How to Add Keywords and Tags to Photos With Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019

Watch the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019 training video tutorial. We will talk about managing and applying keywords and tags. We will show you how to create new category and subcategories, how to assign a keyword to an image, how to add an icon to a category and how to delete keywords.

Welcome back to our course on PSE 2019. In this section, we’re going to take our first look at keywords and tags. If you’ve used keywords and tags before, you’re familiar with them, then you can certainly skip this section.

Before we really get started though let me just emphasize something. I said to you earlier on, when we were talking about catalogs that it’s a good idea to make a decision about the number of catalogs you need before you start doing too much importing of media.

In the case of keywords and tags, it’s also a good idea to do some careful thinking early on. If you are going to use keywords then getting the structure of your keywords, the taxonomy of keywords correct is very important.

If you get it wrong from the outset, you can certainly change things later on. But, if you’ve tagged many imaged with keywords which don’t follow the correct structure, it can be really quite a time consuming to correct things later on.

I suggest that before you really launch yourself into using keywords in a big way you work your way carefully through the sections of the course that relate to keywords. Then, you experiment a little bit and make it absolutely clear how they work, so that you can make good decisions early on about your own keyword taxonomy.

First of all, I’m going to give you a quick overview of keywords and tags. And then, I’ll show you how to start setting up your taxonomy, how to assign keywords. We’ll look at filtering using keywords. Then we’ll talk about further developing the structure.

One other thing before we get started, the terms Keyword and Tag tend to be used rather interchangeably in PSE. I think there was a reasoning intention that they are subtly different things.

A keyword would be a word or a phrase like Dog or Animal or Mountain. A tag is something attached to an image which might be a keyword but it might be something else as well.

You can tag an image with keywords. Now, as I say these terms tend to be used rather interchangeably now and I’ll probably use them interchangeably as well. But, I’ll try not to confuse things.

To look at keywords, we click on the Keyword Info button, the righthand end of the task pane. And with the Tags option selected there are four headings. They are Keywords, People Tags, Places Tags, and Events Tags.

Those three tags, People, Places, and Events, we’re going to look at all of those later on. We’re only really interested in Keywords at the moment.

And by default, you have these four categories of Keyword: Nature, Color, Photography, and Other.

I’m going to build up my own structure for keywords, my own taxonomy. In the process of doing that if you’re working along with me, I suggest you create yours as well.

Although at this stage I suggest that you only experiment with it you can actually start thinking about how to make your taxonomy as complete and thorough as you need it to be.

There are a number of uses for keywords. One of them is so that you can filter the catalog. Another use, which we’ll see later on in the course, is that you can search in fairly sophisticated ways to find specific media that satisfy specific criteria. More on Search later on but for the moment let me show you how to start to build up a taxonomy.

You probably realized by now that a large proportion of the photos that I take are taken outdoors. And in fact, I don’t really take many photos indoors at all.

I tend to take pictures associated with nature and sometimes in relation to buildings. But there is a default category here of Nature. Nature is far too general a subject for me. So, I’m going to subdivide Nature and I’m going to create a subcategory.

If I right click on Nature; one of the options is Create New Subcategory. The subcategory that I’m going to create is Coast. Note, in that little dialog there Parent Category or Subcategory is Nature. Click on OK and I have now created the first part of my taxonomy.

I also want another subcategory of Mountains. I’m going to make a mistake with this because what I’m going to do is use that dropdown on the right and say New Subcategory. I typed in Mountains, and then, I realize: “Oh no! I’ve got the Parent set as Coast.

I left the Coast selected. Let’s should have selected Nature again, but you can change that. We can just go back and say it’s a subcategory of Nature. Then, I’m going to do one more. There, I have the beginnings of my keyword structure.

Let’s look next at assigning keywords. So, first of all, I’ve got some pictures near the top of the catalog here of a lake. If I click on the Lakes & Rivers keyword on the right there, click and hold. Note, the hand cursor there, I can drop that on to one of those images.

When I release the mouse that keyword is assigned to that image. Now temporarily you saw the little icon on the corner of the picture itself, on the corner of the thumbnail, but there’s also a little icon here indicating there is a keyword tag. If I hover over that icon, I can see that the keyword tag there is Lakes & Rivers.

You don’t have to do these one at a time. You can in, in fact, it the other way around. Let me select one of the other pictures with a lake in it, hold the Shift key down and hold that third one so that all three are selected. Click and hold. Again, the hand icon. This time, I can drop it on to the keyword on the right. Now, that keyword is assigned to all three of those images as well.

Let me find some more pictures with. There’s a whole batch here. I’m going to start with that one and go down to that one and I’m going to drag all of those on to Lakes & Rivers. I’ve also got a batch of pictures here taken at the coast so let’s assign those to Coast. And in fact, I’ve gone through and assigned one or more of those keywords to a number of the images in my catalog.

