Keyword search using Edit/Search

[trstaley]

I have a demo version of PM running on my Mac with Leopard.  I have images in a folder with keywords.  When I select the folder all of the images show up in a contact sheet.  I then select Edit/Search and perform a keyword contains search along with a keyword that is on several of the photos.  I request that the search results be displayed in a new contact sheet.  Every time I attempt the search the contact sheet is blank.  I am able to do an Edit/Find and the photos with the keyword are selected.  What am I doing wrong that I cannot get the Edit/Search to produce the results I expect? 

[Kirk Baker]

I have a demo version of PM running on my Mac with Leopard.  I have images in a folder with keywords.  When I select the folder all of the images show up in a contact sheet.  I then select Edit/Search and perform a keyword contains search along with a keyword that is on several of the photos.  I request that the search results be displayed in a new contact sheet.  Every time I attempt the search the contact sheet is blank.  I am able to do an Edit/Find and the photos with the keyword are selected.  What am I doing wrong that I cannot get the Edit/Search to produce the results I expect?

The Search feature uses Spotlight in Mac OS X to do the searching.  For some reason Spotlight is returning no images with the query you are using.  Have you disabled Spotlight on your system?

-Kirk

[trstaley]

I have not disabled spotlight.  It behaves as though PM is not looking at the keywords fields or that the way the data is stored, spotlight is not recognizing the text.

[Kirk Baker]

I have not disabled spotlight.  It behaves as though PM is not looking at the keywords fields or that the way the data is stored, spotlight is not recognizing the text.

What happens if you use the Spotlight interface in the OS on the menubar and search for the same keyword(s)?

-Kirk

[trstaley]

A dialog appears title dictionary which displays the definition of the keyword I placed in the spotlight search field.  Spotlight was invoked from the magnifying glass in the menu bar.

Additional information:

When in PM I can select the information icon in the lower left corner of a thumbnail and see the list of keywords (example: Europe,Switzerland,France,Lausanne,Evian) in the keyword text box. 

If I do a keyword search in Aperture 2.0 for Evian, the pictures with Evian are properly selected.

I also have Breeze Browser and the keywords display properly in BB as well.

In PM preferences the IPTC area shows the default encoding as Mac Roman and write IPTC as unicode is not checked.

When attempting a search I am using keywords contains and selecting a new contact sheet open.

Thanks for helping me with this.

[Kirk Baker]

A dialog appears title dictionary which displays the definition of the keyword I placed in the spotlight search field.  Spotlight was invoked from the magnifying glass in the menu bar.

I'm not sure that I follow.  What does "title dictionary" mean?

Do you get any hits on your search with the Spotlight magnifying glass in the menu bar?
What kinds of images have you keyworded?  What program did you use to add the keywords?

-Kirk

[trstaley]

When I invoked spotlight from the menu bar I entered the text of the keyword I wanted to search for.  This search was outside of PM.  When I ran the search it resulted in a dialog box displaying with the word dictionary in the title (an apple thing).  I realize you may not have meant the Apple upper menu bar for the magnifying glass (which is what I did above) so I also tried the search using the spotlight field in the upper right area of PM and still no success.

The keywords were applied with PM. 

If you would like we can google talk.

[trstaley]

I just thought of a reason why the search may not be working - my files are on a NAS drive.  I will create a local copy and give it a try.

Problem solved!  Search does not work against files on my NAS drive.  That is too bad as it renders the search capability virtually useless for me.  Any recommendations on alternative approaches?

[Kirk Baker]

I just thought of a reason why the search may not be working - my files are on a NAS drive.  I will create a local copy and give it a try.

Problem solved!  Search does not work against files on my NAS drive.  That is too bad as it renders the search capability virtually useless for me.  Any recommendations on alternative approaches?

Are you on Mac OS X 10.4.x or 10.5.x?  Mac OS X 10.5 should allow you to Spotlight index your NAS drive and then it should work fine.

-Kirk

[rcohn]

Are you on Mac OS X 10.4.x or 10.5.x?  Mac OS X 10.5 should allow you to Spotlight index your NAS drive and then it should work fine.

-Kirk

Hi, I just tried Search for the 1st time and am also getting a blank contact sheet- even though the the same terms work for "Find". I'm on OS X 10.4.11. I don't know what a NAS drive is. The images I was looking for are on a FW800 external drive, however I also tried it on my main drive and it doesn't work there either. I'm also unclear after reading the above: Search uses Spotlight? Is Search the same as using Spotlight, or does it just look in the open Contact sheet? When I enter several terms (separated by commas) in Spotlight directly is doesn't find anything, but it does find the images if I enter just one term. I'm not a fan of Spotlight, so I usually search using other methods unless I know Spotlight will work, so I don't have much experience with using it.

