Aaron and I heard rumors of the whale sharks after multiple military checkpoints and a dusty three day drive down Baja California Sur’s roads to La Paz. It was here that Steinbeck chose to set his novel “The Pearl” and here that we had come to search for our own pearls, those perfect moments in the clear warm waters of the Sea of Cortez to depress our shutters. My 1985 VW bus was loaded with tanks, camera gear and little red plastic gas cans strapped to the roof that had been inspected with some incredulity by the machine gun toting fedarales in their fatigues and sunglasses.

Three days of diving with hammerhead sharks and manta rays in La Paz was unable to erase the rumor from our unconscious moments. Some divers spend their whole life to find the filter feeding Rhincodon Typus, and here he was waiting at the edge of a story from a stranger where a long dirt road touches the Sea of Cortez. And so we drove north through checkpoints and hot asphalt with the VW engine struggling against the steeper hills in search of the rumor. Soon after stopping to buy extra gas we found the unmarked road that the source had spoken of. A road that quickly deteriorated from pavement to potholes to dirt and 100 miles later a small fishing village next to a beautiful half moon bay.

A Mexican man who made his living renting his boat to sport fishers nodded when we showed him a magazine clipping of the picture of a whale shark. For a few dollars each he agreed to take us into the bay. The hum of the outboard engine and the splashing of the water became the only sounds as the small white huts of the village shrank slowly in the distance dwarfed by a mighty mountain behind them.

“There!” Aaron said. A few hundred yards away a giant fin was breaking the surface of the water. We scrambled to don our fins as Roberto maneuvered the boat close to the Sharks and cut the engine. Seconds later we were in the water with two of the most magnificent creatures I have ever seen. The bodies extended for 30 feet and the mouths easily matched my height.

My mind went numb with awe.

Moments after jumping in, Aaron and I realized that the larger of the two sharks had recently battled with a fishing net. The net had lost but the force of the struggle had cut the lines of the net deep into the dorsal fins of the creature. The remnants of the net dangling from both fins combined with the resistance of the water against their tattered remains was slowly forcing them to cut deeper and deeper into the sharks flesh. In places the cuts were nearly a foot deep, and if allowed to continue would eventually cripple the shark.

Swimming back to the boat Aaron and I agreed that we must try to cut the net off of the fins. In broken Spanish we asked Roberto for a knife, and swam back to the mammoth creatures.

At twenty feet of distance a thirty foot whale shark looks quite large. At five feet of distance, the closest I got on that first attempt, the thirty foot shark was so intimidatingly huge and massively alive I forgot I was underwater until a strong kick of the sharks tail left me churning in its wake and searching for the surface.

It took most of the day for our fear of each other to subside enough for another attempt. The sharks basked in the warm ocean water near the surface eating large amounts of plankton while Aaron and I swam and photographed until the late afternoon when were too tired to reload our cameras. Swimming back to the boat to rest, we agreed to try once again to cut the net from the large sharks fins. Use to our presence in the water, the second attempt was a success. The shark lay docilely near the sea’s surface while Aaron and I took turns diving down and cutting the strands of coarse netting away from its fins.

When we were finished, we swam a while longer with the sharks who continued to bask near the surface of the sea and casually slurp plankton in a vortex of water down their throats. There was silence in the boat ride back to shore. We had found our pearls.

Images and Text © Jonathan Kingston 2002 and 2007 respectively

For the first time since owning Lightroom, I have experienced a Lightroom catalog becoming corrupted. Fortunately under File>Catalog settings>Metadata, I have been writing my metadata to my .xmp side car files. Unfortunately, I did not realize when a .lrcat file becomes corrupted, the metadata does not include virtual copies of the images, or references to what catalog sets they are in. I hope Adobe changes this in the next release of Lightroom.

To back up a step, I am running a MacBook Pro on 10.5.1, working with Lightroom version 1.3.1 and working off of external hard drives where my library of images lives. Virtual copies and catalog sets are critical parts of my workflow, and I would rather scrub down my bathroom walls with comet than manually reconstruct both of those aspects of a major edit. My .lrcat files reside on the external hard drives, as I don’t have space for them on my laptop, and the particular catalog that became corrupted was comprised entirely of .TIFF film scans. I believe what caused the corruption was going to the Photo>Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS3… command, choosing “Edit Original ” file in Photoshop CS3, applying a rotational change in Photoshop and then saving the file in CS3. When the edited image returned back to LR, it would not display correctly on the screen, and appeared mashed. Upon quitting and re-opening LR, the images displayed correctly on the screen, however the .lrcat file became corrupted.

