Coming from Aperture, I'm flabbergasted that this isn't supported by default. I can't imagine how the design process of this feature could leave something like this out... Anyway, I voted, but given that this post is 5 years old it seems like Adobe couldn't care less. Quite ridiculous, really.
LR needs facility to match "exactly" the keywords being searched for. Often use two words like small pearl bordered when there is also a different species as pearly bordered. searching doesn't allow them to be separated and brings up both lots. This is a fault in my book and need to be bale to search for two words with spaces in between.
I've received responses from John R Ellis and Simon Chen and can't answer on the links provided as closed. I have used the "contain words" but this doesn't change the search result. I put in "pearl bordered' and search brings up "small pearl bordered" as well. This means a lot of sifting through to get to what I want. the whole idea of a search is to find exactly what I want. This use to be a search in Aperture I believe where you can search for "exactly" and this is what is needed in LR.
Yeah, the search function and folder organisation features are beyond embarrassing. It's a shocker really. Not fit for managing a large database of images. Seems Adobe don't monitor their own forums though.
Exactly! Catalogues, the indexed file structure is shambolic. You can't edit anything quickly and you can't scroll through a list of names without it buffering. So poorly designed.
Aperture had the ability to limit Smart Albums to filtering a specific album. This rule gave a drop down list of all the available Albums. Pretty simple and straightforward. And best of all, IT WORKED! Heck, even the new Photos app gets this (a screenshot of it is attached).
In Lightroom, in theory, you can limit a Smart Collection to a specific Collection or Collection Set, but it doesn't seem to work constantly.
PLEASE allow Smart Collections to filter via Collection Set.
PLEASE allow the "Collection" filter in the Smart Collection set to be set to "is" (as seen in the attached Photos.app screenshot). If its not an exact match, then the Collection/Collection Set doesn't get included. Including text in quotes does not perform the expected operation.
It shouldn't have to be a trial and error operation to do something which could be SO simple.
This makes Smart Collections a complete pain in the bum to use on Lightroom.
It would be amazing if Lightroom management could know that even the small things matter.
You can usually work around the lack of the Is operator by using Contains All rather than Contains. The Contains operator matches if the field contains any of the words (e.g. "Hawaii" or "1998"), whereas the Contains All operator matches only if the field contains all of the words (e.g. "Hawaii" and "1998").
There are common use cases where Contains All isn't sufficient, of course. And we all agree that LR's text-matching operators are ill-conceived.
Yeah, we shouldn't have to hunt around for terms to include as text or have to design stuff like collection names for easy text searching. Lr should give us drop-down menus with the actual items, whether it be collections, cameras, lenses, etc. But we've nagged about this forever. And I would love to be able to save filters as a smart collection as opposed to a filter.
One thing you have to watch out for using "Contains" or "Contains All" is they do not match just complete words, but will match parts of words as well such as if you search for the word "Red" it will also return words like "Cleared" because "Cleared" has the letters "red" in it. To get only complete words returned, use "Contains Words". Unfortunately none of Lightroom's text search routines give the expected results all the time, and Adobe, now that it has gone to a subscription business model, does not seem to feel any need to do anything about the database capabilities of Lightroom. That is pleasing customers is no longer their highest priority.
I am very disappointed in the new Lightroom Classic CC. There are no improvements to its database abilities. When Brian O'Neil Hughes spoke at Adobe Max 2017 and said he never uses Keywords, that seemed to explain Adobe's attitude towards Lightroom as a database manager.
I still can't believe this is ongoing. Please Adobe fix this. Surely you can;t have all these people asking for a feature and for you not to do something about it?
Pleeeaaassse fix!! Keywords need to be able to contain white space. I have integrations with other areas that require the white space. Consequently, I am locked out of using smart collections until this bug gets fixed. Implement a regex feature. Thanks.
I suspect there is a simple solution for this, but as an example, if I have a key word "estate" and another one "real estate" and a third "MacKenzie King Estate". When I do a search/filter for "estate" I get all three whether I uses "contain"/"contain all"/"contain words".
Are there special characters I can use to select the images with the single word keyword "estate"??
