P: Allow smart collections to reference other smart collections or library filter presets

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It would be very useful if the smart collections could work recursively. What I mean is that the filters on the upper lever would work on all collections under that collection and the lower level collections could have additional filters

e.g.

| Landscape
| |- 5 stars
| |- marked red
Portraits
| |-John
| | |-5 stars
| | |-B&W
| |-Mary
|-5 stars
|-B&W

and so forth. This would make lot of organizing much more straight forward.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I think there is a feature to add other defined search criteria to new search criteria. But I can't find it.

[areohbee]

Good idea (as an option):

I suppose it would be as simple as allowing inheritable collection criteria to be specified as part of the collection set definition, eh?

Another idea that might go well:

Have the combination criteria that is in play when multiple collections are selected be switchable between "union" (all included - the default now) and "intersect" (only if both criteria satisfied). This way a collection would not necessarily have to be a child to inherit from another collection, even if only a temporary thing.

Another idea:

Allow smart collections to be dragged and dropped on a smart collection to have criteria added. Maybe a drop modifier to dictate add vs. replace.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

You mean as in built-in feature? or and addon?

[AlanUniqueName]

This is a very good idea as long as the smart collection does not have to be in the same "tree" as the parent.

For example I would like to use the same definition of a smart collection across multiple publishing services.

Specifically I would like to see at the top of the smart collection definition dialog a drop down called "Inherits from" in which the user can specify an existing smart collection.

[JohnRolfeEllis]

The Any Filter plugin provides the ability to define a saved filter that references other saved filters and smart collections. Not quite as convenient as having it builtin to smart collections, but it may get the job done for you depending on your needs.

[areohbee]

Also consider CollectionAgent - it supports collection synchronization, duplication, ...

http://www.robcole.com/Rob/ProductsAn...

[AlanUniqueName]

Thanks John and Rob, I’ll take a serious look at your plugins.

I guess like LR3, with LR 4 I am somewhat underwhelmed by the list of available fields to filter on, or smart collect on – I know LR has a real database under the bonnet and this stuff should be bread and butter stuff, low lying fruit or many other flavours of such expressions.

Inheritance on smart collections would create some pretty neat flexibility. The ability of an LR 4 smart photo set / gallery to use “Publish Collection” as part of its criteria is frustratingly close to doing the job ... but alas, this does not include smart published collections just non smart ones! Why, oh why could they not have included Publish Smart Collection as a field as well?

No offence to anyone and you guys do fantastic stuff, but I should not have to resort to a plugin for what I see is fairly basic database functionality on what is billed as a DAM product. But credit to you both for wallpapering over some serious shortcomings of the product.

Alan.

[areohbee]

Personally, I would have preferred if Adobe made the product better, and continued to offer it at the same price, instead of so few improvements, at a reduced price. I guess a large percent of Lightroom users are not very demanding...

[johnrellis]

"I should not have to resort to a plugin for what I see is fairly basic database functionality on what is billed as a DAM product."

Agreed.

[johnrellis]

"Personally, I would have preferred if Adobe made the product better, and continued to offer it at the same price, instead of so few improvements, at a reduced price."

Agreed.

[johnrellis]

This topic should be merged into:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It would be great if we could make one smart collection depend on another.

For example:

Smart Collection A contains all photos with a certain tag.

Smart Collection B filters RAW-Files and, being a "child collection" to Smart Collection A, only shows those from Smart Collection A.

So if I change the criteria of Smart Collection A, Smart Collection B automatically changes to the corresponding content.

This is a feature I really miss at the moment. Most simple solution: Why not make each type of Collection (Smart and "non-Smart") a Collection Set itself? (which can contain as many "Child"-Collections as you want)

[Timothy.Spear]

feature request.
I have common settings I use for multiple smart collections used in the catalog, in multiple publishing services. As such, I would like the ability to create a "master smart collection" which any conditions are automatically added to any smart collection which depends on it.
For example, items I want to publish have two stars and cannot have the color red. I use this in about five publish services. It would be nice to not repeat these ever time.

Tim

[AlanUniqueName]

"Why not make each type of Collection (Smart and "non-Smart") a Collection Set itself? (which can contain as many "Child"-Collections as you want)"

Like Timothy Spear (below), I also use Smart Collections to control the publishing of my photos to multiple online destinations and multiple "in house" destinations - ie multiple publish services. This "most simple" solution is not flexible enough for my needs and in my view and experience (as a system and database designer) should not need this level simplification to aid implementation,

[Timothy.Spear]

Alan,

I would prefer sub query support with full inheritance, you will very quickly run into SQLLite limitations. Think of a situation where you want to have a template model with three levels of depth. Sub queries would be very difficult to implement in SQL Lit, but replication the and appending the where clause to each child object should be rather trivial. That was why I went for a simpler model. :D

Tim

[jdphog2]

Smart collections are missing a point of indirection that would allow a single, potentially complex, set of search terms be reused in multiple collections.

I define a number of complex smart collections as part of my workflow. In many cases, I would like to share common rules among a number of these collections. For example, I want to have a collection of favorites that meet certain requirements, and I want to share those same requirements, possibly with the addition of additional rules, in a publish smart collection. It is tedious and error prone to maintain the same set of selection criteria in two or more places.

I imagine that this could be implemented either by allowing smart collections to refer to other smart collections or by allowing smart collections to reference library rule presets. You could also imagine library rules referring to other library rule presets.

This enhancement would make smart collections and/or library rules so much more powerful. The current implementation does not exploit the full potential of the underlying database.

Thanks for considering this.

Jeff

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

As a Lightroom user, I want to create Smart Collections based on an existing Collection, so that I do not need to enter all the configuration details again.

Background:
I use keyword tags extensively to organize my photos, then I create Smart Collections based on keywords to work with those photos. Most of my Smart Collections are very similar to an existing Collection, except for one keyword change. It would be much faster, and less error prone to be able to create a new Smart Collection based on an existing Collection. For example: right-click on an existing Collection, and select Create Smart Collection based on this Collection, etc..

thanks for considering it,
Dan

[koontz2]

Hi

It will be nice to be able to create smart collections inside smart collections 

Poul

[Califdan2]

That certainly would be convenient.

[JohanElzenga]

I'm sorry, but I do not see how that does something you do not already have. A smart collection is just a list of search criteria, so adding a smart collection to an existing smart collection is nothing more than adding the search criteria of the second collection to the criteria of the existing smart collection. You can already do that now. Sure, it will save you a little bit of time because you do not have to manually add these criteria, but how many times are you doing this anyway? Does that really warrant spending developer time on it? Time that then can't be spent on something a bit more important?

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-smart-collections-to-reference-other-...

[Thomas35104836ewl1]

It would be great if smarfilter could contain another smartfilter as condition. 

This means, if smartfilter A contains condition 1 and 2 and I define another smartfilter B that uses smartfilter A like inheritance, then smartfilter B contains automatically all conditions of A. 

Further more  conditions could be added then to B. If conditions change in A then they will be automatically applied in B.

[johnrellis]

Many people have asked for this over the past dozen years. As a less convenient, partial workaround, you can use this trick to intersect two smart collections (find photos that satisfy both sets of conditions):

1. Click on the first smart collection.

2. Select all the photos (Cmd/Ctrl A).

3. Click on the second smart collection. At this point, the selected photos are exactly those that are in both smart collections.

4. Save the selected photos to the Quick Collection or a regular collection if necessary.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-smart-collections-to-reference-other-...