WHAT DID I DO TO FIX IT?

After testing the integrity of the catalog several times, and trying unsuccessfully to use the built in utility to repair the .lrcat file, Lightroom recommended I visit a website that kindly informed me I was screwed and needed to revert to a backup .lrcat file. I am fairly fastidious about my backups, but the most recent .lrcat file I had on hand was a few days old and would mean loosing three full days of editing. I knew there must be a better way.

Fortunately for me, I was still able to open the corrupted .lrcat database even though it was unable to properly display all of the images in the library. After a lot of trial and error, I came up with a simple, elegant solution for recovering all of the virtual copies and catalog sets from the corrupted database.

THE SOLUTION:

1. If you are still able to open the corrupted .lrcat database, do so. If you can’t get past this step, you are screwed and the following steps will not help you.

2. Click “All Photographs” in the Library module, make sure all filters are turned off, and and choose Edit>Select All from the menu.
3. Go to File>Export as Catalog….
4. From the dialogue box that drops down, choose your desktop as the destination for the exported catalog file, give it a meaningful name (like “corrupted”) and be sure to uncheck the box at the bottom of the window that says “Export negative files” as this will physically duplicate all of the images that are currently in your catalog. NOTE: Whenever I import images into Lightroom, I ALWAYS “Import photos at their current location”.

5. Go to File>New Catalog and choose a meaningful destination and name for the new catalog.
6. Go to File>Import from Catalog, navigate to the corrupted catalog you saved to the desktop, locate and highlight the .lrcat file and click “choose”.
7. Lightroom will present you with the familiar import dialogue box, be sure to select “Import photos at their current location” and click “Import”.

8. Lightroom will think for a while, then most likely give you an error message that reads something like “Lightroom was unable to successfully import the catalog” … Ignore this.
9. If the computer gods are smiling on you, you now have a new, non corrupt, almost fully functional catalog, complete with virtual copies and catalog sets.
10. Go through the new catalog and check for anything that may be missing. There will be some missing images, but in my case, three or four missing virtual copies pales in comparison to having to go back and re-create hundreds of virtual copies.

If any of you have experienced or are experiencing a similar problem, and have a similar workflow of always “Importing photos at their current location”, I hope you find this material helpful, and that it helps you recover your database!

Text © Jonathan Kingston 2007

The first and second jobs I had out of Brooks Institute of Photography were directly due to Paul Liebhardt.  While there were many instances during my first job in India that I couldn’t decide whether he was playing an elaborate joke with me as the unwitting victim, Paul set me on a trajectory that I have been following to this day.  He once said “The best pictures are taken by those who feel some excitement about life and use the camera to share their enthusiasm with others.”  Please – do yourself a favor and share some of Paul’s enthusiasm for life by viewing his images.  Click on the image below to go to his site.

Cross posted from the Aurora News blog here.

August 17th, 2009

Aurora photographer Jonathan Kingston’s image of a pair of boots recovered from a German battlefield was published recently in the June 2009 edition of National Geographic. The boots (whose original owner is currently unknown) are being used by the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) to try and identify the fallen soldier so that his remains can be returned to his family. JPAC, established in 2003, is a response to the Pentagon’s recent efforts to try and find the 84,711 US military men and women still missing after various US engagements all over the world. It is home to the world’s largest forensic anthropology lab.

When asked about the shoot, Kingston said, “Assignments such as this one epitomize what assignment photography entails — problem solving, people skills, and performing well under pressure. I feel honored to have played a small part of bringing the story of what JPAC does to the world.”

To see more work by Jonathan Kingston, visit Aurora Photos.

The ride out to Santa Barbara Island had been rough on the Truth. Our intrepid 40-foot craft labored over the uneven terrain that the pacific presented. Some passengers had the expected rounds of sick, but fortunately for me the Marezine was working like a charm. After an all night ride set to the sound of the hull slapping the base of each wave, it was a welcome prospect to dive into the cold water of the Pacific.

