A fair bit of work goes into setting up the key word sets. But once that’s done at the beginning of the season, most of this work applies to every race, even if I have to make a few additions and changes that pop up along the way.

Individual keywords from Sets are applied to selected images by either clicking on the desired key word in the Sets panel (slow) or using the keyboard short cut of Option-1 for the first key word, Option-2 for the second, and so on (faster). See note about QuicKeys below (fastest).

The first step is creating Keyword Sets for each rider and one for the event itself, which I call Race Keywords: This is the set I use in the process below to make sure that the keywords related to the event are applied consistently to all images in the catalog. (In fact, if you go back through the older catalogs at PHOTO.GP and look at the keywords, you can see mistakes in that consistency due to the fact that in 2009 and 2010 I’d not refined my workflow to its current state. Now and then I reopen those catalogs and redo and then apply the Race Keyword set to remove those errors in the naming conventions I’ve settled on.)

For example, when I get to Qatar at the beginning of the season I will update the set I used in November at Valencia to reflect the new location and other info. This set will contain the keywords: MotoGP, Round 01, Losail, Qatar, Moto2, Moto3, 1000s, the current year, and so on.

The rider Keyword Sets are based at the beginning of a new season on the previous year’s collection of Sets and edited to reflect team and sponsor changes. This saves me having to recreate sets for each rider, although individuals who leave the series also see their Keyword Sets deleted for the current year’s collection, and new sets are created for rookies.

Some change very little, such as Dani Pedrosa’s. Since I started keywording this way, he has been on one team with the same main sponsors. Others change a fair bit, like Andrea Dovizioso’s. New riders require the creation of a new Keyword Set, but in fact this only takes a minute to do from scratch. I usually hold off on new riders to Moto3 and Moto2 and let that rider’s performance over the season determine if he or she deserves a unique Keyword Set. I do not keyword all of my Moto2 and Moto3 images, only those of the main riders in each class.

To switch from one collections of Keyword Sets to another on a Mac, simply replace the current collection with the desired one by swapping folders at this location: User/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Keyword Sets

On a PC, look here: C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\[Keyword Sets]\

The .lrtemplate files can be loose in the Keyword Sets folder or contained in their own folder, which I prefer for moving different collections between LR to Dropbox. Renamed set files will be written into the Keyword Sets folder so keep an eye out here to make sure everything that belongs in the season’s folder is included before you swap it out.

Press B

Once I have the appropriate Keyword Sets installed in Lightroom, I’m ready to start processing images. The other main piece of the puzzle is Lightroom’s Quick Collection feature.

You can add images to a Quick Collections by selecting images and pressing B. When viewing the Quick Collection panel, any selected images can be removed from this section by pressing B again.

The process goes like this:

1. Import images from a session.
2. Select all images and apply collection-wise key words such as event, location, series etc. (I keep these key words in the Race Keywords set and update this file at the beginning of each race weekend.)
3. Apply class key words as appropriate (Moto3, Moto2, 1000s).
4. Apply situation keywords such as ‘pit lane’ or ‘grid’
5. Select all images to be key worded in this pass. I do one class at a time and swap in the appropriate key word set collection from its home on Dropbox.
6. Press B to add selected image to Quick Collection.
7. Beginning with any rider who has many images in that session, select that riders Keyword Set. Select as many images as show in Grid View and apply all keywords from that rider’s Keyword Set to those images.
8. With the recently-keyworded images still selected, press B to remove those images from Quick Collection.
9. Scroll down and find more images of current rider and repeat (apply images from Keyword Set, press B to remove from Quick Collection.)
10. Once all of this rider’s images have been keyworded and removed from Quick Collection, return to top and repeat with another rider until all images requiring content that that Keyword Set have been processed.
11. Repeat by rider until all images in the Quick Collection have been key worded and removed from the Quick Collection.

This sounds complex but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty quickly, depending on how many images are in the Quick Collection. For 1,000 or so imaged I can be done in 30-40 minutes. All of my premiere class images for that session are keyworded and done forever! I can now find all images of Rossi or Lorenzo or Karel Abraham or all Yamaha images or all images of MotoGP riders who wear AGV helmets in a matter of seconds.