• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
1

SmartCollections from exact Keywords

Community Beginner ,
Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have a lot of Keywords with spaces in them (think family names with "first last"). How do I create a Smart Collection that searches for a exact, specific keyword of "Steve Parker"? There is no "equals" option, I have to choose "contains", and when I do this, I get every "Steve" and every "Parker". LR CC clearly supports tags with embedded spaces in the Names function. How do I get Smart Albums to lookup "exactly matching keywords" when those have a space in the Keyword. I've tried quoting the strings to no avail...

And, for bonus points: How do I get a Smart Album to find all occurences of "Barn" without finding "Kevin Barnum" (trying to create an album of Barn pictures without finding pictures of my uncle "Kevin Barnum"). An exact search function would let me do this, but for now, I have to search for "Barn" and exclude "Barnum".

I've searched around the web quite a bit for something that explains exactly how smart collection rule definitions work, but so far haven't found anything but the most basic instructions on how to create a smart collection. Does anybody have any reference links that they can share that tell me exactly how that pattern matching is working?

Thanks in advance!

Steve

Views

1.6K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

LEGEND , Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

My second paragraph describes how to get EXACTLY the photos you want, without using Smart Collections. After you create the rules for matching, it's as automatic as smart collections. But yes, I agree that the Smart Collection panel would be a better place for this type of thing, but smart collections just don't work as well.

Votes

Translate

Translate
LEGEND ,
Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Include the quotes

fir example, type in:

”John Denver”

not

John Denver

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Unfortunately, that does not work. I get 0 results. The quotes are considered part of the Keyword, so it's looking for "John and Denver".

I can confirm this is indeed the case by adding "John Keyword, which is found immediately by the Smart Collection...

And I should have clarified that I'm running Lightroom Classic CC 8.1 on OS X 10.14.2

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

9adobe9  wrote

I have a lot of Keywords with spaces in them (think family names with "first last"). How do I create a Smart Collection that searches for a exact, specific keyword of "Steve Parker"? There is no "equals" option, I have to choose "contains", and when I do this, I get every "Steve" and every "Parker". LR CC clearly supports tags with embedded spaces in the Names function. How do I get Smart Albums to lookup "exactly matching keywords" when those have a space in the Keyword. I've tried quoting the strings to no avail...

And, for bonus points: How do I get a Smart Album to find all occurences of "Barn" without finding "Kevin Barnum" (trying to create an album of Barn pictures without finding pictures of my uncle "Kevin Barnum"). An exact search function would let me do this, but for now, I have to search for "Barn" and exclude "Barnum".

As far as I know, this is an imperfection in Lightroom's Smart Collections. Nevertheless, to find "Steve Parker" you could choose "Contains Words" but it doesn't really care if Steve is adjacent to Parker, or separated by ten other keywords. Also, for finding "Barn" you could again choose "Contains Words" and it will not find Barnum.

If it is CRITICAL that you get the exact results you want, you could always use the Filter Bar for keyword "Steve Parker" or select "Steve Parker" from the Keyword List panel, and you will only get those exact matches. You could then save a filter that will give you the exact results each time. Yes, it's not a Smart Collection in the sense that it does not appear on the left under Collections, but in every other aspect, it works the same.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

dj_paige  wrote

As far as I know, this is an imperfection in Lightroom's Smart Collections. Nevertheless, to find "Steve Parker" you could choose "Contains Words" but it doesn't really care if Steve is adjacent to Parker, or separated by ten other keywords. Also, for finding "Barn" you could again choose "Contains Words" and it will not find Barnum.

If it is CRITICAL that you get the exact results you want, you could always use the Filter Bar for keyword "Steve Parker" or select "Steve Parker" from the Keyword List panel, and you will only get those exact matches. You could then save a filter that will give you the exact results each time. Yes, it's not a Smart Collection in the sense that it does not appear on the left under Collections, but in every other aspect, it works the same.

Thanks for the additional information. The "Contains Words" is getting me quite a bit closer. I'll just have to pay careful attention to what it's returning.

The real problem here is the issue of "quantity of smart albums". I getting ready to map a large amount of my photo library to SmugMug albums/Galleries, and it needs to be as automatic as possible. There could be many dozens of albums by the time I get done with this effort...

I'll come back a few days back and give you the credit for the "partial answer" if I don't get any closer to what I really need (which is matching all photos with Keyword SmugMug in an existing collection (I still can't figure out how to pull items from a nested Collection into a SmugMug plugin Smart Collection using the all criteria, but that's a separate issue for another thread.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Jan 13, 2019 Jan 13, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

My second paragraph describes how to get EXACTLY the photos you want, without using Smart Collections. After you create the rules for matching, it's as automatic as smart collections. But yes, I agree that the Smart Collection panel would be a better place for this type of thing, but smart collections just don't work as well.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jan 15, 2019 Jan 15, 2019

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you. I can live with that as a workaround. It's going to be painful to do this with how many galleries I want to create, but it'll do.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Apr 07, 2020 Apr 07, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi, Still no solution for creating collections with keywords with white spaces? Is Adobe working on a solution, like another option "Contains string" or something like that so if you what to create a collection serching for a keyword with space it works. I catalog all my wildlife photos, and I put the species name and scientific name as two separated keywords, normally these name are composed of two or three words, and adding underscores woulde be crazy.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Apr 08, 2020 Apr 08, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

"Is Adobe working on a solution"

 

This forum is almost entirely other Lightroom users. We are not Adobe. We don't know what Adobe is working on.

 

I suggest you ask Adobe directly.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jun 02, 2022 Jun 02, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have solved this by adding a synonym to the keyword that doesn't contain spaces.  For example, if you have a keyword named Grand Landscape Photography, I have added Grand_Landscape_Photography as the synonym.  You can then select photos containing just Grand_Landscape_Photography using smart collections.

Screenshot 2022-06-03 104150.png

Screenshot 2022-06-03 104815.png

Cheers,

Jos.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 29, 2023 Jan 29, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

This worked for me. Thanks for the tip!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Aug 01, 2022 Aug 01, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Steve - not sure if you have found a work around but I will share the idea I am trying. I create smart collections based on countries I visit. But I also use keywords a lot in my photos. So when I created a smart collection for photos from South Africa, I get photos from my South Africa trip, but also photos from Ghana, Uganda, Botswana and other African countries I have visited because I have "Africa" as a keyword in those photos as well. So what I am trying is just simply using an abbreviation. I have created a smart collection that contains "SA". So for my South Africa photos, I still put Africa as a keyword, I also put South Africa as a keyword, and I also now add SA as a key word. So then only my South Africa photos appear in the smart folder. For you, maybe you can use your initials, SP.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Aug 01, 2022 Aug 01, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

When you create a smart collection for "South Africa", you should have it look for keywords and you should choose "Contains All" and then Ghana shouldn't be chosen.

 

OR

 

Select South Africa in the Keyword List panel, and then no possibility of Uganda showing up

 

If I am understanding you and you ask a smart collection to find keywords that contain SA then photos with keyword Kinshasa ought to be selected.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Mar 09, 2024 Mar 09, 2024

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

I believe I have a solution:  Use Keywords -> Starts with 

I used "Sea Otter" without quotes and it excluded all my river otters.  It still got images tagged with "Sea Otter Pups" but you can add an additional rule  Keywords -> Ends with  to exclude those.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines