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26

P: Expand searchable metadata fields

LEGEND ,
Mar 11, 2013 Mar 11, 2013

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For many photographers the IPTC Extended fields play a big role in organizing and finding images. Therefore it is crucial that this information is searchable. But neither the Text filter nor the Metadata list filter make use of this metadata. This should be implemented since not being able to use IPTC Extended metadata within Lightroom is a big disadvantage.

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23 Comments
LEGEND ,
Mar 12, 2013 Mar 12, 2013

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Agreed that this should be built into LR. As a workaround, you can use the Any Filter plugin to search those fields.

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LEGEND ,
Mar 15, 2013 Mar 15, 2013

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Totally Agree! Extensive keywording must be allowed also in the sets... I like applying and searching for specific things:
Example:
Waterfowl
Duck
Hooded Merganser
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Ring Neck
Red Breasted Merganser
Birds
Blackbird
Red Wing Blackbird
Finch
House Finch
American Goldfinch
Animals
Coyote
Deer

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LEGEND ,
Feb 28, 2014 Feb 28, 2014

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Agreed, it is a must to be able to search in the IPTC extended.
As a general the search opportunities is a little weak in Lightroom. If you add more specific fields in the list of what to search in, it will be a great improvement.
There is another topic about searching here Search in Lightroom. If you like you can support that as well.

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LEGEND ,
Aug 25, 2015 Aug 25, 2015

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Problem: LR does not search in the IPTC extended field “Person Shown in the Image”
As a general the search opportunities is a little weak in Lightroom. If you add more specific fields in the list of what to search in, it will be a great improvement. Then you could choose to search in one specific field (Person Shown), and you’ll get less noise.

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LEGEND ,
Aug 25, 2015 Aug 25, 2015

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Agreed. Being able to search "person shown" would be a great help. Conversely, not being able to search it makes "person shown" almost completely useless.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 17, 2016 Mar 17, 2016

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Adding my voice here as well.  I started using iView Media Pro at least 15 years ago if my memory serves me well.  Way before Lightroom and Bridge.  iView allowed for Custom created fields, and those serve me well in my work and in my archive of over a million photos and other digital assets.  Media Pro calls that field People, where in the Adobe applications it's referred to as Person Shown.  In either case, the People Field has indeed transferred to the Person Shown field in Adobe apps.  However, adding that and possible any other Custom fields in the Search criteria would be a tremendous and most useful tool, and one that could possibly convince me to migrate over fully to LR and to Bridge and finally move away from Phase One's Media Pro, which has not seen any improvements in years.  Thank you.

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Enthusiast ,
Apr 20, 2016 Apr 20, 2016

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It is SO frustrating that I can't search these fields. It's forced me to use other software.

Note to Adobe: a Person Shown is a different criteria than say a person's name in headline, caption, title, etc. For example, I have people's names in fields related to creation or ownership. And sometimes I want to use a keyword with a person's name that is NOT a People keyword, like images related to George Washington, even though he is not shown. So it's an important criterion.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 02, 2016 Dec 02, 2016

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Got to admit, it's kind of ridiculous that this still hasn't been added to Lightroom. I use the IPTC Extension panel all the time, for every photo. I have nearly 150k images, and I use pretty much every field, but specifically the Event, Person Shown, Model Info, Location Created and Location Shown fields.

I was attempting to search by the Event, and was dumbfounded when I realized it wasn't capable of searching that part of the metadata. Can't say it's just Adobe, either. It's the Lightroom team. The fact the red-headed stepchild of Adobe known as Bridge can search ALL metadata, including IPTC Extension proves it can and should be a feature of Lightroom.

I moved from Bridge to Lightroom due to its superior keyword and overall metadata management features, but now see its search is severely handicapped in comparison.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 15, 2018 Jan 15, 2018

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After 5 years there is still no solution to search metadata fields and their combination in Lightroom. How excellent the search capabilities of Aperture were!

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Enthusiast ,
Jan 15, 2018 Jan 15, 2018

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Meanwhile, you can search much of that metadata with John Ellis' excellent plug-in, Any Filter. You can save searches too. Handy for more than just searching, and it's got a variety of operators to refine the searches. Probably better than anything Adobe would come up with; sometimes it's just better to maybe leave things like this in better hands, since Adobe doesn't care much about those who make heavy use of metadata (still no real keyword implementation in CC, for example). http://www.johnrellis.com/lightroom/anyfilter.htm#download

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Enthusiast ,
Jan 15, 2018 Jan 15, 2018

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Hi. I've said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating. There are two plugins that enhance searching in Lightroom, John Ellis' Any Filter, and Jeffrey Friedl's Data Explorer. They are really complementary. Any Filter allows you to set up repeated searches easily, while Data Explorer is better for one-off searches. I use both, but definitely use Data Explorer more (probably because I don't have to think as hard when I use it).

