Trouble filtering by keywords

[R. Neil Haugen]

I know I've seen this before but for the life of me I can't find it ... I want to either filter or Smart Collection to get all images with Anna Haugen in them. And ONLY Anna Haugen.

BIG problem.

My LR2.7 will give me all those with "Anna" in them PLUS all those with "Haugen" in the same image, even if part of separate names. IE ... there's a few shots with my wife, Miriam Haugen, and with Anna Marie Butler. No matter which of the options I choose, I get both all pics of Anna Haugen and all those containing Anna Marie Butler and Miriam Haugen together.

I cannot find a way to filter to get ONLY those images of "Anna Haugen". I've tried every option I can find, either splitting on separate lines or whatever. When I put quotes around "Anna Haugen" it returns nothing. What am I missing?

Neil

[johnbeardy]

Maybe this thread http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=4743.0 ?

I could probably knock together a quick Lua script for this.....

John

[R. Neil Haugen]

Thanks John, but that didn't seem to answer my need, as far as I could tell.

I've spent further time on this, and it AMAZES me ... you can't use a specific entry as a key-word for a smart-collections filter. It will parse ANY multiple-word entry into separate parcels and look for any instance of any separate parcel. You can't even confine it to "this" specific bit, as in that case, it won't even do a search for you.

Pretty darn worthless when you are looking for specific people for a project. You have to do a search from the key-word list in the right panel as the ONLY way to get to a specific person. Searching for John Brown will bring up every John and every Brown in the database. Stupid ...

Thanks again, and if your infinite store of wisdom created a fix for this, well, I'd bless you!

Neil

[markpirozzi]

Neil,

I'm using LR3 - I did a test.  I used the filter panel, clicked the "Text" option and typed in a keyword that has two words (with the second word being one that is found in other keywords).  LR3 seems to filter the way you would like.  (I just left the Text criteria as the default "Any Searchable Field" instead of selecting "Keywords".)

Maybe someone can confirm this behavior in LR3.

Does placing parenthesis around Anna Haugen in LR2 help?

Mark

[R. Neil Haugen]

I hadn't tried parenthesis, just quotation marks ... I'll try that, although over on the Adobe Lightroom forum a couple experienced posters noted that this was a common complaint ... so it might be that 2.x simply doesn't want to behave nicely!

Thanks for the comment,
Neil

[R. Neil Haugen]

Tried your suggestion, using "Any searchable ..." and still got the "mixed" results. Tried the parenthesis, and it returned nothing at all. Ah well ...

Neil

[markpirozzi]

Sorry, I meant quotation marks. Bad mistake.

When I mentioned that I used Any Searchable Field, I was mainly noting that I didn't need to go to the trouble of selecting Keywords in the drop-down menu.  However, I do recall that occasionally selecting "Any Searchable Field" working better than selecting "Keywords" when trying to filter by keywords in LR2.  Doesn't make sense.

Peter's suggestion of using the Filter Panel's Metadata>Keywords is the best option for LR2 then.  You could type 'haugen" in the Text field prior to selecting Metadata>Keywords to make the keyword list shorter.

Mark

[Paul_S]

Does not selecting keywords in the text column and selecting "contains all" and entering both names in the quick search panel not do it for you, it works in LR3.

[R. Neil Haugen]

Paul, that's what I did ... and it returns all picks with "Anna Haugen", but it ALSO picks all pics with both "Anna Marie Butler" AND "Miriam Haugen" in them.

Not quite what I wanted, mind you ... so the only way seems to be to search by the keyword list on the right panel, and click on Anna's keyword. I wanted to make a collection but it seems LR doesn't really allow for that at this time.

Neil

[Paul_S]

Neil , I think I remember having this problem in LR 2.7 but cannot check as I removed it, but it seems to have been fixed in LR3.

[R. Neil Haugen]

Thanks for the note, Paul ... sometime this fall I'll upgrade, but 'till then ... sigh!   

Neil

[Hollywoof]

Hi.

Not sure if this would help, but I'm working in Genealogy (Family History), and we have issues finding names of people in photos as well.   One of the tips I received which I think might help you here is to create a standard naming convention keyword. 

For example:  John Doe

For me to find the pics of John Doe, first I would enter in the keyword to every photo that had John Doe in them, with the keyword JOHN_DOE using an underscore. 

Now later when searching for a specific person, I can enter in their name as one word using the underscore.   John_Doe.

It works, and if, like in family history, there are more than one john doe, we use JR or II or III or IV, and so on based on their actual name.  Or if we like, for Family History purposes, we'll put their birth year in like: JOHN_DOE_1834.

There's lot's of ways to do it, but thinking up front about the name as a whole rather than a partial, as you have done, might make things much easier going forward.

Thanks.

[Hollywoof]

By the way, my name is Scott.  I forgot that at the end of my post.

Sorry.

Scott

Hi.

Not sure if this would help, but I'm working in Genealogy (Family History), and we have issues finding names of people in photos as well.   One of the tips I received which I think might help you here is to create a standard naming convention keyword. 

For example:  John Doe

For me to find the pics of John Doe, first I would enter in the keyword to every photo that had John Doe in them, with the keyword JOHN_DOE using an underscore. 

Now later when searching for a specific person, I can enter in their name as one word using the underscore.   John_Doe.

It works, and if, like in family history, there are more than one john doe, we use JR or II or III or IV, and so on based on their actual name.  Or if we like, for Family History purposes, we'll put their birth year in like: JOHN_DOE_1834.

There's lot's of ways to do it, but thinking up front about the name as a whole rather than a partial, as you have done, might make things much easier going forward.

Thanks.

[peterkrogh]

Back to the original question...
Neil, why do you want the Smart Collection? (As opposed to simply selecting the Keyword on the right).

Are you using it in a combination with another keyword, or some other metadata? 

In the case of "just show me all pictures of Anna Haugen" it seems like the keyword is sufficient.  For other tasks where collections might be better (slideshow, contact sheet, web), I think it would be better to make a collection *by intent* where you decide which of the Anna pictures are worth including, and you set up a sort order.

Just wondering what the use case is.

Peter