How to sort images on any IPTC or EXIF Data in LR2?

[snah]

Hello,
I am trying to sort some images on any IPTC or EXIF data, but for some reason don't get it.
There is probably an easy intuitive solution (like in iView or EM2) but I was not able to figure out how to sort images say on 'Location' or 'Exposure-time' in LR2?

Background:
I have some 500 NEF-images taken of an opera during several performances. They are stored in a folder for each performance. The best shots are rated with 3 and more stars. Now I want to bring  all the rated images together in a catalog set, sort them manually and then KEEP that new manual order for additional rating to 4 and 5 stars - eventually to output on the WEB or a slide show. Also I'd like that iView EM2 (which still is my actual DAM) can recognize that sort order as well. That would be really nice.
Sorting can take place in LR or in EM2, the important thing is to keep work applied in one application to be recognized by the other (by rebuilding the metadata for each image).

For example in iView I simply sorted the images by placing them according to my liking, then I used a script to number them in sequence. Voila here is the sorted listing of image files.
This time around working with NEF and XMP files this doesn't seem to be so easy anymore.
So far I have abused the field IPTC-Field 'Status' for this purpose of exchange.

Any ideas and suggestions are most welcome.

Thanks, Hans.

[peterkrogh]

Hans,
Lightroom has limited sorting options.  You can see it in Library in the center bottom section.
Sort order will only be preserved when you are in a collection.  You should be able to bring all 3 and 4 star images into that collection, and then sort on capture time, and see all the images from each play grouped together.

Does that do what you need?
Peter

[snah]

Peter, thanks for your reply.

Well, I thought Lightroom to be a real DAM providing search and sort capabilites to all fields.
Apparently this is not the case.
From my point of view a real good DAM must provide proper search and sort functions, else the word 'management' in this acronym is missleading.
But then having both (Management- and Editing-) Functions in one app is probably not so good either, because both areas require specialty expertese - most likely, one area will allways be second (at least that is the reality today).

So for now it's better to keep EM2 as a DAM and LR2 as a really great and simple image editing tool.
Bummer though that many fields differ from these 2 apps.
Hope PhaseOne will take care of that drawback by making EM2 to fully comply to XMP and by bringing out a iv-catalog conversion tool.

Or is there something similar available already?
Thanks for your attention.
Cheers, Hans.

[peterkrogh]

Not sure what you mean by iv conversion tool.  iView catalogs can be read by EM2.

As to XMP support, I assume you mean the ability to harvest and reattach any XMP fields, not just those it can work with.
Peter