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Participating Frequently
September 3, 2026
Question

Keyword searching with OR operator

  • September 3, 2026
  • 7 replies
  • 38 views

If I have two keywords, say, “Bob” and “Mary” I know how to search for all photos containing BOTH keywords. Is there a way to search for all photos containing one OR the other (or both)?

    7 replies

    johnrellis
    Legend
    September 4, 2026

    [View this post in your web browser. It contains formatting and images that don't appear in email.]

     

    Building on Johan’s reply, the first approach of using the Keyword column in the Metadata browser is fussy and clumsy when you’ve got a large number of keywords, since the scroll bar and fonts are tiny and you can’t use auto completion to quickly find the desired keywords.

     

    The second approach, using the “Keywords contains words” criterion in filters or smart collections can mismatch keywords when they contain spaces, and there’s no auto completion, so it’s easy to trip over misspellings and typos.

     

    As a third approach, the Any Tag plugin’s Filter By Keyword command lets you populate the Metadata browser’s Keyword columns using auto completion of keywords, letting you choose “Match all” or “Match any”:

     

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 4, 2026

    There are several ways to do this. In the library filter you can click on one keyword, and then Ctrl-click / Cmd-click on the other keyword, so both are selected in the same column. Another (even easier) way is filter on Text, choose ‘Keywords’ and then ‘Contain’ or ‘Contain words’ (not ‘contain all’) and then fill in keyword1 keyword2. Of course you can also use a smart collection with two keywords and ‘Any’.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    kglad
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 3, 2026

    logically “or” would be the correct conjunction.

    leo.r
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 3, 2026

    In what app?

    Find the forum for the desired app and post there:
    https://community.adobe.com/community

    Participating Frequently
    September 4, 2026

    Lightroom Classic

    John T Smith
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 4, 2026

    Then you need to ask in Lightroom Classic https://community.adobe.com/lightroom-classic-672

     

    And you need to change the title to not get a duplicate message warning