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scot.hacker
Inspiring
November 30, 2024
Open for Voting

P: Boolean operators in Smart Albums

  • November 30, 2024
  • 9 replies
  • 830 views

Very happy to see Smart Albums in v8! Unfortunately, when I went to create one for 'keyword=foo or keyword=bar' I was disappointed to see that the only option is for criteria to be ANDed together - there is no OR option.

 

Please allow us to create smart album criteria with all of the common logical operators (like we've been able to do in Apple Photos for a decade).

 

Thanks!

9 replies

Participating Frequently
February 12, 2025

Thanks for the fast reply, Peter.

 

I'll go with my suggested approach for now.  I can understand the technial challenges of implementing sharing for Smart Albums.   The downside risk of inadvertent sharing occurred to me as well.  

Community Manager
February 11, 2025

Thanks for the feedback.  I think your current approach makes sense, and has the benefit of maintaining more control over sharing.  An approach of supporting direct sharing of a "live" Smart Album may mean inadvertant or unintentional sharing of photos/videos so we have some concerns around how to best support that.  Additionally, there are some technical issues that would need to be overcome.  Would appreciate any other comments or thoughts here to help us prioritize workflows.

 

Thanks,

Peter

Participating Frequently
February 11, 2025

Thanks for the answer on creating "OR" logic for Smart Albums.  

 

Similar to Scot's publishing workflow-related request, I'd like the ability to share Smart Albums on Lightroom Web.  Seems that the best current workaround is to share a regular album and then manually update its contents periodically by copying from the Smart Album.

Community Manager
December 5, 2024

Thanks for sharing that info, very helpful for us to see the details as we work out our priorities here.  Will keep you updated on our progress.  (Sorry for the repost, that was my alternate login).

 

-Peter

scot.hacker
Inspiring
December 5, 2024

Sure, I'm happy to share my goal for sync'ing Smart Filters (or at least being able to create them on mobile). Here goes:

 

I do all of my editing on desktop, and all of my posting (to social media platforms and photography sites) from Mobile. An important thing for me is to have quick access to the set of all images I've never published, and a subset of those that I consider "current picks" or "up next."

 

I currently do that by copying all new images to an "Unpublished" folder when I'm done editing a session. And from that, I drag the very best to "Unpublished Picks" and post from there. After posting a new image, I remove it from that album, so I never repeat myself.

 

My idea was to stop doing this with folders, but to instead tag everything Unpublished, and to have smart filters that work with that tag and possibly others, and in combination with the Picked flag. Then when I post I would remove the Unpublished tag.

 

That system would only be a small improvement over the current one as I wouldn't have to maintain those folders. But it's not currently possible unless on Mobile I can create a query for "Unpublished" and the Picked flag.

 

Thanks!

Community Manager
December 4, 2024

Glad you figured things out -- we'll take a look at how we can make the logic clearer here.

We don't yet have a way to sync Smart Albums.  Would love to hear more about how you are looking to use that feature.  The workaround would be to do a one-off copy to a second album.  Obviously that is non-ideal.

 

-Peter

scot.hacker
Inspiring
December 4, 2024

Now that I've got that working, my intent was for the smart filter to sync to LR Mobile, but it doesn't seem to. Is there a way to accomplish that? Thanks.

scot.hacker
Inspiring
December 4, 2024

Hi Peter - It works! Not via comma-separation (there is no text entry), but by selecting a second keyword in the same dropdown - it sets them up side by side. Not very intuitive, but it does work. Thanks much.

 

 

 

 

Community Manager
December 3, 2024

You can accomplish "OR" with keywords by selecting more than one keyword in your rule.  Please try that and see if it meets your needs.

 

-Peter