I tried Search because the Find feature seems weak and Search looked stronger. When I do a Find it highlights the images, but doesn't separate them, or give any info on how many images were found, so it's basically useless on a large folder of images. It's possible I'm misusing both features.

Ric

[Kirk Baker]

Ric,

Hi, I just tried Search for the 1st time and am also getting a blank contact sheet- even though the the same terms work for "Find". I'm on OS X 10.4.11. I don't know what a NAS drive is. The images I was looking for are on a FW800 external drive, however I also tried it on my main drive and it doesn't work there either. I'm also unclear after reading the above: Search uses Spotlight? Is Search the same as using Spotlight, or does it just look in the open Contact sheet? When I enter several terms (separated by commas) in Spotlight directly is doesn't find anything, but it does find the images if I enter just one term. I'm not a fan of Spotlight, so I usually search using other methods unless I know Spotlight will work, so I don't have much experience with using it.

You would have to enter the keywords separately in additional search criteria items.  Keywords are not actually stored in the metadata with comma separation.  They are stored in lists of items.  So you would need to have several Keywords search items in order to find an image with multiple keywords.

I tried Search because the Find feature seems weak and Search looked stronger. When I do a Find it highlights the images, but doesn't separate them, or give any info on how many images were found, so it's basically useless on a large folder of images. It's possible I'm misusing both features.

If you look at the status message at the bottom left corner of the Contact Sheet it will tell you how many items are selected and how many total items are in the Contact Sheet.  Now that your images are selected you can perform various operations on the selected items like tagging, rating color class, renaming, copy/move, etc.  I'm not sure how that is useless?

-Kirk

[rcohn]

You would have to enter the keywords separately in additional search criteria items.  Keywords are not actually stored in the metadata with comma separation.  They are stored in lists of items.  So you would need to have several Keywords search items in order to find an image with multiple keywords.

Ah, knowing that helps. However, I don't see a way to restrict the search to the active Contact Sheet, so unless I missed something, search is not as useful to me as it appeared at first glance. However, this behavior does make a very nice way to use Spotlight to search for images-only across multiple hard drives.

If you look at the status message at the bottom left corner of the Contact Sheet it will tell you how many items are selected and how many total items are in the Contact Sheet.  Now that your images are selected you can perform various operations on the selected items like tagging, rating color class, renaming, copy/move, etc.  I'm not sure how that is useless?

-Kirk

OK, not useless, it is more user error (inexperience).<g> I did miss the "Selected" info at the bottom of the Contact Window and I realize now that once they are selected I can set the view to "Selected" to bring them all together.

I do see that Find will also take words that contain the searched for letter combinations, so for example, a search for "hand" will also select "handle". Would an option to "match only" be possible?

Thanks again for your help!

[Kirk Baker]

You would have to enter the keywords separately in additional search criteria items.  Keywords are not actually stored in the metadata with comma separation.  They are stored in lists of items.  So you would need to have several Keywords search items in order to find an image with multiple keywords.

Ah, knowing that helps. However, I don't see a way to restrict the search to the active Contact Sheet, so unless I missed something, search is not as useful to me as it appeared at first glance. However, this behavior does make a very nice way to use Spotlight to search for images-only across multiple hard drives.

Yes, Search searches for files that are on your system.  Find searches through images in the current Contact Sheet.

If you look at the status message at the bottom left corner of the Contact Sheet it will tell you how many items are selected and how many total items are in the Contact Sheet.  Now that your images are selected you can perform various operations on the selected items like tagging, rating color class, renaming, copy/move, etc.  I'm not sure how that is useless?

OK, not useless, it is more user error (inexperience).<g> I did miss the "Selected" info at the bottom of the Contact Window and I realize now that once they are selected I can set the view to "Selected" to bring them all together.

I do see that Find will also take words that contain the searched for letter combinations, so for example, a search for "hand" will also select "handle". Would an option to "match only" be possible?

It currently does a sub-string match, but it could be modified to do an exact match as an option.

-Kirk

[rcohn]

It currently does a sub-string match, but it could be modified to do an exact match as an option.

-Kirk

IMHO that would be a great option. I'd like to make it a Feature Request!

Thanks

Ric