How can I consolidate keyword hierarchies in Lightroom?

Question

is it possible to consolidate two trees with different number of levels in their hierarchy? That is, I want to add several new superlevels, but due to the current keyword structure it's easier to add these outside LR where I don't need to click-and-drag every keyword (we're talking several thousand keywords, i.e. species' names).

FROM

• A
  • B
    • C: 2 images
    • D: 3 images

IMPORT THE FOLLOWING KEYWORD LIST:

• A
  • B
    • X
      • C
    • Y
      • D

AND CONSOLIDATE INTO:

• A
  • B
    • X
      • C: 2 images
    • Y
      • D: 3 images

So that the images that are tagged according to the first will end up with new levels in their hierarchy.

Yes, I know of the plug-in RC Keyword Consolidator, but for the life of me I can't get it to do this task ( if it can at all?).

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I think you have two mutually exclusive goals. It is much easier to do this outside Lightroom, by exporting the keywords to a file. It can then be edited in any plain text editor and imported back into LR. Voila! (See https://lightroomkillertips.com/exporting-importing-keyword-list/ for import/export details. See https://photo-keywords.com/keyword-list-editing.php for editing details.)

But that is probably going break the links to your existing photos, and that creates an even bigger problem. I don't know anyway to maintain those links once you get outside the LR environment.

Answer 2

If you don't have duplicate keywords in your hierarchy, I wrote a plugin that could help with selecting all parent terms of selected child terms. So, assuming you had re-ordered your keyword hierarchy (adding new levels), the parent terms could be explicitly added (not just on export), which would allow you to select by the new parent terms. That's not what this plugin is really designed for, but since I use it in conjunction with semi-automatic (AI) keywording, it allows me to add more context to those keywords (if I put them into my custom tree) and automatically add related (parent/synonym) keywords.

Even if you don't have the "numeric keywords" I'm copying to IPTC fields with my plugin, this could help you explicitly add parent keywords to images, if you've re-structured your hierarchy: https://github.com/LowellMontgomery/LrIptcCodeHelper

And this plugin could help you identify keywords that are "duplicate", allowing you to rename them (and add synonyms to export, if the "duplicate" term is still appropriate). This allows us to select all parent terms with confidence (I was adjusting my own keyword tree to give "front-level" preference to the terms provided by the ClarifAI service.) https://github.com/LowellMontgomery/LrKeywordDeduper