That's great news! More and more professional photo organizers/photo managers are starting to use DOpus, and they will be pleased.
If you want it to be optional, consider doing what Photo Mechanic does. There is a box next to the Keywords field. checking the box means you want to append keywords.
Today I have just tried the +newtag method on a selection of 127 files and it is a painfully slow process! I've used DOpus tagging via the metadata panel before (without the + method needed because there was nothing to retain) and it was very quick. I am working on files located on an SSD. Can anyone comment on whether the other methods suggested earlier in this post are much quicker?
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Just tried the various methods with 127 jpegs, 3 MB each, and every time it took maybe one second. How slow is "painfully slow"? Maybe other software is interfering?
I agree it's slow. One thing that makes it slow is that I need to be VERY careful because if I forget to add the + in front of the keyword I want to add, The mistake could be very costly, as I could wipe out the existing keywords.
Adding keywords is essential to my profession and every day work. The biggest problem is the risk of error.
I hope that Directory Opus will see that having keywords appended by default, as they are with every other application I have ever used is would be a logical change to make. The exception is Photo Mechanic which needs the 'append keywords' box to be checked.
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+newtag is the fastest of the methods. Are you concerned by the risk of error? I am. Have you used any other applications for which appending tags was not the default/standard?
Jon already said we're going to add an option to make adding tags the default. No need to go over it all again. 
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By painfully, I mean it was "go upstairs, make coffee, start folding laundry, come back and only 50% done" slow. I should have clarified that I was using an external SSD. I moved all of the files to my internal hard drive (not SSD, although my OS and programs are installed on an older SSD) and it was once again lightning fast.
I also rebooted in between attempts so perhaps something else was going on with my machine at that moment. I also display the Exif:DateTimeOriginal in a column when viewing photos so maybe that complicated things with an extra call needed to Exiftool?
Thanks for the quick follow-up.
Yep, that IS painfully slow 
Setting metadata is rather time-consuming, but not that slow. Exif columns delay the file display, but again, not by so much. If you see that happen again and can reproduce it, let me know so I can investigate. I'd say, you should only have time for an espresso shot while waiting for Opus to finish 
Hello! I've just finished working on a 7 TB digital photo collection (1.2 M photos) for a client and managed by deduplication to get it to a measly 120K. What complicated this endeavor was getting many quality photos that didn't contain the correct keywords that the ratty, smaller files contained--many times a subset or flat out incorrect keywords. I have to politely agree that having a faster way to append keywords directly and error-proof would have saved me hours of work, if not days. I look forward to seeing this change implement as I absolutely LOVE so many things about DOpus and have been telling many colleagues about it. Thank you!
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