Skip to main content
Adobe Photoshop Family
pippo_baudo

18 Messages

 • 

840 Points

Sat, May 28, 2011 11:49 AM

43

Lightroom: A better search/find in the library module (Library Filter)

I have used for many years iView, and then Expression Media to catalog my files, and I must say that even today I did not find nothing better from this point of view (on Mac).

As the actual one is very limited, it will be very nice to implant some more powerful search/find function in the LR Library module.

Something that allow to make very precise researches like, for example:
"Find all the tif or pdf files with a weight > 1 000 000 bytes, a resolution of 300 dpi, an Adobe RGB profile and 16 bits of depth..."



It will be very nice too to have the possibility to personalize more the info on the preview module (for example somebody could be interested to see the weight in MB of each file, of the embedded color profile, or the resolution, or the depth of the file):

Ideas

 • 

Updated 

9 months ago

8

26

43

Responses

rob_cole_2221866

4.5K Messages

 • 

76.3K Points

9 years ago

I realize your idea is for native support in Lightroom, and I agree this would be a good feature.

But just so you know, you can do *most* of the search part of this now with the help of DevMeta and ExifMeta.

I say "*most*" because plugins do not support numeric metadata comparisons yet (nor date/time...)

PS - I'm not pushing my plugins, I just thought the OP and/or other readers may be interested in a partial interim solution, that's the only reason I bring it up.

Also, in case you didn't know, you can do some limited customization of the grid view now using 'Library View Options" grid view preferences.

0

0

john_beardsworth

1.3K Messages

 • 

22.5K Points

9 years ago

I agree with the original post. Anyone who has used iView/ExMedia misses their search capability. If data is in a database, sooner or later someone will have a very good reason to search on it, so don't second guess which fields they need - make them all searchable.

Take a look at Jeffrey’s “Extended Search” Lightroom Plugin which is specifically designed to fill gaps in Adobe Lightroom's image-search capabilities.

John

PS Rob, you are pushing your plug-ins. You've posted enough about them already.

5

0

rob_cole_2221866

4.5K Messages

 • 

76.3K Points

No John - I am not.

And I won't stop mentioning my plugins to people, nor yours, nor anybody elses, nor any solutions that don't involve plugins, as long as I think the people who have posted about their needs and desires might benefit from them and appreciate knowing about them. So, you might as well stop riding me...

Like

9 years ago

0

geoff_walker_2225610

Champion

 • 

219 Messages

 • 

3.9K Points

Rob, if you weren't pushing yours you would have mentioned others like Jeffrey's as well.

Like

9 years ago

0

rob_cole_2221866

4.5K Messages

 • 

76.3K Points

You're wrong Geoff. I wasn't familiar with this plugin of Jeffrey's. How about you get off my back too?

Like

9 years ago

0

Victoria_Bampton_Lightroom_Queen

Champion

 • 

5.8K Messages

 • 

102.5K Points

Settle down guys, there's no need for this

Like

9 years ago

0

pippo_baudo

18 Messages

 • 

840 Points

Thank you John and Rod, I shall take a look to these plugins as soon as possible

Like

9 years ago

0

snapper_98491

11 Messages

 • 

268 Points

8 years ago

In Lightroom, though you can show the exposure bias in the view options, you can't filter by this metadata. I frequently want to mark all the -1ev images one colour and all the +1ev images another colour. I imagine others using HDR type techniques may want this too.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Extra Metadata fields for search/filter.

0

son_nguyen_2405250

62 Messages

 • 

1K Points

8 years ago

I would love to be able to create Smart Collection that can use various information from Edit History.
For example, I like to create a smart collection to contain all images that has been exported to hard drive (or printed).

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Edit History available to use in Smart Collection.

0

0

john_silva_3824723

5 Messages

 • 

166 Points

8 years ago

I very often want to search for images with specific Lightroom-defined properties such as process version (i.e, all images with process version 2012), specific develop settings (Clarity >= 30), etc. None of this information is available via the traditional EXIF based search tools.

Rob Cole's plugin DevMeta comes close to providing this ability, but because it relies on image selection to update it's private cache of Lightroom metadata the results are often out of date. I don't blame this on RC's plugin, but rather the fact that Lightroom doesn't expose this information in the Metadata Filtering functionality. To provide a balance between functionality and performance RC's plugin doesn't extract more nuanced information such as tone curve region parameters or individual curve modifications.

