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Participant
March 3, 2019
Open for Voting

P: Lightroom Add support for Boolean Search

  • March 3, 2019
  • 35 replies
  • 2696 views

E.g. negating search parameters such as a certain person is NOT found in these pictures

35 replies

mathieud65778067
Participating Frequently
November 3, 2025

We've only been waiting for 6 years, for something which already existed before in LR...

Participating Frequently
November 2, 2025

In Lightroom cloud version we need an "AND" search capability wherever searching. Most certainly in Keywords.

Sturm-Brazil
Participant
July 8, 2025

Smart albums were a great feature added, but you can't do much without the option to choose photos that are not included within a specific range.

 

Example:

 

Location  does not include A to Z (to find out pictures without proper GPS tagging) or

People include X or Y, People do not include Z ( to find out pictures of two people without a specific one).

 

Participant
June 26, 2025

My photo culling strategy would very much benefit from an "OR" in the filter logic, so that I can express things like `>= 3 stars OR picked`.  I am not a professional photographer.  However, my workflow is to iteratively add stars/filter until I pick the final set.  In doing so, sometimes I decide to pick a photo after the first or second round, but I still have to successively add stars after each iteration (to the already picked item) so that it continues to show up in the filter as I reduce down the set.

cryanhorner
Known Participant
May 11, 2025

Adobe,

 

Please add more robust filter and search criteria in lightroom cc / cloud, as the options that are available now are very limiting and not that helpful.

 

Specificaly, please add "≠" or "!=" or "does not contain" as filtering criteria, so that users can exclude certain images from display.  For example, say I wanted to "hide" all of the images that contain my ex, or a recently deceased relative or just some set of images that I want to keep private and so not have them pop up in my "all photos" screen.  I could just use the face detection feature or a tag with their name applied to those images, and then choose the "does not equal" or "does not contain" term to filter them out of that main page view.

 

Currently the only way to do this is so cumbersome as to not be worth it, as I would have to instead tag all of the other images that do not contain that person or tag, and then filter to only show those, and would have to continue to manually manage that forever by adding that tag to every new image I upload or else it won't be displayed.

 

Another example (that I've been requesting for years now), let us sort by file size (MP, not dimensions).  When cloud storage gets close to full, the obvious move is to sort by file size and delete the largest files in order to free up space, but you give no means of sorting by file size which makes this impossible.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of other use-cases for better filtering and sorting options that other users have encounted, but there really isn't any downside to this very low-effort addition that would improve usability tremendously.

cyrillec22966370
Participant
July 18, 2024

Pourquoi ne peut-on pas dans LR faire des recherche de mots-clé comme dans LR Classic avec des "et", des "ou" et des "sans" ? 

Rechercher chien et chat, chien ou chat, chien sans chat, etc.

Merci.

 

mathieud65778067
Participating Frequently
July 18, 2024

Adobe Lightroom team, could we please have an update ?

Participating Frequently
December 21, 2023

Complex search is absolutely required to find a photo in a sea of 55,000 family images.  Adobe brags about AI image analysis and keywording, but it's not very helpful without the ability to hone the search criteria.  Example: cars and Fred and not Emily.  I don't know how much longer I can justify paying for Lightroom vs moving everything over to Apple Photos.

Participant
December 5, 2023

More 'search' feature requests have been made. It is working but not all expected options are available. My library is of in incredible size of items and it is hard to get through. In the end I would like a more complex search query feature in the search bar. Combining multiple questions, and being able to include, exclude and combine, with AND, OR, NOT statements would be way much better. 

 

Queries like: search all photo's of a date range between x and y AND made by camera c and d, NOT metadated "xxxx" would improve my workflow dramatically. With work arounds I can manage but.. these are workaround for features which are quite common.

mathieud65778067
Participating Frequently
August 29, 2023

Lightroom CC Premium has a very high potential (Desktop PC and iPad), however at this stage, there are still a few very critical features missing:

The first one: it still needs a powerful SEARCH function. Being able to search with AND / OR / NOT is a real must-have. Currently, we can only search with OR. If you're looking for photos of one person AND his dog, you need to be able to include AND. Same thing if you're looking for several people together, or several people in a specific place, or with a specific tag. The search function needs to work for Persons, also in the people's tab (currently disabled).

@21062019 can you please tell us when to expect this basic feature ?