library filter - text

[bastien25055890erqx]

hello,

I have a question regarding the "library filter" > by "text".

When I search with the exact name (ex: IMA_1022), everything works fine, the photo is found.

But when I insert in the search field "IMA_1022-name-photographer, IMA_488-name-photographer, IMA_789-name-photographer,...": it doesn't work.

Yet the name of the image is contained in the title. I have tried everything as a parameter, nothing works, any help? Thanks...

[richardplondon]

In your example e.g. IMA_488-name-photographer is a single contiguous string without any spaces, so that will act as a single search word (like, "apple"). You can widen the search with a sequence of such words: thus, "apple pear". 

But that's not necessarily the same as searching on "apple, pear". Not if "apple," - which is a six-character search word consisting of five letters and a comma - gets treated as the search word, rather than the intended "apple".

Similarly, including quote marks (if they worked fully in LrC, whihc I am not certain they do) would logically mean you were seaching on the entire "apple, pear" string as a single word, in which case neither "pear", nor "apple" would get found.

Unfortunately I can't check the actual behaviour with these variations just now. Personally, I just stick to spaces and the result is an ANY/ALL search using the terms separated by those spaces. This means e.g. where a keyword includes a space, you will be searching on those keyword fragments. But I've always found this workable nonetheless. Anything that does need to be logically treated as a single search 'word' can be made into that with underscore or dash rather than space, exactly as you have done with your filenames. In the case of (say) a keyword "eiffel tower" that needed to show with a space when exported, you could also have the non-exporting synonym keyword "eiffeltower" if that was useful for disambiguation within the Catalog. 

[bastien25055890erqx]

hello and thank you for the answer !

I thought that for the search, if there was a number for example included in this search, that the photo would be found. It doesn't matter the text before or after in the title. Like "if 1022 is included in the title, here's the picture".

I am a professional photographer and I use the "Pic-time" gallery. When customers choose photos, the system offers me all the photo names, which I am supposed to include in the Lightroom search. Example: "IMA_1022-name-photographer, IMA_488-name-photographer, IMA_789-name-photographer,...", but that is useless to me since Lightroom does not recognize one or more elements included in photo titles. In short, all this is really a shame ^^ I do not know if you understand well (I am French).

[richardplondon]

I think I understand you! To be clear, if the photo's full name is (say) "xxxx1022xxx" then a search term "1022" will succeed. But this would not work the other way around. The entire search term, exactly as written, does need to be present somewhere in the photo. 

As a first verifying test, maybe try whether your search works correctly when you remove the comma characters. This may not be enough.

So, next: I assume you have master working images in LrC, that get renamed in a certain way as part of uploading copies to the gallery. Often we fetch values from separate metadata fields (name, photographer), and combine those to make a new, complex name. But that complex name may not itself exist anywhere within the Catalog. It is only implemented for the exported copies. In that case, it will not be productive to use it as a search term. One solution could be to extract just the image number sequence, and search using only that. For example, search on "1022 488 789" and this would find any image which includes any of those image numbers - but this search must find also (e.g.) 3488, or 789xx, or zz41022, etc. Probably it's wise to search just on filename, rather than on all text fields, since any of these number sequences may appear incidentally, in any metadata field. 

You could also combine this kind of search, with a Smart Collection that includes only those photos reporting a chosen "name" / "photographer"(say). Or, maybe search within a given folder where you know all these images are contained, rather than searching from the entire library.

[bastien25055890erqx]

hello, ok, i understand too, thank you very much for all these useful explanations. ^^ bye!!

[bastien25055890erqx]

i find an answer, for all users :

if you have a photo list like : "IMA_1670-photographer_name, IMA_2756-photographer_name, IMA_3400-photographer_name, etc, etc..." and lightroom cant find the photos :

1/ use the little freeware "renamer". Say : i want delete from the list the exact word "-photographer_name", and after, you have all the "correct" list for LR "IMA_1670,IMA_2756,IMA_3400,....."

2/ copy/paste the new correct list on the "text search" into LR : all is ok ! 

 = perfect if you have a long list that lightroom can't understand (with renaming)