Workflow Guides

Your first match

1. Pick a small test batch

Start with one folder of 10 to 20 photos from a single shoot. Pick a shoot where you know the species in the frame, so you can tell straight away whether Nomen gets them right.

2. Run Nomen with Full review

Select the photos in Library and choose Library > Plug-in Extras > Nomen > Run Nomen on Selected Photos. On the Scan options tab, choose Main subject as the detection mode and Full review (one at a time) as the review mode. If your photos have GPS data, Nomen detects the country automatically from each photo. If not, select the country where the shoot took place on the Location tab. Then click Run Nomen.

3. Review the matches

The match window is called Review Match for a photo with one subject, or Review Matches for several. Check the photo against its candidate list. The bounding box shows what Nomen found in the image. Candidates are ranked by match score, and the top candidate says Clear match, Close call, or Check this one. Each also carries a rarity tier (very rare, rare, uncommon, common, or abundant) for the country Nomen used.

4. Verify and exclude

Check that the bounding box actually contains wildlife. If it grabbed background, press Skip Photo. In a photo with several subjects, untick any box that isn’t wildlife. Use the iNat button next to each suggestion to check species you are not sure about.

5. Apply to your catalog

Click “Apply” (“Apply Selected” for several subjects). That’s the only confirmation. Nomen writes the match, and a short message fades away when the batch finishes. Check the results in Lightroom’s keyword panel and metadata fields. If the matches look right, move on to larger batches.

Matching a full trip

1. Work one folder at a time

Don’t select your entire catalog, or even an entire trip. Work through one folder at a time, whether that’s a single shoot or a single day in one place.

2. Pick the species groups for the shoot

Click Quick setup… at the top of the Run Nomen window and finish the sentence with where you were, what you were shooting and what you saw. Nomen picks the species groups and the country. Or tick the groups yourself on the Species tab, starting from a preset such as Underwater for a dive trip.

Ticking only the groups you shot keeps look-alikes from unrelated groups out of the suggestions. The cost is that a subject from a group you didn’t tick can come back with the closest name from the groups you did. In Main subject, Nomen offers to search all groups for photos with no strong match before you review them. If dolphins showed up on your dive trip, add Mammals.

3. Start with Full review

Use Full review for the first folder so you see every match before it lands in the catalog. If the matches are consistently good for this type of subject and these shooting conditions, switch to Quick review or Don’t review for the remaining folders from the same trip.

4. Spot-check after each batch

After each batch, open the metadata panel on 5 to 10 matched photos and verify the species. If something looks wrong, you caught it early while it is still one folder, not your whole library.

Taking Nomen into the field

1. Download everything at home

Before you leave, download the species data in File > Plug-in Manager > Nomen, and on Windows the DirectX 12 bundle too. That’s about 4.5 GB of species data. Nomen takes about 5.8 GB on a Mac or 6.6 GB on Windows in all. Do it on a good connection. Matching needs none afterwards.

2. Connect once before you go

Open Nomen while you’re still online. It checks your license when it’s online and keeps working for 60 days after the last check. Setup then shows the date, such as “Checked today; works offline until 11 Dec 2026”. Lightroom Classic has its own offline limit, set by your Adobe plan, so open Lightroom online before a long trip as well.

3. Test with Wi-Fi off

Turn off Wi-Fi and run Nomen on a few photos at home. If it matches there, it will match in the field.

4. Match each evening

Run the day’s photos through Nomen in camp or on the boat. Each photo’s GPS sets its country without a connection, so a trip that crosses borders sorts itself out. When your camera has no GPS, tell Quick setup where you are.

Working through a backlog

1. Start with your most recent trips

You remember those shoots best, so you’re more likely to catch a wrong match. They’re also the photos clients and editors ask for, and the ones you’ll search for yourself.

2. Work chronologically backward

One trip at a time. Use Full review until you trust the results for a given type of subject and shooting condition. Switch to Quick review or Don’t review only when you’re confident in what Nomen does well with your photos.

3. Prioritize what you actually need

If a client asks whether you have a particular species, run Nomen on that trip first. You don’t have to work through the entire backlog in order. Match what you need most right now.

4. Set realistic expectations

Nomen turns weeks of manual keywording into hours of supervised matching. It does not turn it into minutes. The review step is where the quality comes from. Skip it and you risk filling your catalog with plausible-looking but wrong keywords, which is worse than no keywords at all.

When matches are wrong

1. Check the suggestions list

Re-run the photo with Full review. The match window lists the top 5 candidates, and the correct species may be among them. If “Skip already-matched photos” is on, turn it off first or Nomen will skip the photo.

2. Your corrections are preserved

If “Skip already-matched photos” is enabled in settings, your manual correction is preserved on future batch runs. Nomen won’t overwrite it.

3. Diagnose batch problems

If many matches in a large batch are wrong, the cause is usually one of three things. The wrong species groups may be ticked, so Nomen is matching birds against marine groups. Without geographic filtering, it may suggest species from the wrong continent. Or the batch may include photos with no clear subject: landscapes, camp shots, or gear photos mixed in with wildlife.

4. Adjust for next time

Tick the species groups that fit the shoot, set the correct country if your photos have no GPS data, and pre-filter your selection in Lightroom to include only wildlife photos before running Nomen. If divers, hands or bystanders keep coming back as species, tick Leave out people in Quick setup or on the Scan options tab.