Search not working all of a sudden...?

[courtlevephoto]

I've just entered in tons of keywords to a lot of my files.  Music, being one of my keywords.  When I type in music in my search, I get 10 photos....out of about 500 images that have music in the keyword field.  It worked yesterday but not today?


Any help?

[Kirk Baker]

I've just entered in tons of keywords to a lot of my files.  Music, being one of my keywords.  When I type in music in my search, I get 10 photos....out of about 500 images that have music in the keyword field.  It worked yesterday but not today?

I would suggest trying to use the Spotlight feature itself to see if it gets any better results.  If it does return upwards of 500 images then that would indicate a problem in PM.  However if Spotlight returns similar results (about 10 like you said) then I would suspect a problem in Spotlight.

Now, I will say this that Spotlight does not know how to correlate matches in XMP sidecar files to their corresponding RAW files so that may be the cause of the problem.  In fact, as of 10.4.10, Spotlight does not index XMP files at all.

Are you using RAW files and captioning them with XMP sidecar files?

-kirk

[dbrouse]

Let me make another suggestion...why not keyword a FEW files before you do hundreds/thousands?  Then run a quick little test to see if it works the way you want it to work. 

If you work with a small test set of images FIRST to LEARN the software I think you'll have more success than the way you seem to be trying it. 

Just my $0.02 worth


Have fun. Ride a Fuji.

Delane

[courtlevephoto]

1.  I have been experimenting with small batches, things seemed to work great.  Now, not so great.  The files in question are .dng files.  Not a SINGLE keyword, location, keyword, etc.. would yield a search. 

2.  NEF files from Nikon don't seem to be supported file formats in PM.  Going back through my NEF files, ALL of my own contact info, phone, website, email are not kept intact....  This totally sucks...  This info stays in jpeg, dng and psd but not nef?  I entered all info in PM, and it is NOT sticking for nef files.  I opened a few to double check in PS to see if perhaps they would be generated fields during opening.  File info shows the same info is missing. 

Can someone tell me if PM simply does not support NEF files completely?

[Kirk Baker]

1.  I have been experimenting with small batches, things seemed to work great.  Now, not so great.  The files in question are .dng files.  Not a SINGLE keyword, location, keyword, etc.. would yield a search. 

2.  NEF files from Nikon don't seem to be supported file formats in PM.  Going back through my NEF files, ALL of my own contact info, phone, website, email are not kept intact....  This totally sucks...  This info stays in jpeg, dng and psd but not nef?  I entered all info in PM, and it is NOT sticking for nef files.  I opened a few to double check in PS to see if perhaps they would be generated fields during opening.  File info shows the same info is missing. 

Can someone tell me if PM simply does not support NEF files completely?

Please post a screenshot of your IPTC/XMP settings in the Preferences dialog.  I expect you don't have PM set to embed IPTC4XMP into TIFF-based RAW files (NEF is a TIFF-based RAW file.)

-Kirk

[Juerg]

Can someone tell me if PM simply does not support NEF files completely?

Actually PM seems to be one of the few programs that work perfectly with NEF files (and Capture NX for most the time). This was one of the main reasons I bought the software. As Kirk suggests, you may have a wrong setting in the preferences of PM.

Regards,
Juerg

[lbo]

I've just started using PM and am impressed with the intuitive functions.  I am also getting intermittent results with the "search" facility and am having trouble figuring out if it's a Spotlight problem or PM problem (or "operator error").  I am running PM 4.5.3 on Mac OS X (10.5.1).  I currently have only a few hundred JPG files ingested via PM, and have assigned text to the captions, categories, keywords and special instructions fields.  The problem is when I submit a search through PM  for a term that I know exists on several photos as keywords, I sometimes end up with the "Spotlight Search in progress" message for hours with no results.  Other times, the same search results in target files being found within a few seconds.  Some keywords don't seem to ever show up when searched.  The "find" facility works with no problem, but I usually need to be able to launch a broader search.  Is there a hierarchy of "best" fields to use for searching?  In other words, is it better to embed my keyword values in the captions if I want "search" to find them?  I noticed that information in some of the IPTC fields, like "category" is never found when searching with Spotlight or PM search.  I'd appreciate any advice on this.

[Kirk Baker]

I've just started using PM and am impressed with the intuitive functions.  I am also getting intermittent results with the "search" facility and am having trouble figuring out if it's a Spotlight problem or PM problem (or "operator error").  I am running PM 4.5.3 on Mac OS X (10.5.1).  I currently have only a few hundred JPG files ingested via PM, and have assigned text to the captions, categories, keywords and special instructions fields.  The problem is when I submit a search through PM  for a term that I know exists on several photos as keywords, I sometimes end up with the "Spotlight Search in progress" message for hours with no results.  Other times, the same search results in target files being found within a few seconds.  Some keywords don't seem to ever show up when searched.  The "find" facility works with no problem, but I usually need to be able to launch a broader search.  Is there a hierarchy of "best" fields to use for searching?  In other words, is it better to embed my keyword values in the captions if I want "search" to find them?  I noticed that information in some of the IPTC fields, like "category" is never found when searching with Spotlight or PM search.  I'd appreciate any advice on this.

Try performing the same searches with the Spotlight widget in the menu bar at the top right corner of your screen.  If you get different results, please let me know.  If it doesn't work with the Spotlight widget then there is likely something wrong with Spotlight on your system.

-Kirk