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Hi, all
It is all about restricting a smart collection filter to a particular LR top folder.
Say I have 2 top LR folders D:\pictures and D:\videos.
I want the query to get the items from D:\pictures only.
Folder Contains "pictures" will return them all but will also include any LR folder with "pictures" in it, e.g. a video in the D:\videos folder called "videos showing my pictures of the holidays". That is normal.
So I changed the smart collection to Starts with "pictures" and Ends with "pictures". That is unique but it still returns the same. I made sure to use the "All conditions" options which I assume is equivalent to an AND.
I tried using Contains "D:\pictures" ,and other similar attempts, but none of them find anything at all.
I resorted to assign keywords like "Dpicturesfolder" for the whole D:\pictures but that is not "smart" as I have to make sure it is always up to date.
I could change all occurences of "pictures" and refrain using it in the future but that is not smart either: I have many of those top folders with commonly used words like Documents, Music, Events, Travel etc. for example and I cannot go round telling people not to send me pictures sets with these words in folders.
I could make a collection of the top LR folder with a unique name but that has the same drawback at the keyword solution (it needs to be kept up to date).
I could also resort to rename D:\pictures to "D:\top folder pictures" or something else unique but where will it end to sort out what seems like a bug or a misunderstanding of mine.
I might be missing something here but in that case, I still need help.
Kind regards
Bernard
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I type this on my iPad, so I cannot check it, but I think you need to change this as follows: Use 'Source' instead of 'folder'.
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Thank you for your reply.
Unfortunately, if I am not mistaken, you cannot choose "Source" as an option on its own. Choosing it only give 4 sub-options: Folder (which I used), Collection, Publish Collection or Published (none of which are what I have). By the way, it is irrelevant, but I don't know the difference between the last two.
Kind regards
Bernard
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Can't you choose Folder is Pictures rather than Folder contains Pictures?
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Thank you for keeping up with this conversation, Johan.
It has always foxed me but the option "is" or "equal to" is not there.
I would not have played with starts and finishes if it did and this thread would not be here.
"contains", "contains all" and "contains words" all 3 return the the same inflated answer. That is "sort of" expected from them 3. They are ambiguous or superfluous, depending on your interpretation. In my mind, they are the same and return the same as I am expecting. I would happily scrap the last two and get one "is" or "equal to" in exchange.
Kind regards
Bernard
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Oh, no ... I'm in the wrong forum ... It is Lightroom here and not Lightroom Classic.
I apologise and I don't know how to correct my mistake.
Can an administrator move the thread to the right forum? Or shall I start again in the LRC forum?
For my defence, it is an easy error to make but I apologise again
Kind regards
Bernard
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Don't worry, that happens all the time.
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OK, here's another idea. Again, because I am typing this on my iPad I haven't checked it, but the following should work: Lightroom can search on file type, so you should be able to create a smart collection that catches all possible still image file types that you have in your catalog, but not video files.