Edit-Search Form - only see subset of all IPTC (but newby on trial)

[JamesGW]

About 6 hours into PM, so could be on thin ice.

The Edit-Search form has a drop-down list of IPTC fields to look at (Caption, City, State, Country,?). There are 27 items on this list, so it is a subset of the fields visible elsewhere (e.g. IPTC Stationery). Given similar features in PM, I am expecting to be able to customise this list, but can?t see how.

While talking about the Edit-Search form, is there a way to use ?NOT? to search for images where an IPTC does not have a given value?

Similarly how do you search for an IPTC field being empty (leaving the value blank on the search form doesn?t seem to do it)?

Thanks for any pointers in the right direction.

Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 19728 (3c52d76)
MacBook Pro, Mojave, 10.14.

[JamesGW]

I think I have worked it out for myself. The documentation says that PMs Edit-Search is based on the Spotlight feature in MacOS. So the available search fields are probably determined by Spotlight.

Spotlight has very powerful search facilities when used via the Finder (Finder-File-Find). The default drop-down menu Kind offers only a small subset of all the metadata that is available to be searched. As well as general file-related items, there are also these for images:

acquisitionMake, acquisitionModel, aperture, bitsPerSample, cameraOwner, colorSpace, exifgpsVersion, exifVersion, exposureMode, exposureProgram, exposureTime, exposureTimeString, flashOn, fNumber, focalLength, focalLength35mm, hasAlphaChannel, isoSpeed, layerNames, lensModel, maxAperture, meteringMode, orientation, pixelCount, pixelHeight, pixelWidth, profileName, redEyeOn, resolutionHeightDPI, resolutionWidthDPI, whiteBalance.

These are the technical names, PM and Spotlight present them in a more friendly fashion.

To find them, and add them into the Kind-list, select Other at the bottom of the Kind drop-down menu. Detailed AND/OR queries can then be constructed and Saved, similar to Smart Folder facilities. Results could go into a folder for examination by PM.