P: Search resets when you change folder selection

@dw24154351 

Agree the Lock icon in the Filter is a terrible design compared to other Lock icons in LrC.  They should all be the same but this one has only a minor change when locked/unlocked which makes it more difficult to quickly see what the setting is.

On closer inspection, there's a darkened gap on the right.

That's a padlock icon that varies from being locked to being more locked - only the height of the icon changes 😉

Didn't have a chance to actually figure out the difference. But enough to go "huh? who designed that icon interaction?"

1: When you start typing in the keyword field of the import dialog, Lightroom will show a pop-up list with all the existing keywords that match what you typed so far. That makes it less likely that you make typos.

2: When you want to search for the same thing in multiple sources, make sure you click on the little lock in the upper right corner. That will lock your search, so you can go from folder to folder and keep the search criteria. I still think that using a single collection is even easier, but this is effectively what you asked for.

Thanks Johan for the tip about collections and keywording. I've used collections on a per project basis or a subproject basis and have not had the need to think across multiple folders.

I've mostly only thought about folders since many of the projects are event driven, so everything you need to deliver on the day is in the folder. I've used smart collections to extract out specific people from a project or a way to maintain photos that need to be considered in groups.

I've just worked through the workflow again. This time, the search field is remembering the text that I had entered previously. If you click the folder, the search bar is hidden but when you command F again, it appears, this time remembering what I had typed before. I'll have to keep an eye out to see if it ever clears again but I'm pretty sure that I had to retype what I had just typed in. Now it is working more consistently.

Looking at the Keyword entry in the Import screen, it is just a text view. There's no UI that borrows from the known keywords. So it is easy to make a typo rather than select from your existing keywords.  This would encourage you to use your keywords more consistently and also apply keywords at the import step.

The easiest solution is to create a (temporary) collection of all the images of that client. Then you can search within that single collection so the problem does not occur. You could use the Quick Collection too, but I would think it makes more sense to just create a collection for each client. You can auto-add the images on import. You might also use a smart collection if you have keyworded the images with the client name. That is what collections are for, and that is why it makes sense to consider folders only as storage containers, not as organisation tools.