P: Support for searching, sorting, and filtering by all available metadata fields

As we are about to hit the new year (2025) and in light of the recent post by ADOBE describing their roadmap for productivity improvements - here are five somewhat more complex feature requests that would improve my productivity

1. There are arbitrary situations all through Lightroom where you can search, sort and filter the metadata information - but they are limited and not consistent-nor do they provide the capability to access all the different metadata tags. While this keeps the options simpler, I often run into situations where I am using a lot of the metadata fields (I run a major photo competition) and I am unable to search/sort/filter on many of the fields I have used. While many people might not need this, consider implementing a Settings/Preference that would widely expand the metadata fields for Grid Sort, Filtering, Smart Collections etc.  For example, if I am trying to search for "Toronto" then references to it pop up wherever it is used and not in the specific field I am looking for, eg. location="Toronto Camera Club".  Because we can't easily create our own, genuine metadata fields, we often resort to putting specific data into existing fields that is not necessarily the intended use of that field - but it's our best option; then we are constrained in trying to find images corresponding to that field.  So, in summary the suggestion is to open LrC's database capabilities in searching, sorting, automatic capationing in slideshows, etc.  In essence, if a metadata field exists, then make it universally available everywhere you can access metadata fields.

2. The Identity Plate in the print module is often used to overlay simple text onto a print image.  But it is difficult to edit that inside LrC. People resort to writing more complex text with bold/italic/font-choice etc in another app (e.g. word, pages, any RTF editor) and copying/pasting that to the Identity Field to print it.  Why not just expand the existing Identity Plate editor in the print module to provide some simple editing - showing more than one line.

3. The Slide Show module provides access to some metadata fields - similarily add the capability to access metafields inside the Watermark editor so metadata information could be automatically overlayed on exported photos.

4. It's 2025 folks, could we have the capability to open multiple instances of the Library folder/Collection sidebar to make file management easier for those with lots of folders - ie: drag and drop between the panels for moving, adding to collections, etc.

5. Print Module, Custom Layout - guidelines and snap to guidelines, zoomable view

JC

MacOs 15.2 Sequoia, Mac Studio M1-Ultra 64gb/2TB