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Bernard Corteville
Participating Frequently
July 17, 2021
Question

Smart Collection returning more than I expect

  • July 17, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 222 views

Hi, all

 

It is all about restricting a smart collection filter to a particular LR top folder.

 

Say I have 2 top LR folders D:\pictures and D:\videos.

I want the query to get the items from D:\pictures only.

Folder Contains "pictures" will return them all but will also include any LR folder with "pictures" in it, e.g. a video in the D:\videos folder called "videos showing my pictures of the holidays". That is normal.

So I changed the smart collection to Starts with "pictures" and Ends with "pictures". That is unique but it still returns the same. I made sure to use the "All conditions" options which I assume is equivalent to an AND.

I tried using Contains "D:\pictures" ,and other similar attempts, but none of them find anything at all.

 

I resorted to assign keywords like "Dpicturesfolder" for the whole D:\pictures but that is not "smart" as I have to make sure it is always up to date.

I could change all occurences of "pictures" and refrain using it in the future but that is not smart either: I have many of those top folders with commonly used words like Documents, Music, Events, Travel etc. for example and I cannot go round telling people not to send me pictures sets with these words in folders.

I could make a collection of the top LR folder with a unique name but that has the same drawback at the keyword solution (it needs to be kept up to date).

I could also resort to rename D:\pictures to "D:\top folder pictures" or something else unique but where will it end to sort out what seems like a bug or a misunderstanding of mine.

I  might be missing something here but in that case, I still need help.

 

Kind regards

Bernard

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 18, 2021

OK, here's another idea. Again, because I am typing this on my iPad I haven't checked it, but the following should work: Lightroom can search on file type, so you should be able to create a smart collection that catches all possible still image file types that you have in your catalog, but not video files.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 17, 2021

    I type this on my iPad, so I cannot check it, but I think you need to change this as follows: Use 'Source' instead of 'folder'.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    B
    Bernard CortevilleAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    July 17, 2021

    Thank you for your reply.

    Unfortunately, if I am not mistaken, you cannot choose "Source" as an option on its own. Choosing it only give 4 sub-options: Folder (which I used), Collection, Publish Collection or Published (none of which are what I have). By the way, it is irrelevant, but I don't know the difference between the last two.

    Kind regards

    Bernard

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 17, 2021

    Can't you choose Folder is Pictures rather than Folder contains Pictures?

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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