In addition, because the API doesn't allow for sufficiently rich metadata comparisons (contains, start and end) it's impossible to adequately work with this expanded metadata.

At a minimum, everything that RC's DevMeta plugin does should be standard in Lightroom. Metadata comparisons must support numeric, boolean, negation and range comparisons. It would be a bonus if word, list, and regex comparisons were also available.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Need better metadata filtering capabilities.

0

0

imanolz

76 Messages

 • 

1.5K Points

8 years ago

It is any trick to filter my developed shots that have not used local brushes or graduated filters?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
LIGHTROOM: Powered filtering.

0

0

kevin_lozaw

6 Messages

 • 

172 Points

8 years ago

Many photographers now batch process stacks of bracketed files. However, they are often of varying stack sizes and intermingled with plenty of non-bracketed single shots.

We need to be able to view ONLY the stacked image sets. There seems to be no solution other than 3rd party SW or to label all your stacks with colors or keywords, etc. then filtering.

With all the people using HDR this seems like a logical feature to add immediately

Thank you,

Kevin

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Need filter to view only stacked (and only non- stacked) images.

0

0

angus_jenkinson

8 Messages

 • 

178 Points

8 years ago

It would be extremely useful to be able to sort or filter by file size (and megapixel too). for example, if you have a run an action there may be files that are small (eg cropped or reduced in size) or large (because they have multiple layers still embedded - I run an action and then open the files to do do final layer opacity changes etc). I keep having to go to Finder to fine files that need to be opened, then you have to fiddle to find the right ones. Its just not clever to not have this funciton - Bridge has it

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Filter or sort by file size.

0

0

walt_sorensen

46 Messages

 • 

948 Points

8 years ago

There is a nice feature for smart collections that allow filtering keywords by "are empty" and "aren't empty"

I would like to filter images by X number of keywords.
It's great to have a collection that tells me that there are no keywords but if I add only one keyword I then have to find the image by that keyword.

As a work flow this "are empty" and "aren't empty" isn't adequate. I want to start with images with no keywords, then work through images with 1 keyword and 2 etc. by using multiple smart collections.

I know this is a database issue because of the data type used for keywords. As such this would require a secondary function to "count" the keywords and store that data so we can easily filter images by the number of keywords.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Better filtering for smart collections - by number of keywords.

1

0

dnicolaescu

677 Messages

 • 

8.7K Points

The Parse&Audit function of John Beardy's Search, Replace, Transfer plug-in establishes a metadata filter column based on the number of keywords.

Like

8 years ago

0

sandra_seilmann

5 Messages

 • 

132 Points

8 years ago

On top of my wishlist is the ability to create a smart filter that counts the applied keywords.
I often want to search for photos containing (for instance) less than 15 keywords.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
LR4 - keyword counter as smart filter.

0

0

John_R_Ellis

Champion

 • 

5.1K Messages

 • 

93K Points

8 years ago

To summarize from previous comments in this thread and the other merged threads: There are a number of plugins that can help with the issues raised here. They generally aren't as good as having the functionality built-in to Lightroom, but they usually get the job done with a minimum of fuss:

Search, Replace, and Transfer: provides a number of additional criteria to filters and smart-collections, including whether title/headline/event/caption fields are empty, the number of assigned keywords, the month of a photo's date.
http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/...

DevMeta: makes all develop settings, e.g. Luminance or Sharpening Amount, available as filter and smart-collection criteria.
http://www.robcole.com/Rob/ProductsAn...

ExifMeta: makes all EXIF and camera-specific metadata available as filter and smart-collection criteria.
http://www.robcole.com/Rob/ProductsAn...

Extended Search: provides additional criteria for filtering and smart collections, including crop status, aspect ratio, virtual-copy status, stack status, exposure bias, additional text-matching operators for common text fields.
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-good...

Any Filter: lets you search virtually all fields, metadata, and settings visible in Lightroom and many that aren't (305 in total), with more complete matching operators.
http://www.johnrellis.com/lightroom/a...

3

Victoria_Bampton_Lightroom_Queen

Champion

 • 

5.8K Messages

 • 

102.5K Points

Thanks for a great summary John

Like

8 years ago

0

John_R_Ellis

Champion

 • 

5.1K Messages

 • 

93K Points

Another plugin for enhanced search: Data Explorer, which lets you group photos by 150 different criteria. http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-good...

Like

6 years ago

0

rob_cole_2221866

4.5K Messages

 • 

76.3K Points

+1 star ;-)

And another recent addition: Metadata Extensions (free, by me).

