Lightroom: Exact text match in smart collections and filters, including matching spaces

"The keyword search filter could have a way of searching for the exact term, and the possibility of having several exact terms"

Agreed there should be an "exact match" operator for all fields in the Library Filter bar's Text search and in smart collections. This is an embarrassing oversight in LR's design.

For keywords, you can get exact match using the Library Filter bar's Metadata browser with one or more Keyword columns, e.g.



Click the option menu indicated to switch the keyword listing between hierarchical and flat.  This example will filter all photos containing both "John Rolfe Ellis" and "Karyn Hunt Ellis" (boolean "and").  Selecting more than one keyword in a column will do a boolean "or" of those keywords.

You can save the current filter as a preset, making it easier to call up in the future.

Unfortunately, the user interface is poorly designed and very klutzy to use for large keyword lists. 

A handy shortcut for searching for photos containing one keyword is to hover the mouse to the right of the keyword in the Keyword List panel and click the right-arrow that magically appears:



This will open the Metadata browser with the keyword selected in a Keyword column.

Another handy shortcut: To find a keyword in a large keyword list, use the Keyword List search box:



If you're often searching for multiple keywords (e.g. photos containing k1 and k2 and...), consider the Filter By Keyword command of my Any Tag plugin.

Keyword search in Lightroom definitely needs a major tune-up.   Actually, the whole Library filtering system needs some development time.

The keyword search filter could have a way of searching for the exact term, and the possibility of having several exact terms, eg "Rafael Rosa", "Edson Rosa" In that term it would only find the words bracketed with quotation marks. full term, so you could find more exact terms, not just from the names

Identified and described EIGHT YEARS ago! I keep hoping in the face of all evidence that Adobe will eventually put some attention on fixing and updating the DAM tools in Lightroom. This is simply one of several areas that are well documented in the feedback forum that need some well deserved attention. 

-louie

BTW, I think that a smart collection that searches on 'Jane Smith' should find photos labelled with the keyword 'Bob and Jane Smith'...

We certainly do agree on that. 

Yes, we certainly agree on that.

The criteria "starts with Jane Smith & ends with Jane Smith" will match a photo with these two keywords: "Jane Smith's home" and "Bob and Jane Smith".

The smart collection 'Start with Jane Smith' and 'Contains Words Jane Smith', as I suggested, should not match this photo. 'Bob and Jane Smith' will not match start with Jane Smith. And "Jane Smith's home" does not contain the word Smith. Unless Lightroom also ignores the '-character and considers "Smith's" as "Smith" plus "s"... I haven't checked that.

Similarly, the criterion "contains words Jane Smith" will match a photo with the two keywords "Jane Crate" and "Bob Smith".

The smart collection 'Start with Jane Smith' and 'Contains Words Jane Smith' will not match this photo because it does not start with Jane Smith.

While the counter-examples to these approximations may seem "rare" to you, the more keywords you have, the more likely you'll trip over them. As the author of the Any Filter plugin (which does provide exact match for keywords and all other fields), I've seen over the years a fair number of surprising gotchas from my customers.  Put another way, there's no accounting for other people's naming of keywords 😆

But, to build on Dan's observations, I think we all agree that the lack of exact match is an embarrassing defect in smart collections.

Another complication with all these approximations to exact match is how LR handles the presence of multiple keywords. Two examples:

The criteria "starts with Jane Smith & ends with Jane Smith" will match a photo with these two keywords: "Jane Smith's home" and "Bob and Jane Smith".

Similarly, the criterion "contains words Jane Smith" will match a photo with the two keywords "Jane Crate" and "Bob Smith".