Keywording at Light Speed – Part IV

Posted by Eric Leszkowicz on Feb 16, 2009 in Blog, Keywords | 1 comment

The fourth post brings us to perhaps the most unusual methods to apply keywords – a spray can. This may not be readily visible on your Lightroom Library Module.  You may click on the arrow and make the painter tool visible. 

The other option is to use the keyboard shortcut (ctrl – alt – K).  Once you pick up the paint can, you enter the keywords that you want to paint on the images.  You can enter multiple words by separating them with a comma.  Existing keywords will be suggested.

Once they are set, just click the mouse on the images that you want to “paint” the keywords on.  You can paint multiple images by holding down the left mouse button and spraying over several images.  Spraying them a second time removes the keyword (you will notice the can turns into an eraser.)

Warning:  Spray painting in real life is not a way to paint things precisely.  Spray painting in Lightroom can be equally as messy.  Be careful.

Why stop there?  You can paint several things onto images.  In Lightroom 2.2, you can paint keywords, labels, flags, ratings, metadata, settings, rotation, and target collections.  This opens up a whole bunch of possibilities.  Nearly all of them I haven’t thought of yet!

When to Use:  This is best used when you have to apply keywords to images that are spread throughout a collection.

Sample Use:  In our weddings we keyword every image that has the groom in the image and every image that has the bride in the image.  So we load up the paint can with bride and then after spraying those images, we spray the images with groom loaded up.