Or am I stuck with getting them all or dreaming up a new set of one word keywords?
First of all, merging these post LEAVES OUT a lot of pertinent information from the other posts that seem to be relevant to the issue. The only way to see them is to follow the links. Makes it more difficult to resolve issues
Onto the main topic. This comment is from a linked post.
Johan's above suggestion works great. As this smart collection filter has been requested in several posts I would think I should be fairly easy to add a choice in the smart collection to do this as in the above scenario. The filtering programming code is already written as it works as above so it just needs to be added to the smart collections.
I'd like to be able to click on existing keywords/people to create a smart collection. This would simplify the smart collection creation process and avoid the problem I am currently encountering of my smart collection pulling in the wrong images. (I want a smart collection that pulls in John Smith, but it is also pulling in John Doe and Mary Smith -- all three people exist as keywords but Lightroom is treating first and last names as individual words instead of the first and last name of each person as an individual unit). It seems like I should be able to create a new smart collection and then just click from my keywords which ones I want to include.
And on a different note, keywords seem like an obvious search tool so why do I have to dig through an additional layer to find them when I am creating smart collections (i.e. you have to click on "Other Metadata" to find the keyword option)?
"I want a smart collection that pulls in John Smith, but it is also pulling in John Doe and Mary Smith"
It sounds like you're using the "contains" operator, e.g.
Keywords contain John Smith
That will match photos that contain the string "John" or "Smith" anywhere in their keywords. E.g. it will match a photo with the single keyword "Johnson" and a photo with the single keyword "blacksmith".
Instead, use "contains words":
Keywords contains words John Smith
This will match photos that contain both "John" and "Smith" in their keywords as punctuated-separated "words". That will significantly reduce the number of false matches, though you can still get some; e.g. it will match a photo with the two keywords "John Doe" and "Bob Smith".
You might consider using the Library Filter bar instead of smart collections -- its Metadata browser is the only way to get exact keyword match (without using a plugin), and you can search for a keyword with a single mouse-click. See the end of this post for details:
My workaround is to create keywords (that don't export) without spaces. They are like placeholders to filter more easily on. Instead the real keyword (with spaces) is in the synonyms.
This would be how I would tag a photo that has me in it. For people in my family tree, a unique identification number (RIN051 in this case) is used that corresponds to the ID number in the family tree database. But my friend John Doe would have JohnDoe as non-exporting keyword, and John, John Doe and Doe as synonyms.
I use this for workflow as well, but without synonyms, because I won't be exporting these workflowkeywords at all. Some examples:
DoNotX > I have culled these photos and although they are no picks, I don't want to reject them. So a smart collection for culling might look like: Keywords doesn't contain "DoNotX" and Flag is "Unflagged"
ToTagPeople> I haven't tagged all the people in this picture yet
TaggedPeople> All people are tagged (if I would create a smart filter based on "Tag People", these might show up as well)
Like John R. Ellis says you can also use the library filter. Or you can look up the keyword in the keywordlist and click the arrow on the right side. That will also return any image that contains that keyword.
I was using "contains all" instead of "contains words." Unfortunately switching to "contains words" made my problem worse (collection went from 754 images to 51,128). But thank you for making me aware of the distinction because it solved a different problem I was having.
My dilemma for this collection is that I am trying to create a collection of photos of all the pets in my life (don't judge me). This would include ten (so far) keywords. Originally I was only using a first name for the pets' keywords but there are several of the pets (Riley, Molly, Abbey, and Addison) who share the name of real people in my collection. So I thought adding last names to my pets' keywords would solve the problem but that led me to stumbling upon the problem which is the topic of this thread - Lightroom doesn't recognize spaces in keywords. So, for example, a smart collection containing the words "Riley Findlow" (my dog) includes false positives for any picture that includes the person "Riley Robertson" plus anyone in my family whose last name is Findlow. This leads me to the conclusion that smart collections are useless. If I wanted to wade through thousands of pictures to find the ones of my pets, I could do that in File Explorer on my computer.
