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Note: A pre-release version of Photo RAW 2023 is featured in this article The final product may be slightly different.

Keywords are powerful because they let you find your photos quickly. However, tagging your photos with keywords is laborious, and because of this photographers often don’t bother with keywords. Keyword AI does the tedious tagging work and you reap the benefits of search.

Keyword AI Automatically Tags Your Photos

Keyword AI is a new feature in ON1 Photo RAW 2023 that automatically scans your cataloged folders of images and adds keywords. The AI smarts detect all sorts of objects, from people to bodies of water to buildings to modes of transportation … the list goes on and on. Keyword AI is just that simple - set and forget. In the example here, not only did Keyword AI recognize natural elements in this landscape, it also recognized a person in the scene, dressed warmly against the elements, and added keywords for outwear and shoes. Impressive!

Using Keyword AI is insanely simple - set and forget. You do have control over what types of things Keyword AI will look and consider when adding keywords for in the ON1 Preferences, and you can turn off the feature if you prefer.

• GPS coordinates

• Properties of the photo, including the type of processing applied to the image (ex: monochrome vs. color)

• Histogram properties, like underexposed, overexposed, high contrast, etc.

• People and faces

• Estimate ages of people (ex: children vs. adult)

• Estimate gender (disabled by default)

• Objects and regions, all sorts of elements, objects, and structures that the AI can detect.

• Folder Names, consider the folder path as a hint or input to the AI

Finally, if you are a Cloud Sync user (formerly known as ON1 360), you can have the Keyword AI results shared across your devices through the cloud.

After Keyword AI has added tags to your images, you can search in ON1 Browse across those keywords. For quick searches, use the search box in the Filter at the bottom of the Browse window. You can also tap into Keyword AI data in the Advanced Search options.

Keyword AI Augments Traditional Keywords

You might be a photographer that already uses keywords and you have a carefully curated set of keywords. Will Keyword AI mess that up? Absolutely not. Tags added by Keyword AI are kept in a separate area in the metadata panel, the AI Keywords area. You have the option to add them to the traditional Keywords metadata (the IPTC keywords), and you can add some or all of the AI-powered keywords.

This is quite useful for stock image photographers that don’t like keywording. Let Keyword AI do the tagging for you, then click the Add All button to promote the keywords to the IPTC metadata area. When you export your photos and upload them to a stock agency or online, those keywords are searchable by other applications.

Keyword Strengths, Areas For Improvement, And A Delightful Surprise

There are some areas and some photos where Keyword AI is at its best. Strengths of Keyword AI are:

• Keywords from GPS coordinates

• Photos with a clear, prominent subject

• Photos with people

• Tonal and color characteristics

Areas where Keyword AI can improve are:

• Finding and tagging secondary subjects

• Detecting reflections

• Crisper descriptions of bodies of water (ex: river vs. ocean)

And a delightful surprise in Keyword AI is multi-lingual keywords. Looking at the keywords from a photo I captured in Japan, one keyword with Kanji was automatically added. I am hoping that extends to a broader set of languages.

Keyword AI Tags Per Photo And Per Version

It is also worth noting that Keyword AI adds keywords for every photo and every version of a photo in your cataloged folders. Returning to the photo of the bicycle, I created a black and white version of the image. Notice the AI Keywords sections are different. The black and white treatment has a “Monochrome” AI keyword added. That’s a great attention to detail by ON1 and a very important one. Later down the line, when I’m looking for monochrome images, I want this bicycle to be found in my search.

There you have it! Keyword AI in Photo RAW 2023 is going to make your keyword tagging life easier. It does its work in the background. And you have the choice to add the AI Keywords to your traditional IPTC keywords (or not!) for photo exports to clients, search engines, and stock agencies.