Locating all photos in catalog across all folders and collections?

[adriant12105070]

Hello,

i have included in the image “Label” field, the word “Church on perhaps a thousand images. when I go to ”Text”, type in the box “Church”, having selected “All Photographs” under “Catalog”, and also tried “Any Searchable Field”, and selected Contains Words, nothing comes up unless I also select “Filters Off”.

Even then, a vast amount of images are missing, and unrelated images also appear. I have also tried clicking on Metadata to no avail. Here’s the interesting thing, if I am in Lightroom Classic, and search “Church” I get what appears to be most, if not all Church images, but still get unrelated images that do not have Church in their metadata or keywords.

I have tried this same exercise using a person’s first name, similarly included in the label field, and have the same experience as the search for Church. How can I search a word in the Label field and get a pure selection of all images in the Catalog with that word, that are Rated, and without also getting unrelated images included in the resulting images?

Help would be appreciated.

thanks,

Adrian

[Bob Somrak]

The "Label field" in metadata is actually the "text value" of the "color labels".  The color labels default to Red, Green etc.   If you change the Label field using the metadata panel then the "Label badge" on the photo thumbnail will turn white.  Doing this will negate any other use you are using for the "color labels".  If you type something into the "Label field" and then use the color label buttons or shortcuts the text you typed into the label field will be overwritten.   The above may be confusing but the the short story is that you shouldn't be using the label field for this.  I don't know why Lr allows hand changes to the label field in metadata anyway as it causes these kind of problems.

[Bob Somrak]

Also, you can search the Label field using the Filter Toolbar

[adriant12105070]

Thanks for your information. I was not aware the the Label field was only for colour labels. Actually, I do not use colour labels, only stars, and only 5 stars vs unrated. Nevertheless, if I use the Text Filter, I still get images that do not have the search word in the Label, or in the search field of text filter or Metadata field of the unwanted image(for search purposes).

Do you have any further thoughts.

Thanks,

Adrian

[Bob Somrak]

I'm pretty sure that "label" is an unsearchable field using the Text Filter.   If the Label only contains the word "Church" then just use the Filter Bar Metadata "Label" field .as shown above and click on Church.  If the Label field isn't shown you have to enable it.  If there are only a few labels with the word Church in them you will have to Cmd/Ctrl click them to select them all.  In the long run it would be better if you would "fix" the mess you have made and quit using the label field for this.  You can see all the different "labels" you have created by using the above method with the Filter Bar Metadata Label field.  May be a difficult, time consuming task if you have used this method for a long time.

[Bob Somrak]

John Ellis, Jeffrey Freidl, John Beardsworth and others may/do have plugins to copy one metadata field to another but I don't know if label is included.  Just internet search each of their names along with Lightroom Plugin and they will show up.

[johnrellis]

The Search Replace Transfer plugin will copy the Label field into another field, e.g. Captioin or Keywords. You may wish to consider using Keywords for indicating churches.

[adriant12105070]

Bob,

Very helpfully, thank you. Actually I don’t really have a mess, as these searches are not critical to my site. I will revert to only using the Keyword, Title, and Caption field. Surprisingly, Lightroom Classic does a far better search utilizing the keywords generated in Lightroom Classic. Nevertheless, I will certainly look into the plug-ins you suggested to do a cleanup.

Again thank you.

Adrian

[Bob Somrak]

Apparently you won't have to search too hard for a plug in that works as johnrellis​ posted a link to his plugin above.

[adriant12105070]

John, thank you in fact thank you all for being so proactive. Just one thought, as clearly you are all experts,  perhaps one of you could suggest to Adobe that they modify the Label field to a drop-down with choices, or a pop-up explanation to avoid others thinking this is just an added metadata sort field.  No doubt many users would benefit from this.

Thanks again,

Adrian

[johnrellis]

You can provide suggestions to Adobe via the official feedback forum: Lightroom Classic | Photoshop Family Customer Community . Product developers read everything posted there but rarely participate here.

[johnrellis]

(The plugin was authored by John Beardsworth, not me.)

[dj_paige]

Descriptions of the photo (such as "church") belong in either the keyword field, or the caption field. These are searchable via the Filter Bar.