I appreciate you feedback (especially because that explained why looking for pictures of Niko also pulled in every picture I'd taken on my Nikon). I will just have to hope Adobe cares enough to make what seems like an easy and intuitive fix.
Thank you for your suggestions of using synonyms. I tried it for this smart collection and it seems to have solved my problem. I will have to start using synonyms when I run into problems like this and then go back and edit my existing keywords as I have time. I have just short of 450 people in my catalog so it is a little frustrating to consider editing that many keywords as a work-around for something Lightroom should do easily.
I also appreciate learning about your workflow tags. I always love to see how other people make the program work for them.
I was using "contains all" instead of "contains words." Unfortunately switching to "contains words" made my problem worse (collection went from 754 images to 51,128).
Hmm, there's more going on here. Switching from "contains all" to "contains words" can only make the matched set smaller. "contains all x y" matches all keywords containing the string x and the string y somewhere in the keywords, whereas "contains words x y" matches keywords that have x and y as punctuation-separated "words". E.g. "contains all john smith" will match the keyword "johnson blacksmith", but "contains words john smith" won't. Can you post a screenshot of your smart-collection rules using "contains words"?
"Here's an easier method. Try 'Start With' rather than 'Contains All' or 'Contains Words'."
Be careful with this. For search terms including multiple words, e.g. "starts with Jen Smith", that can often produce fewer false positives than "contains words", but it can still get them, e.g. "Jen Smithson".
But for search terms with a single word, e.g. "starts with Jen", you could end up with more false positives than "contains words", e.g. "Jennifer".
"My dilemma for this collection is that I am trying to create a collection of photos of all the pets in my life (don't judge me)."
There are a couple of easy ways to accomplish this without resorting to the drastic solution of using synonyms, which I think you may regret down the line.
1. Use the Keywords column of the Library Filter bar. Open the Filter bar by doing Library > Enable Filters, click on Metadata, and choose the Keywords column. Then Cmd/Ctrl-click each pet keyword:
Save that as filter preset "Pets". (I obsess on my pets too :->)
2. Put all of your pet keywords under a parent keyword "Pets". Then use the Library Filter bar and select just "Pets". Or use the smart-collection criterion:
Keywords contains words Pets
The advantage of a parent keyword is that you don't have to update your saved filter preset or smart collection when you add a new pet keyword.
Just to add to John's comment, sometimes the best solution to make a smart folder do what you want it to do is to introduce a unique string. For instance, if "pets" had been used elsewhere in your keywords, you could use the parent keyword "MyPetsXYZ", and then use that for a search. (Just make sure that the keyword isn't exported!)
I often want to limit a search to a particular folder. I just called this folder "unique123" and set up a smart folder with "any searchable text" contains "unique123". I find it much easier to go to that smart folder and search within it than to find the folder in my folder hierarchy. And I can easily set up smart folders that limit their search to this part of my folder hierarchy.
"Here's an easier method. Try 'Start With' rather than 'Contains All' or 'Contains Words'."
Be careful with this. For search terms including multiple words, e.g. "starts with Jen Smith", that can often produce fewer false positives than "contains words", but it can still get them, e.g. "Jen Smithson".
True, so 'Start With Words' would be the ideal solution (but does not exist). However, this small problem can easily be solved in a smart collection by adding a second criterium 'Does not contain Smithson'.
But what if the photo contains both both "Jen Smith" and "Andy Smithson"? With "does not contain Smithson" you will exclude the photo from your search when it should be included.
True, you can’t win them all. “Start with words” would be what you need, but unfortunately that does not exist. This is a rare problem however, because it would only occur if you have images of “Jane Smith” and “Jane Smithson”. If “Jane Smithson” does not exist in your library, then you do not have to exclude “Smithson”. Other names that include “smith”, like “Andy Smithson”, will not be found if you search on ‘Start with “Jane Smith”.
Perhaps this is the answer: create a smart collection with two criteria that both must be true: - Start with “Jane Smith” - Contains words “Jane Smith” That should exclude images that only contain Jane Smithson, but still include images of both Jane & Jane, or Jane Smith and any other person called Smithson.
