Removing Keywords

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Today’s Question: What do you do in Lightroom Classic when you want to remove certain keywords from images? I have added keywords in the past that I no longer feel are relevant or are part of a hierarchy which I no longer want to use and wish to remove these from the Keyword List and the subsequent photos. Can I do this easily?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If you want to completely remove keywords from all photos in your Lightroom Classic catalog, you can delete those keywords from the Keyword List on the right panel in the Library module. If you want to remove the keywords from only selected photos, you can turn off the checkbox for the applicable keywords on the Keyword List while in the grid view display so all selected photos will be updated.

More Detail: The Keyword List on the right panel in the Library module of Lightroom Classic provides one of the easiest ways to remove keywords from multiple photos. It can also be helpful to add keywords to photos using the Keyword List, in order to help make sure that you always use the same spelling and structure for your keywords.

If you have decided that certain keywords are not needed at all, and you want to remove those keywords from all photos in your Lightroom Classic catalog, that is remarkably simple to accomplish. Simply go to the Keyword List on the right panel in the Library module and locate the keyword you want to remove. Right-click on that keyword and choose “Delete” from the popup menu that appears. Click the Delete button in the confirmation dialog, and the keyword will be removed from the Keyword List and also removed from metadata for all photos that had that keyword assigned.

If you want to remove keywords from only selected photos, first select those photos. Then be sure you are in the grid view display rather than the loupe view display, meaning the main image preview area shows thumbnails rather than a single photo. Then, on the right panel in the Library module, you can turn off the checkbox for any keywords that are applied to photos but that you want to remove.

Note, by the way, that there won’t be a checkmark to the left of keywords that are not assigned, there will be a checkmark to the left of keywords that are assigned, and there will be a dash to the left of a keyword that is assigned to some but not all of the selected photos.