The underwater terrain of Santa Barbara Island is not unlike an underwater rock castle bordered by a sandy plain with sea lion sentinels patrolling its rocky ramparts. On more than one dive I would see the aquatic animals move in pairs move along the outer rock wall of the flourishing pinniped rookery like sentinels in search of sharks. For those who have never been underwater with a sea lion, imagine an aquatic puppy that is hyper, curious, gregarious, inquisitive and graceful. Dive-bombing the unexpected diver, the daring creatures bark, twist, pirouette, dart, blow bubbles and disappear. Just like a puppy the Zalophus californianus will play until it is to tired, bored or warned of unseen danger by some form of communication unknown to man, to continue.

Ralph Clevenger and I were on the northeast side of the island when the sea lions reached this state of exhaustion after gregariously greeting their visitors for over an hour. They languished on the surface soaking up the sunshine long enough for both of us to burn through a roll of film. As we were preparing to head back to the dry deck of the boat, the calm mood among the sea lions changed and after a few nervous glances over 20 creatures had vanished from view. Ralph and I cautiously looked around for the sign of the disturbance and the dry deck of the boat suddenly seeming extremely inviting. As we nervously searched for the disturbance, unseen to Ralph, one of the smaller sea lions swam out of hiding and mischievously crept up directly below his fins. Before I could wave or point, the miscreant had latched on and begun shaking the fin vigorously side to side like a chew toy. The bubbles coming out of my compatriot’s regulator momentarily doubled in volume until he navigated his limited field of vision to realize that his leg wasn’t about to be decapitated by a shark.

Spooked and out of film, we hugged the bottom of the ocean on the way back to the anchor line. Back on the deck of the Truth we were thankful that this ride in the underwater realm had not been as rough as the ride to the island. In a typically understated fashion Ralph chuckled and said “that was exciting”.

Images and Text © Jonathan Kingston 2002 and 2007 respectively

‘All right Jacque – lets see who stays down the longest!’, Enzo smiled at me. We had been playing the same game for the last four weeks, Beau and I were on the final dive of a five-day trip and we had built up a friendly rivalry pretending to be Jacque Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, the free divers made famous in the movie “The Big Blue”. We were about to dive a site known as Silverbanks that sits on the southeast side of Santa Cruz Island. Silverbanks is a massive kelp forest in 30 to 60 feet of pure pacific blue. Swimming through the tall trunks of the aquatic trees, it is easy to momentarily forget the water and imagine how bird must feel in flight.

It is unusual for me to feel uneasy in the water, but during the dive I was unsettled — the submerged hairs prickling on the back of my neck. Determined not to let Enzo beat my bottom time, I found an uninspiring reef to photograph and slowly burned through my roll of film, taking small sips of air to conserve my tank and wondering if my friend had finished his dive.The commotion started as soon as I surfaced. “GET ON THE BOAT NOW!” my frantic friends faces yelled at me as I lazily swam towards the swim step “SHARK!”.

Apparently as I was taking my time underwater, a 14 foot juvenile Great white had hit a harbor seal a couple of hundred feet from the anchor line of the boat. When I surfaced the shark was slowly circling his prey waiting for it to bleed to death.

Sharks are smart hunters. Rather than risking bodily injury to themselves, they hit their prey with the teeth that tear and wait just below the surface for their lunch to become to weak to resist. Never have I seen a more hopeless look on the face of any creature, then in the eyes of that harbor seal. It was a broken being. Waiting for death.

Juvenile great white shark, Channel Islands National park, California.

We waited with it. We waited for over an hour, watching and waiting for the deed to be done.Waiting for the shark to fulfill its role at the top of the aquatic food chain and take its dinner to the depths. But time was running short, and the sun was sinking low, and the channel had to be crossed. Jacque and Enzo knew the most important lesson of the sea, that she either wants you, or she doesn’t. In the final scene of La Grand Bleu, the audience is left guessing to Jacques fate as he swims into the depths and the embrace of the ocean. I also was left guessing to the fate of that harbor seal. The last I saw it; it was swimming for some rocks near the shore. A sad trail of blood lingering behind its path in the water. In my mind, it survived, gnarled teeth marks a proud battle wound on side. But in reality there was no guess that day, the sea didn’t want me and it was time to go home.

