How to find all pictures not in catalog/collection

[LRAT]

Hi,

I've got about 35,000 pictures in 4 active catalogs (All, Events, When and Where).
The number of pictures in my catalogs is not the same as the total amount of pictures I got in my pictures folder.
To find the missing pictures and go through this by hand will be very time consuming.
Is there a function or a search query that shows me all the pictures that are NOT inside a catalog?

Also, is there a search function that can show all the pictures with a brown dot (Pictures no longer in the master folder)?
Thanks for your help!

[Kirk Baker]

I've got about 35,000 pictures in 4 active catalogs (All, Events, When and Where).
The number of pictures in my catalogs is not the same as the total amount of pictures I got in my pictures folder.
To find the missing pictures and go through this by hand will be very time consuming.
Is there a function or a search query that shows me all the pictures that are NOT inside a catalog?

No.  The catalog system only knows about the images that are in the catalog.

Also, is there a search function that can show all the pictures with a brown dot (Pictures no longer in the master folder)?

There is the "Select Missing" (pictures with a yellow dot, not sure what you mean by a brown dot) command on the edit menu.  Note: it is fairly slow in operation as it requires all of the metadata for the images in the contact sheet to be loaded in order to do the work.  You'd have to do a query that shows all images in your catalog.  Searching for "" (two double quotes, no characters in-between) will show all images in a catalog.

-Kirk

[ahoward]

Is there a function or a search query that shows me all the pictures that are NOT inside a catalog?

Just to add to Kirk's reply: It can only query things if it knows where and what files to query, and it can only know where they are by being in the catalog. However, it sounds like you know where all these pictures are, and you just want to add them to the catalog? If so, just use Scan to Catalog and point it to the folder that contains all of the images. Any images that are not yet in the catalog will be added to all Catalogs with "Add" selected.

[LRAT]

Thanks for your help guys!
This was most helpful and will save me a fair bit of time.
Cheers,

Luke

[editor@africamediaonline.]

Further to this topic, I am trying to put every image that is in my catalogue into one or other collection. Is there a way to identify all images that are in the catalogue, but not in a collection?

[editor@africamediaonline.]

Is anyone able to assist with the latest request on this string?

[LRAT]

I don't think it's possible to do that. (See my question above).
I was also hoping to see a feature in PM that shows to which catalog/collection a picture belongs (and with a sort function).
Maybe in a later version.

[DavidHoffmanuk]

There is a slow way to separate out photographs not in a collection by marking everything that IS in a collection. If you don't use colour classes for any permanent form of classification you'd set all the pictures in a catalog to one (or no) colour. Then open all the collections and set them to a different colour. Sort by colour class. Another way would be to append a word used nowhere else (I use zxzx) to all captions of photographs in collections & search "caption not zxzx" which should find the ones that are not in a collection. You can use find/replace to remove the zxzx afterwards. There are other similar methods. It'll be slow with a large catalog so maybe check that it works for your setup on a small test catalog first.

[LRAT]

That's a useful suggestion, though it can be a bit slow, and I have tried it before using the checkbox method. However, the main issue is that when working with multiple catalogs and their collections, there’s no way to identify which catalog or collection a particular photo belongs to directly from the picture itself.

I manage six catalogs, each containing around 30 collections (one of them even has over a hundred). It would be really helpful if I could view the catalog or collection information directly in the properties of each photo.

Unfortunately, this feature isn’t available at the moment.

[ahoward]

That's a useful suggestion, though it can be a bit slow, and I have tried it before using the checkbox method. However, the main issue is that when working with multiple catalogs and their collections, there’s no way to identify which catalog or collection a particular photo belongs to directly from the picture itself.

I manage six catalogs, each containing around 30 collections (one of them even has over a hundred). It would be really helpful if I could view the catalog or collection information directly in the properties of each photo.

Unfortunately, this feature isn’t available at the moment.

David's solution is probably the best one at the moment. Moving this to feature requests.

[DavidHoffmanuk]

Media Pro had a very useful feature with its collections (they may have had a different name). When one or more images were selected the collection(s) that they were in would change colour. You could also drag files into a collection from the contact sheet. I did make a more detailed feature request for this in 2022.
https://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=14783.msg72744#msg72744
David Hoffman