It's kind-of-an odd-ball - you have to select which items are of interest up front (since having all enabled would be a large drain on cpu) - supports having selected (non-exif) metadata items available for Lr-standard/built-in lib filters and smart collections, e.g. stack position, folder path, aspect ratio...............

And also: Space Urchin (free by me), which is even more of an odd-ball than Metadata Extensions, but can be very convenient (especially if you have spaces in your metadata, but even if not..).

And don't forget: AnySource by John Ellis - searching for folders and collections is still searching ;-}.

There is also John Beardsworth's ListView, which supports metadata filtering and sorted results (beware of potential conflict with other plugins).

Have we missed any?

Me? I use most of them, depending on circumstance.

* I use ExifMeta (without XMP option enabled) - once source metadata is in catalog, it never changes, and so this plugin drains ~0 cpu cycles after initially writing metadata to catalog.
* I use DevMeta because I frequently want to filter/search based on develop settings. It requires a big chunk of the CPU (since it kicks in every time you change anything - kinda like auto-save XMP feature), but I've got some to spare..
* I enable selected Metadata Extension options for frequently used items.
* I use Space Urchin if I simply want to consider spaces to be part of search term and metadata being searched (or want to use pattern matching), in a library text filter. (I also have a few "dynamix-enhanced" smart collections).
* I use AnyFilter for one-time or infrequent queries - it's *very* handy (and reliable).
* I don't use Search, Replace, & Transfer, nor ListView, since neither is reliable when also using plugins that do background catalog updates (like Metadata Extensions, DevMeta, ExifMeta, ... ) - John Beardsworth is aware of this problem and so may have fixed it by now - dunno.
* I don't use jf's Extended Search only because I didn't learn about it until after my needs were covered.
* I rarely use jf's Data Explorer - it's a great plugin, but again: my needs were (and still are) already covered by the above-mentioned. Dunno about reliability, but Jefffrey has promptly fixed every bug I've reported, so not to worry..).

Rob

Like

6 years ago

0

john_caldwell_4078410

10 Messages

 • 

170 Points

8 years ago

The feature would allow a search, or a Smart Collection perhaps, of files where Print existed as a history state. Along the same lines, the search/filter functionality might permit entry of Date, or date ranges, that Printing was performed.

John Caldwell

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Search for "Print" within History States.

0

0

sebastien_barre

14 Messages

 • 

642 Points

8 years ago

As of LR3, only the "Capture Date" field is available for use in a Smart collection rule. I'd love to see:

- "Capture Month": i.e., a field matching only the month, whatever the day or year is. I try to always keyword a photo with the *name* of the month it was taken in. It makes my life much easier with respect to 3rd party websites and external APIs (faster than looking at the EXIF), and I can look for photos that were taken specifically in autumn for example. Right now, my smart collection rule "No April" that test if a photo needs to be "fixed" because its "Capture Date" is in April but it doesn't have the April keyword is *humongous*; I have to pile "Capture Date is in the range 2011-04-01 to 2011-04-31", "Capture Date is in the range 2010-04-01 to 2010-04-31", "Capture Date is in the range 2009-04-01 to 2009-04-31", etc back to 10 years in the past under a "Any of the following are true". Clumsy, and slow. My "Mislabeled April" is equally fun, the same huge list going back 10 years, and test if any of the keyword contains January, February, March, etc. all months except April.

- Capture Time: same principle, only match against the time, not the date. It could be used with "Capture Month" to create a smart collection of all the photos taken during "Golden hour" for example (around sunset/sunrise).

Thanks

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Add Capture Month and Capture Time to smart collection fields.

1

0

John_R_Ellis

Champion

 • 

5.1K Messages

 • 

93K Points

The Any Filter plugin lets you match against the month, day of month, day of week, and time of day.

Like

8 years ago

0

robert_barnett_3894617

1 Message

 • 

62 Points

8 years ago

I would like to be able to use Smart Collections to show only images that have been Stacked. I use stacks to manage my images that need to be merged for HDR and Panorama's and being able to create a Smart Collection that would show only the images that are Stacked would be great. Also, please show them stacked not unstacked.

Thanks,

Robert

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Create a Smart Collection to show Stacked Image Collections.

0

0

kevin_lozaw

6 Messages

 • 

172 Points

8 years ago

I second that request!

0

0

Helpful Widget

Tags

search

library

find

information

info