# Color labels are gone



## Staf (Jan 15, 2018)

Operating System:OSSierra 10.12.6
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): CC

Well, now I have something strange.....
I'm using the color labels for indicating portraits, glamour etc. I Found that I could rename them, so I did: "red - portraits"   for all five. Suddenly LR closed and had to be restarted. Adobe asked me what I was doing, so I told them. After restart, all my color labels were gone ! 
Can I fix this ? 

Thanks in advance
Staf


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Jan 15, 2018)

Did you perhaps made a new Color Lable Set? You can check it onder 'Metadata'. Try another set and i think you will see your labled photo's again.


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Jan 15, 2018)

Color labels are stored in a special text field, so if the field contains the text 'portraits', then the label showed red (because you defined that). However, you probably didn't save the renamed color labels as a label set, and now the labels are back to their defaults as a result of that crash. That means that an image with the word 'portraits' in that field won't get a color label, because there is no color assigned to the word 'portraits'. If you did save the edited labels as a set, you should simply select that set again. If you did not, you may have lost the edits and so you have to redo them. As soon as you do, and so you define the word 'portraits' to the color red again, your labels will return.


----------



## Staf (Jan 15, 2018)

I went to Metadata/colorset and switched to LR standaard. Got the labels back  


Mag ik even in het Nederlands ? Als ik nu kleurlabels/bewerken en ze dan hernoem (portret ipv rood) en dan opslaan als nieuwe voorinstelling (bijv Thema's), dan blijft alles behouden ?


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Jan 15, 2018)

Staf said:


> Mag ik even in het Nederlands ? Als ik nu kleurlabels/bewerken en ze dan hernoem (portret ipv rood) en dan opslaan als nieuwe voorinstelling (bijv Thema's), dan blijft alles behouden ?


Nee. Een foto die nu een rood label heeft, heeft het woord 'Red' in het tekstveld staan. Als je een labelset maakt waarbij de kleur rood is toegekend aan het woord 'Portret', dan moet je zo'n label opnieuw toewijzen, anders blijft het veld het woord 'Red' bevatten en zie je dus geen kleur als je die nieuwe set hebt geselecteerd. Op die manier kan je dus de kleur rood voor meerdere omschrijvingen gebruiken, door van set te veranderen.


----------



## MarkNicholas (Jan 16, 2018)

Colour Label Sets are still a bit of a mystery for me. I tried creating a different colour label set and experienced the same thing, all the colours disappeared. I eventually got them back by reverting to the default set but only after giving myself a major fright. I have since been very wary of this feature.


----------



## clee01l (Jan 16, 2018)

MarkNicholas said:


> Colour Label Sets are still a bit of a mystery for me. I tried creating a different colour label set and experienced the same thing, all the colours disappeared. I eventually got them back by reverting to the default set but only after giving myself a major fright. I have since been very wary of this feature.


There is no mystery.  "Label" is an EXIF Text field.You can check (and assign) values in the Metadata Panel, There are only 5 assignable LR colors.  A Color Label Set is a ASCII preset file that assigns Label Text values to each of the 5 colors based upon the active color label set.  Only one defined Color Label set can be active at a time. If the Label field contains the exact text value in the current color label set then LR will  surround that image with the corresponding color.  ANY other label text field values that are not in the current color label set are considered "Custom" and assigned the White color in Grid and FilmStrip. 
Perhaps a source of confusion is the LR Default Color Label Set.  It assigns a text value of "RED" to the color "Red" ... and finally the Label text value of "PURPLE" to the color purple.


----------



## MarkNicholas (Jan 16, 2018)

clee01l said:


> There is no mystery.  "Label" is an EXIF Text field.You can check (and assign) values in the Metadata Panel, There are only 5 assignable LR colors.  A Color Label Set is a ASCII preset file that assigns Label Text values to each of the 5 colors based upon the active color label set.  Only one defined Color Label set can be active at a time. If the Label field contains the exact text value in the current color label set then LR will  surround that image with the corresponding color.  ANY other label text field values that are not in the current color label set are considered "Custom" and assigned the White color in Grid and FilmStrip.
> Perhaps a source of confusion is the LR Default Color Label Set.  It assigns a text value of "RED" to the color "Red" ... and finally the Label text value of "PURPLE" to the color purple.



Ok Cletus, lets take a simple example which I can hopefully understand.

