4.5K Messages
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76.3K Points
Thu, Oct 13, 2011 1:45 PM
Acknowledged
Lightroom: Exact text match in smart collections and filters, including matching spaces
Is there really no way to search metadata for a term that has spaces in it? e.g. "brown hair".
Problems
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Updated
2 months ago
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Helpful Widget
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search term
metadata
contains
criteria
spaces
smart collections
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John_R_Ellis
Champion
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5.5K Messages
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97.3K Points
a year ago
Agreed there should be an "exact match" operator for all fields in the Library Filter bar's Text search and in smart collections. This is an embarrassing oversight in LR's design.
For keywords, you can get exact match using the Library Filter bar's Metadata browser with one or more Keyword columns, e.g.
Click the option menu indicated to switch the keyword listing between hierarchical and flat. This example will filter all photos containing both "John Rolfe Ellis" and "Karyn Hunt Ellis" (boolean "and"). Selecting more than one keyword in a column will do a boolean "or" of those keywords.
You can save the current filter as a preset, making it easier to call up in the future.
Unfortunately, the user interface is poorly designed and very klutzy to use for large keyword lists.
A handy shortcut for searching for photos containing one keyword is to hover the mouse to the right of the keyword in the Keyword List panel and click the right-arrow that magically appears:
This will open the Metadata browser with the keyword selected in a Keyword column.
Another handy shortcut: To find a keyword in a large keyword list, use the Keyword List search box:
If you're often searching for multiple keywords (e.g. photos containing k1 and k2 and...), consider the Filter By Keyword command of my Any Tag plugin.
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ddphoto
33 Messages
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530 Points
2 months ago
Edit Smart collection allows text to be searched to create a dynamically filtered image collections.
The options are:
From a UX point of view it is not immediately obvious how the first three contains variations are different. You would have to look up help or experiment to figure out what you thought it meant to confirm that it did what you were thinking.
However neither of the "contains" options successfully solves the problem if you are searching for say:
Peter Thomas and Thomas Smith, who might be two different people that you want in two different collections.
For some reason contains all works for one of the collections but for the other collection it includes both Thomas'. Weird. Had to use a does not contain in only one of them to make this work. The asymmetry doesn't make sense either.
What's the business impact? Potential privacy breach if you don't check that the filters are working properly.
The suggestion would be to have a verbatim match which should be called "Exact Match".
Clarity is important in the labelling.
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ddphoto
33 Messages
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530 Points
2 months ago
Face Detection speeds up the process of organising photos of multiple people.
The most intuitive label for face detection is using the person's name.
However, Smart Collections Any Searchable Text options fails to perfectly match the name because there are no options that understand word order. Names where first names and surnames have similar root words are easily confused.
The end result is you have to start making exception condition rules which also means being on top of every name in the list. Then you have to go through every collection to make sure there are no mistakes - of which there were.
Just tried this on 100 people and the face detection speeds things up, but every gain in time was lost to trying to fix the broken text search.
PS. Don't merge this. It has to been seen by those who own the (newer) Face Detection feature.
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