Just a word to the carpers in this thread: It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness -- at least if you are trying to get work done.

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Enthusiast ,
Jan 15, 2018 Jan 15, 2018

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Thanks Alan; I'd forgotten about Friedl's Data Explorer. And I have it. IIRC it did a better job of hunting for various location metadata, which can be in more than one spot I think.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 15, 2018 Jan 15, 2018

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I agree Aperture had some better search capability, but let's not get too misty-eyed. Unlike LR (from v2 IIRC), Aperture never even supported IPTC Extended metadata.

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New Here ,
Aug 16, 2019 Aug 16, 2019

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Making all IPTC attributes searchable shouldn't be a major effort as the attribute set is standardized. What I am personally missing are Source, Subject Code, Scene Code and Person Shown (from IPTC extensions). I can imagine other people miss other attributes. You lose half of the purpose of IPTC if the attributes are not searchable. Thanks

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LEGEND ,
Aug 20, 2019 Aug 20, 2019

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Fully agreed that the IPTC Extension fields should be searchable.

Note that Source, IPTC Subject Code, and IPTC Scene Code are not IPTC Extension fields and are searchable.

As a somewhat inconvenient workaround to search Person Shown or other fields that LR ignores, you could use one of these plugins: Any Filter, Search Replace Transfer, Data Explorer.

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New Here ,
Aug 21, 2019 Aug 21, 2019

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Yes, I know IPTC fields are searchable, but only as free text search over all IPTC fields. If you happen to have same keywords in multiple IPTC fields, it's useless.

So my hope is to see more IPTC and IPTC extension fields in the Metadata attributes list.

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LEGEND ,
Aug 21, 2019 Aug 21, 2019

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So to be explicit, you'd like to refer to individual IPTC and IPTC Extension fields in the Library Filter bar's Text search box, in the Metadata browser, and presumably in smart collections as well.  That's a little different than others, who just want to search IPTC Extension fields similar to how they search IPTC fields now, using "Searchable IPTC" in the Text search box.

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New Here ,
Aug 22, 2019 Aug 22, 2019

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Correct. I referred to Library Filters in my original request title but else was too loosely talking about search.

I happen to have same names appearing in Source, Creator and People fields which makes it hard to filter out the right photo set with text search.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 23, 2022 Feb 23, 2022

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Hello,

 

I am a delighted customer/user of both Lightroom and Camera Bit's PhotoMechanic. I import photos using PhotoMechanic and apply my keywording and other metadata information there. However, I prefer using Lightroom to edit and view my photos later on. However, this system is really empaired by the inability to search for specific information in most metadata fields... right now Adobe only offers the options of searching in Filename, Title, Caption, and Keywords. Using Person's Shown is absolutely critical to my workflow, and I'd also really benfit from being able to search other metadata fields such as Event, Job Title, Headline, etc. 

 

I know this request has shown up elsewhere in this community already – and I know there are (inelegant) work arounds provided by plug-ins, etc – but I feel this subject bears repeating. Adding this functionality would HUGELY improve the efficiency of my & other's workflow. 

 

Cheers.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 23, 2022 Feb 23, 2022

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Added thought... one major way I interact with metadata is through Smart Collections. This is another huge place I want/need to see additional searchable metadata compatibilty for my workflow to work... and as I understand them – correct me if I'm wrong – the plug in workarounds don't work with Smart Collections. 

 

Please add this functionality Lightroom!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Community Beginner ,
May 10, 2022 May 10, 2022

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Hi,


I understand that if you have photos that were assigned people / face tags in another application (like Picasa, gallery, etc.) that they aren't keyworded in the way Lightroom also keywords face tags. But, my issue is that Lightroom doesn't have any filter or search function for the people fields, which is a problem.


I have a bunch of photos with the XMP "Person in Image" field filled out (as well as the face regions marked and tagged and Lightroom can read those), and I want Lightroom to be able to fully use this field and consider it a searchable text field so I can search and filter and create smart collections. Right now I have to use an outside application to read this info and filter on it and if I'm going to keep paying for Lightroom I'd like it to be able to do all of the normal things so I don't have to keep using multiple pieces of software.


Any plans for this?

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LEGEND ,
May 10, 2022 May 10, 2022

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LR displays XMP:PersonInImage in the Metadata panel's IPT Extension tagset. For example, this photo's XMP:

   <Iptc4xmpExt:PersonInImage>
    <rdf:Bag>
     <rdf:li>John</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Jane</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Bag>

 

gets displayed in the Metadata panel as:

johnrellis_0-1652208555301.png

 

Unfortunately, LR doesn't allow any of the IPTC Extension fields to be searched:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-expand-searchable-metadata-fields/idi-p/122...

 

As a workaround, you could use the Any Filter plugin to search Person Shown:

johnrellis_1-1652209584407.png

 

But it's not very convenient compared to having it built-in.

 

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LEGEND ,
May 10, 2022 May 10, 2022

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