Lets assume I have 5 photos in a my catalog. Lets say I create a colour label set called "Distribute". I assign a different colour red, yellow, blue, purple and green to each of the 5 photos. I name the red colour label "send to UK", green colour label "send to USA" etc. etc. Therefore, I can simply filter by colour to find all photos to be distributed "send to USA" say. OK I get this its all very simple.

Now this is where I get confused.

If I create another colour label set called "Editing" and for each colour I assign editing stages, for example - green - "not yet started" through to purple "completed" etc. etc.

Now I want to apply this "Editing" colour label set the same 5 photos which I have previously labelled according the "Distribution" colour label set. Can I do this ? and then be able to revert back to the "Distribution" colour label set ?

So under the "Distribution" colour label set a particular photo may be yellow and under the "Editing" colour label set the same photo could be red.  Can I simply "toggle" between the 2 (or more) colour label sets using the same photos and each set remembers which colour is assigned to which photo ?


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Jan 16, 2018)

The 'mystery' is that when you change the currently used label set, the label field of your images does not automatically get changed as well. So if you have a lot of images with a red label and you change the word 'Red' to 'Not yet developed' in the label set, then you'll still have a lot of images with the word 'Red' in their label field, but the label set does not define any color anymore for the word 'Red'. That's why your labels seem to disappear when you change a label set or switch to another saved set. If you want all the images with the word 'Red' in their label field to keep a red color, then you'll have to re-assign the label so their label field is changed to 'Not yet developed'.

I agree that this is a bit counter-intuitive at first, until you understand how color labels are defined.


----------



## clee01l (Jan 16, 2018)

MarkNicholas said:


> So under the "Distribution" colour label set a particular photo may be yellow and under the "Editing" colour label set the same photo could be red. Can I simply "toggle" between the 2 (or more) colour label sets using the same photos and each set remembers which colour is assigned to which photo ?


The color gets applied ONLY when the text in the Label field matches the text of a color in the current Color Label Set. However if the label was defined when capital "Distribution" color label set was the current color label set, Then none of the label fields text values are going to match the text associated with the “Editing” color label set.


----------



## MarkNicholas (Jan 17, 2018)

OK ! I am beginning to get it.. I think ! I think my confusion came from thinking it was more sophisticated than it actually is.

So depending on which Colour Label set you have selected, when you assign a colour to a photo it gives that photo the current colour label name and this shows up in the Metadata panel under "Label". So obviously (and this was also where I was confused) a photo can only have one Label name. When you switch Colour Label sets, if the Label name for that photo is not assigned to one of the colour labels then it loses its colour. If you then re-apply the same colour to that photo then it changes the Label name.  I think this is what happened to me before.

I see that you can actually filter by Label so that will help keep track of things in the event of any mix-up.

So now that I understand this my next question is how best to use multiple Colour Label Sets in my work flow. There seems no point in using more than one colour label set on the same set of photos as each photo can only have one Label name. So I am thinking that perhaps I would have a Colour Label Set for my DSLR Raw files, One for my Phone Photos and one for my Scanned photos as my editing workflow is different for each. Any thoughts ?

Thanks for your patience...


----------



## clee01l (Jan 17, 2018)

MarkNicholas said:


> So now that I understand this my next question is how best to use multiple Colour Label Sets in my work flow. There seems no point in using more than one colour label set on the same set of photos as each photo can only


That is right. In the practical sense, you only use on color label set in your workflow as Assigning a color to an image automatically assigns the text to the Label field. 
My Color Label Set is for me a quick indicator of the process state of an image.  Roughly it is as follows:

        red     = "To Be Worked",
        yellow = "Work In Progress",
        green = "Needs Further Review",
        blue = "Not In a Published Collection - Complete",
        purple = "In a Published Collection"
At a glance in grid view, I can visually see which images need attention.  I also use these colors in Smart Collections to move my workflow along.


----------



## MarkNicholas (Jan 17, 2018)

clee01l said:


> That is right. In the practical sense, you only use on color label set in your workflow as Assigning a color to an image automatically assigns the text to the Label field.
> My Color Label Set is for me a quick indicator of the process state of an image.  Roughly it is as follows:
> 
> red     = "To Be Worked",
> ...



Thanks Cletus That is essentially what I have been doing but my colour labels are still named Red, Blue, etc. Do you only use one Colour label set ?


----------



## clee01l (Jan 17, 2018)

MarkNicholas said:


> Do you only use one Colour label set ?


Yes, the one I listed in the previous post and attached to this post.


----------