While the counter-examples to these approximations may seem "rare" to you, the more keywords you have, the more likely you'll trip over them. As the author of the Any Filter plugin (which does provide exact match for keywords and all other fields), I've seen over the years a fair number of surprising gotchas from my customers. Put another way, there's no accounting for other people's naming of keywords :->
But, to build on Dan's observations, I think we all agree that the lack of exact match is an embarrassing defect in smart collections.
The criteria "starts with Jane Smith & ends with Jane Smith" will match a photo with these two keywords: "Jane Smith's home" and "Bob and Jane Smith".
The smart collection 'Start with Jane Smith' and 'Contains Words Jane Smith', as I suggested, should not match this photo. 'Bob and Jane Smith' will not match start with Jane Smith. And "Jane Smith's home" does not contain the word Smith. Unless Lightroom also ignores the '-character and considers "Smith's" as "Smith" plus "s"... I haven't checked that.
Similarly, the criterion "contains words Jane Smith" will match a photo with the two keywords "Jane Crate" and "Bob Smith".
The smart collection 'Start with Jane Smith' and 'Contains Words Jane Smith' will not match this photo because it does not start with Jane Smith.
As can be attested to by the length of this thread, this is a problem many of us "keyword junkies" have and there are a slew of workaround solutions while we wait for years for Adobe to take this problem seriously (which they have so far shown no intention of doing).
Without re-reading this whole thread is to adulterate the keyword name for the pets to distinguish them from people. For example: "Molly(dog)", or "Molly-dog". then when using a Smart Collection or filter you can use "Molly-dog" when you want the pet and "Molly !dog" (Exclamation point in filter means "not") when you want the person.
For similar situations where I am not exporting the keywords in question I bastardize the keyword by adding an asterisk as the 2nd character. For example, I have a keyword for each shoot. So, for example, a shoot might have a keyword of "Shoot 2019-03 France & Belgium". But specific images would have a LOCATION keyword of either France or Belgium. So, when I search for "France" I get the whole shoot due to the shoot keyword when in fact some of those images are in Belgium. To get around this problem I changed the shoot keyword to "Shoot 2019-03 F*rance & B*elgium"
But, sure would be nice to allow filters and Smart Collections to:
a) support Quote marks to support multi-word keywords (e.g. "Mary Smith") where it would use the full text inside the quotes as one thing and not treat any spaces inside the quotes as delimiters,
b) Allow "the contained in" nomenclature they use in the Keywords Panel. For example "Red < Bird" meaning the keyword "Red" that is a child under keyword "Bird" or "Molly < Pets" meaning the keyword "Molly" that is a child of keyword "Pets"
Identified and described EIGHT YEARS ago! I keep hoping in the face of all evidence that Adobe will eventually put some attention on fixing and updating the DAM tools in Lightroom. This is simply one of several areas that are well documented in the feedback forum that need some well deserved attention.
The keyword search filter could have a way of searching for the exact term, and the possibility of having several exact terms, eg "Rafael Rosa", "Edson Rosa" In that term it would only find the words bracketed with quotation marks. full term, so you could find more exact terms, not just from the names
Responses
remco_douma
8 Messages
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190 Points
5 y ago
0
john_long_7497527
22 Messages
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444 Points
5 y ago
LR needs facility to match "exactly" the keywords being searched for. Often use two words like small pearl bordered when there is also a different species as pearly bordered. searching doesn't allow them to be separated and brings up both lots. This is a fault in my book and need to be bale to search for two words with spaces in between.
6
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Rikk
Adobe Administrator
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140.4K Points
4 y ago
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trevor123456
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596 Points
4 y ago
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled When creating a Smart Collection inside a Collection Set, the Smart Collection sh....I switched to Lightroom from Aperture - reluctantly to say the least.
Aperture had the ability to limit Smart Albums to filtering a specific album. This rule gave a drop down list of all the available Albums. Pretty simple and straightforward. And best of all, IT WORKED! Heck, even the new Photos app gets this (a screenshot of it is attached).
In Lightroom, in theory, you can limit a Smart Collection to a specific Collection or Collection Set, but it doesn't seem to work constantly.
