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Dennis van Mierlo
Participant
Dec 25, 2014 12:21 PM UTC
Needs More Info

P: Smart Collection bug with Title doesn't contain rule and letter 't'

Hi,

There are various articles on smart collections that check if the "Title" field is filled or not. Because the "Title" field doesn't have an "is empty" like function, the sugested solution is to use:

Title doesn't contain a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z

But there is a bug in this rule. I found that the letter 't' is causing a problem. The letter 't' seems to include all characters.

Situation:
Four images that have a their Title field as follows:
Image 1:
Image 2: 2014-01 - Street Photography.dng
Image 3: 2014-01
Image 4: Some Image

(Image 1 has an empty title)

Four smart collections with the following rules:
Collection 1: Title doesn't contain a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z
Collection 2: Title doesn't contain 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
Collection 3: Title doesn't contain a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,u,v,w,x,y,z
Collection 4: Title doesn't contain t

My expected result of the smart collection is:
Collection 1: Image 1 and Image 3
Collection 2: Image 1 and Image 4
Collection 3: Image 1 and Image 3
Collection 4: Image 1, Image 3 and Image 4

The actual result of the smart collection is:
Collection 1: Image 1
Collection 2: Image 1 and Image 4
Collection 3: Image 1 and Image 3
Collection 4: Image 1

I'm using Lightroom 5.7 on a MacBook Pro 17" (mid 2010), i7 @ 2.66GHz, 8GB RAM and 2 x 240GB SSD's running on OS X 10.10.1

My questions are:
Can anyone, specially from the Adobe Lightroom team, confirm this?
How to solve this issue?

12 replies

Inspiring
Dec 1, 2021 5:24 PM UTC

Issue: Library Filter using CONTAINS returns unexpected matches

Lightroom Classic Version Number: 11.0.1
OS Version Number: Windows 10.0.19043 Build 19043


Steps to reproduce:

1. Select ALL PHOTOGRAPHS
2. Select LIBRARY GRID view
3. Unlock filter
4. Select TEXT, TEXT:title, CRITERIA:Contains, SEARCH VALUE:train

Expected result:
Only photos with 'train' in the TITLE

Actual result:
Photos also matching 'rain' so train without the T (See attached)

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Inspiring
Dec 1, 2021 9:58 PM UTC
johnrellis
Legend
Jun 27, 2015 7:20 PM UTC


The smart-collection criterion "Title contains t" will match any pic that has a non-empty title field, regardless of the actual characters in the field. This will trip up anyone attempting to work around the silly omission of the "is empty" operator for Title by doing:

Title doesn't contain a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

To reproduce:

1. Create a new catalog

2. Import a single pic

3. Assign "abc123" to its title

4. Create a smart collection with criterion:

Title contains t

5. Select the smart collection and notice that search results contain the pic.

Tested on LR CC 2015.1 / OS X 10.10.3.
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Legend
Jan 6, 2015 6:01 PM UTC
We'll have the LR eng team take a look.
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johnrellis
Legend
Dec 26, 2014 12:31 AM UTC
This also fails on my OS X 10.9.5 and Windows 8.1 LR 5.7:

Assign the title "a" to pic 1, the title "t" to pic 2. The criterion "Title Contains a" will show just pic 1. The criterion "Title Contains t" will show both pic 1 and pic 2. Very strange.
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