Images and Text © Jonathan Kingston 2002 and 2007 respectively

DNG Profile Editor

While waiting for the digital delivery of Lightroom 2 earlier this week I was poking around Adobe’s site and stumbled across an application that excites me more than LR 2 – and let me tell you I am really excited about LR 2.  It is a little application called the DNG Profile Editor and it addresses one of the biggest complaints that everybody has with digital RAW files – the unprocessed RAW files lack of richness.  With the introduction of the DNG Profile Editor, our lives are about to change for the better. 

For the savvy reader out there you have probably been using the Adobe Camera Raw calibrator found on the Chromoholics website here to tweak your baseline colors to a truer tonality. Thanks to this website the camera calibration tab did more than languish in obscurity in Lightroom 1 and CS3 and became a very powerful and useful tool in my toolbox. With Adobe’s introduction of the DNG Profile editor, the camera calibration tab has been taken to a new level, and the calibration process takes about 30 minutes less than using the Chromoholics method.

Adobe RAW Camera Calibration Tab

You can download the brilliant DNG Profile Editor application here and Adobe has posted a tutorial on how to use it here.  (Note: you must have an Adobe account to download the application.  Accounts are free and quick to set up).  The basic concept is to begin with a photograph of a set of known color values, in this case a photo of an X-Rite (formerly Gretag MacBeth) color checker chart.  The colors on the chart are known values that the application then uses in its calculations to establish a baseline calibration of your RAW file.

X-Rite Color Checker in the DNG Profiler

1. Here is a screen shot of the first step of the process.  The application is measuring the color patches from my X-Rite color checker chart against known numerical values for the colors.

Fine Tuning Individual Colors

 2. Once the baseline color values are established you can then tweak each individual colors hue, saturation and lightness in a very intuitive interface.  

Create a Custom Curve

3. After tweaking your colors you can fine tune the curve of the image to achieve the exact baseline contrast you desire.

Global Color Fine Tune

5. As an additional step, if you find it necessary, you can further fine tune the RGB color channels along with the overall white point of the file.

Once all these steps have been performed, you can tell LR2 to load the new camera profile as the baseline look for your files.  While this my not seem very exciting at face value, the power and flexibility in creating these profiles means that one could very easily create a set of film looks specifically for your camera and forget the hassle of using presets built for a different systems.  For anyone that shoots the Nikon D3 please feel free to download a Kodak E100 VS type look that I designed here called Nikon D3 CS Boost.  If your on a Mac, install the file in the following place: Home Folder/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles  

File path on Mac for RAW camera profiles.

I apologize to those on PC as I can’t give you the exact path to install the file, however it will be similar to the path above.  

Once you have loaded the profile and restarted LR, scroll down to the Camera Calibration tab, and in the upper right hand corner of the tab there is a drop down menu where you can choose the profile as seen here:

Adobe RAW Camera Calibration Tab

Note: The profile will only load if you have a D3.  It will not even show up in the list if you are looking at a file from another camera. 

If you don’t want to go through the trouble of purchasing a color checker chart and manually making these profiles, you can download some canned profiles from Adobe here.  I will also be teaching workshops where we do a hands on demo of manually creating the profiles. 

Check back to The Nomadic Photographer regularly for updated profiles to download!

As a photographer who spends a lot of time on the road, the iPhone has been a big blessing with its window to the web capabilities.  During my pre-iPhone life I never had to worry about keeping things like email, calendars and address books in sync — because I worked off of one computer.  Now that I have this terrific tiny top computer, keeping things in sync became a high priority to avoid the digital stress of duplication.

Looking into my options to accomplish this there was Mobile Me for $99 per year, purchasing a Exchange account for $120 per year, or the solution I finally settled on — Google Apps — for free. 

After a lot of experimentation, I have figured out a push-like wireless sync solution for iCal to Google Apps to iPhone calendar, and a wired sync solution for Address Book to Google Apps to iPhone contact list, along with IMAP email support.  All hosted at my business email address. (NOTE: UPDATED INFO ON THIS HERE.  GOOGLE APPS NOW SUPPORTING EXCHANGE PUSH SYNC!)

Here is what I did:

NOTE:  For the below steps to work, you will need to have administrative access to the MX records of your website.  OR you can just follow the steps with a Gmail account – but then you don’t get the benefit of keeping your business email address.