PLEASE allow Smart Collections to filter via Collection Set.
PLEASE allow the "Collection" filter in the Smart Collection set to be set to "is" (as seen in the attached Photos.app screenshot). If its not an exact match, then the Collection/Collection Set doesn't get included. Including text in quotes does not perform the expected operation.
It shouldn't have to be a trial and error operation to do something which could be SO simple.
This makes Smart Collections a complete pain in the bum to use on Lightroom.
It would be amazing if Lightroom management could know that even the small things matter.
Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Lightroom: Smart collections missing criterion for "Collection Set".
4
anders_sorensen_6378269
21 Messages
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782 Points
4 y ago
3
neil_tonge
5 Messages
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262 Points
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1
duncan_moir
8 Messages
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172 Points
3 y ago
I would suggest the addition of a keyword option of "Contains Only" is it only me or are there others who would find this useful
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duncan_moir
8 Messages
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172 Points
3 y ago
Containing only the referenced key word and NO others.
Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: I would suggest addition of a keyword option of "Contains Only" Is it only me ....
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duane_anderson_7555013
2 Messages
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72 Points
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jim_robertson_7046865
236 Messages
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3.9K Points
2 y ago
I suspect there is a simple solution for this, but as an example, if I have a key word "estate" and another one "real estate" and a third "MacKenzie King Estate". When I do a search/filter for "estate" I get all three whether I uses "contain"/"contain all"/"contain words".
Are there special characters I can use to select the images with the single word keyword "estate"??
Or am I stuck with getting them all or dreaming up a new set of one word keywords?
Thanks
1
0
juliefindlow
4 Messages
•
136 Points
2 y ago
I'd like to be able to click on existing keywords/people to create a smart collection. This would simplify the smart collection creation process and avoid the problem I am currently encountering of my smart collection pulling in the wrong images. (I want a smart collection that pulls in John Smith, but it is also pulling in John Doe and Mary Smith -- all three people exist as keywords but Lightroom is treating first and last names as individual words instead of the first and last name of each person as an individual unit). It seems like I should be able to create a new smart collection and then just click from my keywords which ones I want to include.
And on a different note, keywords seem like an obvious search tool so why do I have to dig through an additional layer to find them when I am creating smart collections (i.e. you have to click on "Other Metadata" to find the keyword option)?
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dan_hartford
529 Messages
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12.7K Points
2 y ago
Without re-reading this whole thread is to adulterate the keyword name for the pets to distinguish them from people. For example: "Molly(dog)", or "Molly-dog". then when using a Smart Collection or filter you can use "Molly-dog" when you want the pet and "Molly !dog" (Exclamation point in filter means "not") when you want the person.
For similar situations where I am not exporting the keywords in question I bastardize the keyword by adding an asterisk as the 2nd character. For example, I have a keyword for each shoot. So, for example, a shoot might have a keyword of "Shoot 2019-03 France & Belgium". But specific images would have a LOCATION keyword of either France or Belgium. So, when I search for "France" I get the whole shoot due to the shoot keyword when in fact some of those images are in Belgium. To get around this problem I changed the shoot keyword to "Shoot 2019-03 F*rance & B*elgium"
But, sure would be nice to allow filters and Smart Collections to:
a) support Quote marks to support multi-word keywords (e.g. "Mary Smith") where it would use the full text inside the quotes as one thing and not treat any spaces inside the quotes as delimiters,
b) Allow "the contained in" nomenclature they use in the Keywords Panel. For example "Red < Bird" meaning the keyword "Red" that is a child under keyword "Bird" or "Molly < Pets" meaning the keyword "Molly" that is a child of keyword "Pets"
0
louis_sherwin
149 Messages
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3.3K Points
2 y ago
-louie
0
rafael_rosa_9b4fyayxkr2rr
2 Messages
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92 Points
2 y ago
The keyword search filter could have a way of searching for the exact term, and the possibility of having several exact terms, eg "Rafael Rosa", "Edson Rosa" In that term it would only find the words bracketed with quotation marks. full term, so you could find more exact terms, not just from the names
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robert_somrak
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