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I'm trying to setup a Smart Collection that extracts for each month in the year (jan, feb, mar, etc.) all images in my catalog. irrespective of the year taken (2018, 2017, 2016, etc.)
The Create Smart Collection panel above, yields what appears to be THE solution. But it does not alow the variable (01, 02, 03, etc.) to be declared.
Can any body offer insight/ advice please?
Month Year
01 Any
02 Any
03 Any
Thanks
Interesting question, I don't think there is a way. I don't think there is a wildcard character that can be used in smart collection rules otherwise I think it would be possible.
The best I can think of is to make a row for every year, and set Date 'is in the range' of the dates for each month.
Just like to say a big thanks to Adobe Dev Team on this. The Date, Month Day parms in the filter now provide a quick and easy solution to my feature. Well pleased.
Appologies for the time taken to feedback.
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Interesting question, I don't think there is a way. I don't think there is a wildcard character that can be used in smart collection rules otherwise I think it would be possible.
The best I can think of is to make a row for every year, and set Date 'is in the range' of the dates for each month.
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I agree with Scott- "set Date 'is in the range'..."
An onerous task in Lightroom to define a Smart Collection for each month, but can be done.
Here is a very 'short' example for: March in Years 2017 2018 2019
Your screen-clip using "is in this month" searches for photos in the current month we are in. Right now that would be January2019. (There is no variable)
John Ellis has a Plugin that could answer your question- (try for 30 days)
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Thanks guys for your input, really appreciated. It seems, therefore that it cannot be done within Lightroom's Smart Collection setup parameters. Seems a bummer to me, given that it will entail much work/ time to setup initially, especially if a library encompasses many years. Then there's the annual update, to include the current new year.
There's more I'd like from this 'smart analysis' of my photo library… as in:-
Season Year
12, 01, 02 (winter months) All/ any
03, 04, 05 (spring months) All/ any
I think I'll add this as a Lightroom feature request. All in favor say aye!
BTW what do you think the 'performance drag' will be to filter a Smart Collection using your methodology to achieve my objective? It seems to me as the years go by, there could well be a significant performance drag.
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'Aye'
I agree there does seem to be a lot of work involved whereas if wildcards were possible I would have thought it would have been fairly easy, it's a shame Adobe haven't included the option to use wildcards.
No idea about perfomance on this one. I use fairly high powered machines and no sooner than I think Lightroom is getting better on the performance front it gets worse again. Adobe don't seem interested at the moment in improving that aspect and I don't expect them to either, they haven't been interested in performance for years. Only once products like Luminar mature and there is some competition, will I expect to see Abode address this. I do have a lot of collections and personally I don't think they impact performance.
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what do you think the 'performance drag' will be to filter a Smart Collection using your methodology to achieve my objective? It seems to me as the years go by, there could well be a significant performance drag.
The performance impact won't be noticeable, even for a smart collection with many rules. Some people have complained that have many dozens of smart collections can slow down Library, but even for them, the workaround was simple: put all the collections under a collection set and keep the collection set collapsed.
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To build on Scott's reply, there are three plugins that can search by month independent of year: Search Replace Transfer, Data Explorer, and Any Filter.
Here is the Any Filter query that searches for the winter months:
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Thank you John, very helpful. But I cannot but think this type of query should be already baked into Lightroom.
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I cannot but think this type of query should be already baked into Lightroom.
Adobe has put very little effort over the years into improving Library in general and search in particular. You could add details of your request to this feature request in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom: A better search/find in the library module (Library Filter) | Photoshop Family Customer C... . Adobe product developers do read everything posted there but rarely participate in this forum and won't see your feedback here.
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Looks like the above mentioned 'Feedback Forum' has been closed and renamed as well as relocated to here:
https://community.adobe.com/
Sure do wish they'd add this very seemingly simple addition of wildcards into 'SMART' collections...
To me, NOT have wildcards is not very smart at all 😕
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Just like to say a big thanks to Adobe Dev Team on this. The Date, Month Day parms in the filter now provide a quick and easy solution to my feature. Well pleased.
Appologies for the time taken to feedback.