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Dear Pat,

Keywording in the import dialog is not a good idea unless all the file's share some common characteristic.  You will find it much easier to do your keywording, and add other types, of descriptive metadata once the import process finishes.  Check out our video on how Keyword Sets can help for more information.  As you have discovered that keywording box in the import dialog is not designed for the kind of image specific work that you are trying to do.

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David Marx

Post edited 12:22 pm – August 18, 2010 by davem

Dear Phil,

This is a good suggestion but it will have no effect if you have Lightroom's preferences configured the way I do.  I have Lightroom setup so that it automaticallys ignores the camera's folder names and treats the entire card as if it were one single folder.

While I think that dividing the files up within your memory card (using camera generated folders) is an excellent idea, it requires a whole lot more effort when you are shooting and importing.  In my humble opinion, this system pales in comparison to the power of metadata, keywords, and collections within Lightroom.  I would suggest that you master these tools and then save yourself the effort while out shooting!

Folder name's and the division of files into separate folders is really not all that important in an indexed image managment system.  It's really a hold-over, or hang up, that a lot of us carry around from the primative operating system organizational days when we had to manually manage all of our files.  The truth is that you could put every photo that you have ever taken into a single folder and Lightroom would work just fine thanks to metadata searches.

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David