Keyword entry accuracy

Feature Requests
#1

GOAL: I’d like to delegate other family members to add keywords to photos, but to do so accurately - avoiding duplicate terms and misspellings. The current free-form keyword text entry provides no user feedback whether a keyword already exists in the catalog, or is spelled correctly.

SUGGESTION: Add one or more features to help users conform their entries to existing keywords. This could include:

  1. selecting keywords via a pick list

  2. using auto-complete (like Lightroom) to match existing keywords

  3. a tool to select one or more keywords, then click on multiple photos to apply those keywords to. Something like the Spray Paint tool in Lightroom.

In addition to ensuring keyword accuracy, many of these features would also speed keyword entry.

Thanks!

12 Likes
#2

You could use something like aType, Typinator (Mac only), or Textexpander with a synced keyword set. Built-in support would definitely be better, but those types of tools can provide some level of consistency.

I used Typinator before iOS became a more significant portion of my workflow, and would make the keyword set active in Mylio only so snippet searches in other apps wouldn’t be full of keywords. You could also assign a prefix to the snippets (e.g. “k” for keyword) to help in that regard.

#3

I understand there are potential workarounds & mitigations. Doesn’t change my Feature Request, however. Thanks for the suggestions.

#4

I’m with you 100%. :grin:

1 Like
#5

As a suggestion for this issue, how about an optional panel for keywords like the one in the settings for a sync panel? (It could be that you have to choose one or the other as both additional panels may make the UI a bit busy). That way, you could select several photos then click on the keywords that apply to them, which would definitely speed up workflow and ensure consistency. Thoughts?

#6

Good idea, thanks. Finding or getting to the Keywords field isn’t my main problem, but that certainly could be improved. Rather than another Tabbed panel (like Info, Map, Edit, Sync) - I’d actually prefer to have the Keywords field up top, permanently displayed - like they currently do for Flag, Stars, and Color Labels. Even better - let us configure which Metadata fields we want to “promote” from the Info tab, to the top section.

But wherever it’s displayed, it’s the functionality of the Keywords field that most needs improving. My top priority would be a complete keyword pick-list, with some ability to auto-complete (or auto-jump in list) as you type. The latter is particularly important - I have about 1400 keywords so far, and I don’t relish the thought of manually scrolling thru that list to pick individual keywords.

#7

1400 keywords? Wow! Yes, the panel idea would be… tedious. I try to limit the number of keywords to general terms and more specific descriptors I put in the caption, but each to their own. I agree, though, that the Mylio keyword system needs an overhaul.

#8

My keywords were accumulated over almost 12 years of Lightroom photo cataloging. I still use Lightroom Classic as my “master” app for assigning keywords, because of the extreme shortcomings in Mylio’s keyword management. But LR Classic catalogs are single-user, single-device - whereas Mylio is multi-device. So I’ve been having my wife use Mylio on her computer to tag a large collection of family photos. And unfortunately it’s clear how difficult it is to keyword efficiently, and with any accuracy in Mylio.

1 Like
#9

Fully support this. Typeahead and autocomplete with the ability to create new ones on the fly would work well for my usage. Apple photos does this and very easy. Unfortunately I have quite a lot of very long keywords that were easy to enter with autocomplete but now very hard to maintain in Mylio.

2 Likes
#10

I also have been looking for better keyword support. In Aperture there used to be a small panel at the bottom of the screen with up to 20 keywords that I could simply click to assign to the selected photo(s) or for more then 20 there was a HUD that would open where I could filter, scroll, drag and drop, etc. I would love to see Mylio have some kind of “quick list” of the most popular ones that I could just select to add, or at a minimum be able auto complete the keyword once I start typing it.

1 Like
#11

I’m just discovering the pain of the keyword shortcomings …

Autocomplete, which then predicts other keywords already associated with the first used and so on, would be logical and has existed in other software for quite some time.

And a picklist, sorted by most frequently used for picking your first keyword (and then moving into the predicted picklist described above) seems an essential and expected tool for a photo storage and management app.

Any news on anything in the pipeline?!

4 Likes
#12

+1 to add this feature.
Seems to be pretty easy to implement and would save users who rely on keywords a bunch of time.

Even for a single user chances of accumulating keywords are quite high. I have to occasionally go through the keywords and clean them up due to issues like differences in case (Keyword and keywords are different), typos (keyword) or plural/singular (keyword vs keywords)

#13

True,

Important keyword functions that are currently missing:

  • auto complete
  • nested keywords
    → just like in Lightroom!
2 Likes