Lightroom 4: Multi Selecting Smart collections and Folders in Library Module has changed for the worse

In Lightroom 3, multi-selecting various folders and collections would sometimes show the union, and sometimes show the intersection. The inconsistencies in the behavior were confusing to a lot of people, and caused various problems as well. In Lightroom 4, all such multi-selects now show the union.

We certainly recognize that any change (even an ostensible bug fix) can potentially be detrimental to certain workflows, and we appreciate getting this feedback. In the case of the particular use cases described in this thread, it should be fairly easy to do what you want to do using Filters.

Thanks,
Ben

Why not just use the library filter for that? Select the folder, then attribute, then the blue label.

Hmm, the same thing also occurs with regular collections and folders -- LR 3 intersects folders and collections, LR 4 unions them.

I agree that it's a change for the worse. While you can do some intersections using the Filter Bar, Smart Collections have significantly more capability -- more criteria and the ability to form arbitrary boolean expressions. Smart-collection criteria missing from the filter bar include: Folder, Collection, Published Collection, Published Via, Is DNG With Fast Load Data, Edit Date, Has Adjustments, Is Proof, Cropped.

I wonder if this was an intentional design change or accidental?

As a work-around, you could use the Any Filter plugin, though it's not as convenient as the built-in LR functionality.

I can see the difference, but it strikes me that the current behaviour is what users would expect. It looks to me like it's a bug fix.

The LR 3 behavior aligned with the way the Filter Bar worked: Within a particular metadata column or attribute (color, pick, kind), multiple selections were unioned (boolean or). The results from the individual columns and attributes were intersected (boolean and). Similarly, within a particular source category (Catalog, Folders, Collections), multiple selections were unioned, while the results from the categories were intersected. And the Filter Bar and source categores were intersected.

In LR 4, the source categories now work differently from the Filter Bar.

Use cases for the LR 3 behavior are pretty obvious: Some people use folders to organize by date or by project; when they're working on that project, they want to identify photos that meet specific criteria, such as the built-in smart collection Without Keywords, or their workflow-specific criteria. Similarly, the built-in collection Previous Import identifies the most recent shoot, and you want to further refine photos from the shoot using smart collections.

Perhaps there are equally compelling use cases for the LR 4 behavior?

Yes, there certainly are - selecting all the images in one or more folders and also those meeting a SC criteria. Are you suggesting Union should be dropped from SQL then?

It's simply bizarre that in LR3 selecting a smart collection should invoke it as a filter on the other selected containers, and another way of saying "aligned with the way the Filter Bar worked" is that it was redundant. I'm sure it was a bug, but in any case we now have more functionality, and more intuitive behaviour.

By the way, in LR3 try selecting some folders and two smart collections with different criteria. Not sure what it's returning - looks like a union of the two intersects.

John B wrote, "Another way of saying 'aligned with the way the Filter Bar worked' is that it was redundant."

It's not redundant -- Smart Collections have more criteria than the Filter Bar and the ability to form arbitrary boolean expressions. Smart Collections also handle stacks differently than the Filter Bar.

One partial indication of "what users expect": I don't recall seeing any user feedback here or in the LR forum about the LR 3 behavior. If many users were suprised by the behavior, there's a reasonable chance at least someone would have posted feedback (LR users aren't shy!).

I didn't know about LR3's intersection behaviour but now that I do, I'd like to have it in LR4 as well.

I always found it cumbersome that I had to hard code a folder location in a smart collection in order to apply some search criteria to a specific location only.

If selecting a source location and a smart collection would give me the result of the smart collection confined to only the selected source location, that'll be great.

I find selecting a smart collection much quicker than fiddling with the library filter where there's always something turned on that I don't need at the moment and the way the active / inactive status of criteria are displayed makes it very hard to quickly see what needs to be toggled. Furthermore, smart collection search criteria go beyond what is possible with library filters.

I don't think the current LR4 "union" behaviour is worth keeping as it can easily be emulated by just adding all sources to a (quick) collection step by step.

It's worth keeping because it is the intuitive behaviour and corrects a bug.

The fix for your cumbersome hard coding of folders is a suggestion to make SCs children of folders, as in Aperture.

I use Lightroom at a minimum of 30 hours a week and don't care for the change. It has greatly affected our studio's workflow. We are continuing the use of LR3 due to this change.

In previous versions, Collections (Smart or Not) are essentially a FILTER and should function as a filter.

By the creation of the UNION when multi-selecting, largely decreases the functionality of Collections (Smart or Not) by removing the criteria that has been specified by the user.

In my opinion, I do not see this change as an improvement but a move in the wrong direction. I am frustrated because this new change has rendered LR4 and the use of collections irrelevant to our studio.

I have spent time talking with a senior support tech and I was told that this issue will be discussed in the weekly developers meeting. I am crossing my fingers and hope they revert back to the behavior of the previous versions.

How many of you actually use Apple's addition of "Natural" Scrolling? At least they gave the user the option of turning it off.

Have you tried using the filter bar, and saving a new filter preset?

Making smart collections children of folders is not a good solution as one would have to replicate smart collection definitions as many times as one needs them.

It's a bummer that this feature/bug was changed/fixed - it was better (more useful) the way it was, to me.