Creating smart collections based on identified people - is it possible?

[Malthouse Photography]

Hello, I'm trying to get into keywords more. I've only ever scuffed over the surface of what they can do until now. The answer to my question may lie in that aspect. But I don't think it does.

Imagine you go on a trip with John and Jane Doe. You tag all images in the trip with "John Doe" and "Jane Doe" regardless of if they are in the photo or not. Many will just be scenes that you've taken without people in at all but you know they were on the trip with you so you've tagged them anyway.

You use the People view to identify all the people in the photos. John will get named in some, Jane will get named in others. The two of them together in yet more.

Is it possible (and if so how) to create four smart collections (smart so that the next trip with them the new photos get added there too):
1) Photos of John Doe

2) Photos of Jane Doe

3) Photos of John and Jane Doe

4) Phtos with neither John nor Jane Doe

Essentially I've gone through identifying my parents and children in all of my images and I'd like to create collections of them but when we've been on holiday those holidays have anyone involved tagged on each image.

[JohanElzenga]

Yes, that is possible, but it requires a trick because Lightroom looks at individual words, not keyword phrases. You can force Lightroom to look at phrases by using 'Starts with'. So instead of using 'contains' or 'contains all', use 'starts with john doe', and 'starts with jane doe'. Smart collections 1 and 2 only need to have this one line. Smart collection 3 needs both lines, and smart collection 4 needs two 'does not start with' lines.

[Malthouse Photography]

Hi Johan, I'm not sure how this item has been marked as the "correct answer" as it doesn't appear to be.

I've tried that. Changing from "contains all" to "starts with" makes no difference. It still looks at the keywords rather than the people identified with "draw face region".

What I really want is for it to ingore the "keywords" and only use the people identified by "draw face region" - which end up as keywords. I can't work out how one can create a smart collection based on the identified people.

[JohanElzenga]

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Are you saying that you have 'John Doe' and 'Jane Doe' as normal keyword as well but don't want to find these images? I don't think that is possible. Identified people are keywords too, Lightroom does not distinguish between them. If that is not what you mean, then please explain in more detail what it is you are trying to do and what does (not) happen. Embed (do not attach) screenshots of your smart collections if needed.