Select all images not in a specific collection

[DavidHoffmanuk]

How can I select all the images that are not in a specific collection?

I could open and select the collection, add a term to an unused field and then search the catalog for images without that term but that's very slow with a collection of several thousand and a catalog of a few hundred thousand.

Media Pro has a 'right click to select all in a collection' and I could then invert the selection. What's the best way to do this with PM+?

Thanks
David Hoffman

[Kirk Baker]

David,

How can I select all the images that are not in a specific collection?

Media Pro has a 'right click to select all in a collection' and I could then invert the selection. What's the best way to do this with PM+?

I suggest using a search:

collection is not ^"Collection"$

Where 'Collection' is the full name of the collection you're interested in finding images that are not in that collection.  All of the images in the results will not be a part of that collection.

If you prefer to use a Filter for other criteria at the same time, you can add a "Custom Search" filter in the stack of filters.

HTH,

-Kirk

[DavidHoffmanuk]

Perfect. Thanks!
David

[Kirk Baker]

David,

The following may make it easier:

First, double-click on the Collection.
Then right-click on the tab and choose the 'Search item' (it should be the collection search).  This will copy it into your clipboard.
Paste it into the search field and edit the search to negate it.  (insert 'is not')
Issue the search.

Here's an example:
(?-i)collection ^"Screen shots/PM6"
becomes negated as:
(?-i)collection is not ^"Screen shots/PM6"

Hopefully this explains things better.

-Kirk

[DavidHoffmanuk]

Thanks Kirk

Your previous explanation was enough but this makes the process clearer and I've now sorted out the collection keywording.

An anomaly that this has thrown up is in the number of files found:
View/Combined images is off
A search for "" finds 335,959 images
A search for (?-i)collection ^"Race deduped files for Northants" finds 4,513 images
A search for (?-i)collection is not ^"Race deduped files for Northants" finds 331,579 images

Adding the last 2 search numbers gives 336,092 images that are either in the collection or not in the collection. I'd expect that to be the total number of images in the catalog but the first search shows that to be 335,959 images, a difference of 133 files. These 133 images seem to be both in the collection and not in the collection. I'm baffled. Do you know what's going on here?

David

[Kirk Baker]

An anomaly that this has thrown up is in the number of files found:
View/Combined images is off
A search for "" finds 335,959 images
A search for (?-i)collection ^"Race deduped files for Northants" finds 4,513 images
A search for (?-i)collection is not ^"Race deduped files for Northants" finds 331,579 images

Adding the last 2 search numbers gives 336,092 images that are either in the collection or not in the collection. I'd expect that to be the total number of images in the catalog but the first search shows that to be 335,959 images, a difference of 133 files. These 133 images seem to be both in the collection and not in the collection. I'm baffled. Do you know what's going on here?

No, I do not.

-Kirk