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

[areohbee]

Is there really no way to search metadata for a term that has spaces in it? e.g. "brown hair".

[dw24154351]

Face Detection speeds up the process of organising photos of multiple people.

The most intuitive label for face detection is using the person's name.

However, Smart Collections Any Searchable Text options fails to perfectly match the name because there are no options that understand word order. Names where first names and surnames have similar root words are easily confused.

The end result is you have to start making exception condition rules which also means being on top of every name in the list. Then you have to go through every collection to make sure there are no mistakes - of which there were.

Just tried this on 100 people and the face detection speeds things up, but every gain in time was lost to trying to fix the broken text search.

PS. Don't merge this. It has to been seen by those who own the (newer) Face Detection feature.

[dw24154351]

Edit Smart collection allows text to be searched to create a dynamically filtered image collections.

The options are:

• contains
• contains all
• contains words
• does not contain
• starts with
• ends with

From a UX point of view it is not immediately obvious how the first three contains variations are different. You would have to look up help or experiment to figure out what you thought it meant to confirm that it did what you were thinking.

However neither of the "contains" options successfully solves the problem if you are searching for say:

Peter Thomas and Thomas Smith, who might be two different people that you want in two different collections. 

For some reason contains all works for one of the collections but for the other collection it includes both Thomas'. Weird. Had to use a does not contain in only one of them to make this work. The asymmetry doesn't make sense either.

What's the business impact? Potential privacy breach if you don't check that the filters are working properly.

The suggestion would be to have a verbatim match which should be called "Exact Match". 

Clarity is important in the labelling.

[John R Ellis]

"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.

[Bob Somrak]

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

[Louie Sherwin]

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

[Califdan2]

As can be attested to by the length of this thread, this is a problem many of us "keyword junkies" have and there are a slew of workaround solutions while we wait for years for Adobe to take this problem seriously (which they have so far shown no intention of doing).  

Without re-reading this whole thread is to adulterate the keyword name for the pets to distinguish them from people.  For example:  "Molly(dog)", or "Molly-dog".  then when using a Smart Collection or filter you can use "Molly-dog" when you want the pet and "Molly !dog"  (Exclamation point in filter means "not") when you want the person.  

For similar situations where I am not exporting the keywords in question I bastardize the keyword by adding an asterisk as the 2nd character.  For example, I have a keyword for each shoot.  So, for example, a shoot might have a keyword of "Shoot 2019-03 France & Belgium".  But specific images would have a LOCATION keyword of either France or Belgium.  So, when I search for "France" I get the whole shoot due to the shoot keyword when in fact some of those images are in Belgium.  To get around this problem I changed the shoot keyword to "Shoot 2019-03 F*rance & B*elgium"  

But, sure would be nice to allow filters and Smart Collections to:

a)  support Quote marks to support multi-word keywords (e.g. "Mary Smith") where it would use the full text inside the quotes as one thing and not treat any spaces inside the quotes  as delimiters, 

b)  Allow "the contained in" nomenclature they use in the Keywords Panel.  For example "Red < Bird" meaning the keyword "Red" that is a child under keyword "Bird" or "Molly < Pets" meaning the keyword "Molly" that is a child of keyword "Pets" 

[julief79011434]

I'd like to be able to click on existing keywords/people to create a smart collection. This would simplify the smart collection creation process and avoid the problem I am currently encountering of my smart collection pulling in the wrong images. (I want a smart collection that pulls in John Smith, but it is also pulling in John Doe and Mary Smith -- all three people exist as keywords but Lightroom is treating first and last names as individual words instead of the first and last name of each person as an individual unit). It seems like I should be able to create a new smart collection and then just click from my keywords which ones I want to include.

And on a different note, keywords seem like an obvious search tool so why do I have to dig through an additional layer to find them when I am creating smart collections (i.e. you have to click on "Other Metadata" to find the keyword option)?

[Jim 185]

I suspect there is a simple solution for this, but as an example, if I have a key word "estate" and another one "real estate" and a third "MacKenzie King Estate". When I do a search/filter for "estate" I get all three whether I uses "contain"/"contain all"/"contain words".

Are there special characters I can use to select the images with the single word keyword "estate"??

