LIBRARY - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 115

XMP sidecars are now listed on Metadata panel
In conjunction with the conl ict status icon, Lightroom 3 will now show you
when a raw i le has a sidecar saved next to it on disk. Look on the Metadata
panel, below the File Name i eld.

3

Reading Metadata from Files
If you've edited your i le outside Lightroom (such as in Bridge, Adobe Camera
Raw, Photoshop etc.) and want to update Lightroom to show the latest changes,
you can read in the metadata from the i le using the command on the Metadata
menu. h is will overwrite the photo's metadata in the Lightroom catalog.

Coni rm your decision
Be careful using the Read Metadata from Files command; it will potentially
overwrite all your current Lightroom metadata for selected images. Be sure it's
what you really want to do before going ahead.

Keywords
Keywords (also ot en called “tags”) are words and short phrases used to describe
the content, theme and subject of a photo. Keywords can also be used to address
metaphors, abstract concepts and graphical elements of the composition.

In most cases, keywords are essential metadata that should be applied to every
photo, especially those that will be posted online: search engines commonly
read keywords embedded in image i les, and display search results based on the
contents of this metadata.

Keywords also have lots of potential for use within your local Lightroom
catalogs. You can use keywords to i nd and organize photos in your archives,
even if those keywords are never shown to the public.

You can apply keywords during Import, and then enhance them in Library,
where you work with the Keywording and Keyword List panels.

KEYWORDING STRATEGIES
For most photographers, every image in your catalog should have at least a few
keywords assigned to it, and usually, more is better. Obviously, there's no point
wasting time applying keywords to photos you will never use, but as has been
discussed previously, this can be dii cult to determine today.

Most importantly, your i nal selects should have many keywords applied when
you're done processing them. Years from now, locating specii c images will
depend on the richness of the metadata you've applied, especially keywords.