Now, just one other thing before we move on. Let’s suppose I take an image like that one, and I accidently assign a keyword to it. Let’s suppose that I assign the keyword Lakes & Rivers to it.

I don’t think there’s a lake or river in that picture. If I right click on the keyword icon there note there is a Remove Lakes & Rivers subcategory keyword tag option there. So, that can be used to remove the keyword. In fact, if I right click on an image there’s an option there if there are any keyword tags assigned to remove keyword tags. Since that one no longer has any that option is grayed out.

One of the main uses of keywords is to filter what we can see in the media browser. Having assigned keywords to several of the images here, let’s look at the images which have the keyword Coast assigned.

All I need to do is to tick on Coast. There are the coast pictures. What about the pictures that have the keyword Lakes & Rivers assigned?

If I just check Lakes & Rivers, I won’t see any because by having two keyword categories here. Checked! I’m looking for both being assigned. Let me uncheck Coast.

You can now see Lakes & Rivers. And in fact, if I check Mountains now I do find some because these particular ones do have two keywords assigned. They have Lakes & Rivers assigned and Mountains assigned.

If I right click on that, click on Remove Keyword Tag, you can see that’s got two assigned. Because there is a lake there and there is actually a mountain. It’s not much of a mountain but I’ve called it a mountain for the purposes of this exercise.

When you’re filtering using keywords you may want to clear the filter at some stage and return to a situation where you’re looking at the whole content of the media browser. There’s a Clear button here. Click on Clear and we’re back to seeing everything again.

Let’s finally look at some of the other tools and techniques. You’ll need to develop your structure.

If there is a part of the structure that you no longer need you can delete it. If I’m not going to use the Color category there if I right click on it one of the options is Delete.

I get a warning about deleting this category. It warns me that it would delete all of its subcategories and keyword tags. And, remove these keyword tags from all items.

Now, there’s one other mention there related to something called Saved Searches which we haven’t looked at yet.

You don’t need to worry about that because we haven’t looked at them. But at the point that we get to Saved Searches, you’ll realize we’re removing a keyword tag that’s used would cause a problem.

Let’s click on OK to delete that category. I’m now going to create a new top level category. Many of the images I take include pictures of animals. So, I’m going to create a new top level category.

I’m going to use that dropdown again and I’m going to say New Category. It’s going to be Animals. I can choose a color. Now, I can choose the color from a wide palette of colors here.

So, I think I’m going to choose that one. And, I can choose an icon; a category icon. There’s a picture there with a little dog on it. That’ll do. Click on OK and I have a new top level category.

I can arrange these categories into a sequence. If I click and hold Animals, I could drag that up to the top and make it the first category. Now, I’m going to create some subcategories under Animals. Within Farm Animals, I’m going to create subcategories again.

All the time, that I’m creating categories and subcategories they can be further subdivided as you’ve seen. I may get to what you might loosely call a leaf on a tree or get to a particular subcategory where I don’t intend to further subdivide it and the next thing.

I’m going to add here is one of these leaves on a tree. We literally refer to these as keywords. Then, I’m going to create a new keyword tag. It’s going to be in the category Farm and the name is going to be Chickens.

We don’t intend to subdivide Chickens any further and I can add a note there. I can also edit an icon. Now, I can import an icon from elsewhere. If I wanted to get a picture of a chicken in there, I could import a little icon of a chicken.

I’m not going to do that now. Just going to leave it with a default empty icon if you like.

Will click on OK and I now have chickens, which is a keyword tag. Then, when I right click on Chickens, I don’t have the option to create a further subcategory because it’s if you like a leaf on a tree.

However, I do have the option to change it back to a subcategory. I could further subdivide it into Rhode Island Reds or whatever other subcategory of chickens I might want to create.

Now, I’m going to have one more subcategory of Farm Animals. So, I’m going to select Farm and then with Photography. I’m going to create a couple of subcategories there as well.

So there we are! My structure is really beginning to build up now. I’m going to do a few assignments. Just join me again in a moment.

I’ve made a few more assignments. Let’s do some slightly more sophisticated filtering. What about Farm Animals in general?

I’ve got quite a few there that have Farm Animals marked in them. Let’s remove that filter and instead just look for the ones with chickens, cattle, sheep. Let’s look again at Lakes & Rivers but no sheep. Then, let’s look at any portrait pictures we have of Lakes & Rivers. And there are two.

That’s the end of this section. I’ll see you in the next one.

Adam Lacey

Adam Lacey is an Excel enthusiast and online learning expert. He combines these two passions at Simon Sez IT where he wears a number of different hats.When Adam isn't fretting about site traffic or Pivot Tables, you'll find him on the tennis court or in the kitchen cooking up a storm.