Or am I stuck with getting them all or dreaming up a new set of one word keywords?

Thanks

[DuaneIndeed]

Pleeeaaassse fix!!  Keywords need to be able to contain white space.  I have integrations with other areas that require the white space.  Consequently, I am locked out of using smart collections until this bug gets fixed.  Implement a regex feature.  Thanks.

[duncan1938]

Containing  only the referenced key word and NO others.

[duncan1938]

I would suggest the addition of a keyword option of "Contains Only" is it only me or are there others who would find this useful

[rctneil]

I still can't believe this is ongoing. Please Adobe fix this. Surely you can;t have all these people asking for a feature and for you not to do something about it?

[Crystal Visionary]

I am very disappointed in the new Lightroom Classic CC.  There are no improvements to its database abilities.  When  Brian O'Neil Hughes spoke at Adobe Max 2017 and said he never uses Keywords, that seemed to explain Adobe's attitude towards Lightroom as a database manager.

[trevor98712893]

I switched to Lightroom from Aperture - reluctantly to say the least.

Aperture had the ability to limit Smart Albums to filtering a specific album. This rule gave a drop down list of all the available Albums. Pretty simple and straightforward. And best of all, IT WORKED! Heck, even the new Photos app gets this (a screenshot of it is attached).

In Lightroom, in theory, you can limit a Smart Collection to a specific Collection or Collection Set, but it doesn't seem to work constantly.

PLEASE allow Smart Collections to filter via Collection Set.

PLEASE allow the "Collection" filter in the Smart Collection set to be set to "is" (as seen in the attached Photos.app screenshot). If its not an exact match, then the Collection/Collection Set doesn't get included. Including text in quotes does not perform the expected operation.

It shouldn't have to be a trial and error operation to do something which could be SO simple.

This makes Smart Collections a complete pain in the bum to use on Lightroom.

It would be amazing if Lightroom management could know that even the small things matter. 

RackMultipart20170709616041bv2-21d1d286-47e2-4da7-96fc-658836157f54-1196893321.png

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[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I have updated the bug to reflect the recent information. 

[Crystal Visionary]

Adobe, Adobe, wherefore are thou Adobe if not to serve thy customers?  Is anyone at Adobe reading this thread?  Could someone from the company please give us an answer to this problem?

[keepof4worlds]

Dear Adobe: could we get this fixed, pretty please...?

[damoncrane]

Any progress with this awful flaw in your software Adobe?

[rctneil]

Can we try and get more people to vote on this page. The more "1 ups" we get on it then the better chance we have of the issue getting resolved.

[Crystal Visionary]

When Adobe started cloud subscriptions, we were told it would lead to more and faster improvements in the software.  The problem with the search in Lightroom has been going on for years, but Adobe still has done nothing about it. Adobe is for what ever reason, ignoring it.  They seem to be putting whatever development effort they are making in Lightroom into the photo processing area, but Lightroom is supposed to be a database management system too and far too little attention is being given to that aspect of the program.  I can't remember that last time they made an improvement in that aspect of the program.  Database management is what sets Lightroom apart from Bridge.  Adobe needs to pay more attention to it.

[damoncrane]

I wouldn't mind how simple or complex the command is. It could and should be really simple, a smart search of some kind, but quotes, a tick box, a code. Anything but the inability to search combination of words.

[Samoreen]

Actually, since Lightroom claims to be a professional tool, I think that it should support regular expressions. This feature would allow to solve any problem when searching within text. Although regular expressions are often used by developers, some popular software like Notepad++ or Astrogrep have support for regular expressions. Why not Lightroom?

For those who don't know what a regular expression is, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression .

[damoncrane]

Every day I am amazed by how advanced a tool Lightroom is for processing images but how unbelievably, shockingly bad it is at managing a large library of photos. Its like they never spoke to anyone who takes a lot of photos. Are there no Adobe folk loitering around to comment? Its a shocker really. I'm starting to regret migrating from Aperture. If you search for something and have a lot return on the search you literally can't scroll down the results. As you go down it stops and jumps back to the top. Takes about 5 minutes to scroll down to the bottom of the search result, complete joke.

[rctneil]

Can't agree more. Come on Adobe! Please fix this!