Keywords
Descriptive terms attached to an image to make it findable by subject rather than by filename or date.
Measured in
count
In depth
Effective keywording works in layers, from broad to specific — location, subject, activity, mood — and hierarchical structures let a parent term be applied automatically when a child is used. The discipline pays off only at scale, but at scale it is the difference between an archive and a heap of folders.
Examples in practice
Keywording a coastal shoot with location, weather, species and activity terms makes it searchable a decade later.