Email Sync:

1.  Sign up for a Google Apps account here by clicking on the blue button on the upper right hand side of the screen.  Google Apps allows you to keep your business email address, but have it hosted through Google.  There is a step-by-step guide here on how to get started with the setup.  Once this process is complete, Google is now acting as the host of your business email.  With Google mail you have the choice of enabling POP or IMAP email.  Choose IMAP, which allows you to mark a message as read on any device (your iphone or smart phone, your computer or web based mail) and it will be marked as read on all other devices reading the IMAP account.  Brilliant.

2.  Set up your local email client to access your new IMAP account.  This will work whether you are using Mac Mail, Entourage or Outlook.  Instructions of how to do this for your specific email client are on the Google Apps help page here.

3.  If you want to take the process one step further, you can upload all of your old emails that live locally on your computer hard drive to the cloud.  It took me almost a whole day on a fast connection to upload the last ten years of correspondence to the cloud, but it was well worth the wait.  No more worry about backing up some of my most valuable data – my emails.

4.  If you have an iPhone you will want to connect it to your computer at this point, open up iTunes and un-check “sync mail accounts” as you see below:

iTunes Settings

5.  Set up your iPhone for to access your new Google Apps account.  Instructions here.

6.  Now – If you just need your emails to sync across multiple platforms, you can stop at this point.  Mission accomplished.  However, if you want your address book and calendar to sync to Google Apps and your computer, read on…

Address Book to Google Apps to iPhone Contacts via wired Sync:

7.  Assuming you have all your contacts in Apple’s address book (if you are an Entourage user like myself, you will need to enable sync services in Entourage preferences to accomplish this, if your in Outlook I can’t help you) you can find full instructions on how to set up the tree way wired sync here.

iCal to Google Apps Cal to iPhone Cal via wireless push sync:

8.  To set up over the air synchronization between your new Google Apps calendar and your iCal calendar you need to set your iCal calendar to function as a CalDav calendar.  Instructions here.  What CalDav enables you to do is wirelessly sync iCal with Google Calendar.  Brilliant.  Unfortunately there is not yet CalDav support for the calendars on the iPhone – not Brilliant.  Here is the workaround…

9.  Sign up for a free Nuevasync account here.

10.  Follow the directions on the Nuevasync site to sync your iPhone calendar over the air to your Google Apps calendar.  Nuevasync acts as an intermediary exchange server for the iPhone, enabling wireless push type syncing to be possible.  Thanks Nuevasync!

I struggled not to gag from the exhaust fumes in the gridlock of Ajmer.  Night was falling rapidly and the main street of the town in the heart of the Thar desert seemed like a narrow canyon leading to Hades filled with honking vehicles, smoke and dust.  I motioned to my rickshaw driver that I would get down here – as it didn’t make much sense to stay in the gridlock breathing fumes from the nearby bus exhaust pipe carefully positioned a foot from my face.  I was kicking myself for leaving my camera in the hotel, as I have never seen more air pollution in one place as had materialized in the last half hour before sunset – it was the kind of air pollution that makes for great stock.  The buses, rickshaws, two wheelers with gear and without, bicycles, camels, and cacophony of sound were all crammed so tightly into the narrow street that it was slow going by foot back to the hotel.  Apparently the Ajmer police department had decided to make Main Street a one-way road-leaving town, but hadn’t passed the memo along to the angry drivers trying to force their way the wrong way down the street. 

Back at the hotel, surrounded by fort like walls of concrete, the din of the evening died down and I watched the smoke and dust rise into the night in a glorious column of black.  To save a few rupees Paul and I were splitting a room, but not wanting to share a bed we asked the hotel housekeeper to supply another mode of sleeping.  Happy to oblige, the young man of no more than 20 dragged a heavy single bed into the room, its plywood base covered by thin dusty sheet-less cushions and its metal coasters making a horrible screeching sound over the marble floors as it moved.  The process of sheeting the bed disturbed a small mouse that had made its home in the mattress, causing it to leap off the bed.  “Mouse!”  I said, pointing to the now certainly doomed creature.  The housekeeper abandoned making the bed and began chasing the little mammal around the room.  He chased it under the couches and under the bed and eventually managed to herd it into the bathroom where he shut the door behind him.  Paul and I watched the closed door with incredulity and anticipation as the crashing and banging seemed to reach a crescendo followed by silence.  With a feigned look of triumph the housekeeper emerged.  “Mouse finished?” I asked in my best pigeon Indian English accent.  “Finished!” the housekeeper said triumphantly but unconvincingly.  Not believing my young friend I asked again “Expired?  Mouse Expired?”,  “Yes” he said.  “Finished” at which point he forgot there was a bed to make and left the room.

