers are still so difficult to use.
  For exampe, the Elements catalog is stored in the
    Documents and Settings\userName\Application Data\
  folder. The backup software backed up 1 folder in that 'Application Data' folder. Why didn't it back up all of them?
  I realize it's my fault for not checking, but as an industry, we have a long way to go to make this easy to use.
  [step off soapbox]

-I wish I had saved the keywords to the files on a regular basis (in Elements, it's the "write tag info to file" option)