Thirty minutes later the mouse cautiously crept out of the bathroom.  If it had better luck and timing, it would not have chosen to walk right in my line of site between the television blaring Bollywood sounds and myself.  Paul and I saw our furry friend at the same time, but before I could say anything Paul grunted, “I’ll take care of it” and walked out the door.  A few minutes later he returned and said the manager was sending Suzy.  “The manager said to me ‘No Problem! Suzy will take care of it!’ so I guess he is sending the maid, poor girl”.

Moments later our hotel room door burst open to a chorus of Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy from our young housekeeping friend who was herding a beautiful gray German Sheppard into the room.  Skidding around on the polished marbled floors of the hotel on her extended nails, Suzy sniffed out our hapless mammalian friend, and like the housekeeper, chased her first under the bed and then into the bathroom.  However, unlike our hapless housekeeper, it was apparent that Suzy had done this before.  The housekeeper shut the door behind her in the bathroom and folded his arms across his chest.  With a triumphant smile he said “No Problem!” which, in India at least, usually means that there is, in fact, a problem.  We could hear Suzy’s nails scuffling around the floor of the bathroom until after a few seconds the scuffling grew silent.  Moments later, and to my great surprise, Suzy emerged tenderly holding the lifeless mouse in her jaws, with a look halfway between guilt and elation that her task was over. 

Suzy performed her mouse catching feat no less than three other times during our stay in Ajmer, and I must admit by the time it was time to check out, I had begun rather hoping for a mouse to make its way into our room for the wonderment of seeing Suzy perform her duty.  As we were checking out with the manager who had a curled white mustache that Salvador Dali would be proud of, we asked him what Suzy does with the mice.  “Oh, Suzy is a good girl” he said in perfect British Indian English, “She takes them to the corner of the roof and leaves them for the birds, she never eats them herself.”  Formulating this in my mind as we bumped up the road to Pushkar, I realized that we had witnessed a vegetarian, mouse catching, German Sheppard that does social work for the birds.  A better explanation of the inexplicableness that is India cant be found anywhere.

As a professional photographer, one of the parts of my job that I dread the most is keywording.  Send me on a 50 mile hike with 90 pounds of gear, just don’t make me keyword!   Sadly, if I choose to forgo this loath activity, the odds of my images ever being found in an online database are slim to none.  This equals no sales and one very unhappy photographer.  

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, keywording is something that you use on a daily basis without knowing it.  Every time you search Google or another major search engine, you are searching key terms or keywords that describe what you are looking for.   To find specific images on the internet, or within a stock photo library like Aurora Photos, the problem is compounded.  The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is quite true, however, as a photographer I have to boil down those thousand possible descriptive terms to about twenty five key words that capture the essence of the image.  Once boiled down, I then type these words into the metadata of the file, embed the metadata into the image and get the images online.

Before yesterday, my keywording process would often involve me staring at the computer screen for a few hours with my mind a complete blank.  I would then rally into procrastination mode and read the news, answer all my emails, and daydream about being anywhere but in front of the computer screen keywording. Finally, when I realized I had just wasted a few hours of my life,  I would begin the arduous process of convincing my girlfriend to do my keywording for me.  On a good day, I (she) could get about 30 done. 

This week, a lifeline appeared on the keywording front when Cradoc Software, makers of the much loved FotoBiz, released a product called fotoKeyword Harvester.  I purchased it yesterday, learned the program in about 15 minutes, and in less than an hour had 12 images keyworded and ready for upload.  Now, for me, that is some sort of all time speed record — not even my girlfriend could get it done that fast.  The brilliant idea behind the software is you begin, as the name implies, by harvesting keywords from similar images already online.  You then cull the unnecessary keywords out of this list, fine tune the existing keywords from a brilliantly implemented list of controlled vocabulary built into the program, and export the keywords to your clipboard.  Once the keywords are in your clipboard they can be pasted into whatever program you are embedding the keywords with.  Thank you Cradoc — my girlfriend thanks you too!