Copy Smart Collection Settings

I would like for there to be a way to copy Smart Collection settings directly. It can be done by exporting the smart collection settings to a file, then reimporting them.
Suggestion - in the context menu for the smart collection, add a new item Duplicate.
This came up when I was building smart collections based on dates and keywords and wanted to create new collections with different date sets.

I've been asking for this ever since smart collections made their first appearance in Lightroom - there should be a simple right click menu.
Instead, you have to right click and export the smart collection, then right click and import it.

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Creating smart collections using Import Smart Collection settings

Does anybody know if I can create smart collections using Import Smart collection settings? Where can I find any information on this other than Photo collections? In particular, I am interested in what to do with the ID.

I'll try to explain the best I can. I am trying to improve my workflow.
I have been a little lazy with my workflow, I don't rate by images for 2 reasons: 1) I haven't found a rating system I am comfortable with (we might have discussed this on another thread), and 2) I am not very good at critically assessing my own photo graphic work. This means I have very often jumped to the develop module to adjust an image without ever bother to rate them (almost 20% of my catalog).
I have also rated some images and never touched them.
So I have a need to find images I have rated and adjusted, images I have rated and not adjusted, and images I have adjusted and not rated.
Now, my photographers vision and knowledge have both changed substantially over the past 5 years. So to make the task more manageable I am trying to divide my catalog into 3 collections per year:
1 - Rated and adjusted
2 - Rated and not adjusted
3 - Adjusted and not rated
The assumption is that this is the bit of the catalog worth looking at and re-organise first. I know that anything I edited last year would have been more proficiently edited that anything I edited in 2010.
Does it make some sense?

Virtual copy in a smart collection does not show up in that collection

LR5; When I make a virtual copy in a smart collection it does not show up in that collection but in the original folder...
All of the metadata and custom fields are identical....

The screenshot was very helpful. The problem is with the Custom 05 custom metadata field. Which plugin defined that?
It appears that smart collections don't properly search the custom metadata fields of virtual copies. I filed a bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom: Smart collections don't correctly search custom metadata fields.
You could work around this by using a filter preset in the Library Filter bar. Perhaps not as convenient, but it would get the job done.

Copy-Pasting crop settings also affects other Develop settings?

I noticed the following behavior in my Lightroom 4.3. Let's say I have two almost identical pictures. Both have their Develop settings reset, no keywords and store some GPS info (so in the flimstrip both pictures have a "geotag" icon overlaid on them and no other icons).
Now, I go to Develop screen and crop the first picture. I leave other Develop settings untouched. This makes a "crop" icon to appear on the first picture in the filmstrip. All works as it should.
After that I ask Lightroom to copy the Develop settings from the first picture. In the selection dialog I leave everything unchecked besides the crop settings. I.e. I want to copy crop settings only, nothing else. Then I immediately paste these settings over the second picture. Expectedly, the second picture gets cropped in exactly the same way as the first one. It also acquires a "crop" icon in the filmstrip. However, in addition to the crop icon it also gets a "+/-" icon, as if some other Develop settings got changed by the paste as well. A quick inspection shows that all Develop settings (besides crop, of course) remain at their default values.
I wonder why the second picture acquires that "+/-" icon. Is there some hidden Develop setting that gets affected by my paste, even though I explicitly asked Lightroom to copy crop settings only? Or is it just a user-interface-level bug?

I reported this strange behaviour a year ago already for LR 3.4: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_3_4_1_wrong_activation_of_ badge_has_delevop_adjustments. LR 4.3 seems to have the same bug (at least I think it is a bug).
As far as I know, no "real" development settings are affected by this bug, however an internal flag for "has development settings" seems to be set when the "+/-"-badge appears. This means that such images are found by smart collections with "has adjustments = true". So it is not just an user-interface-level bug.

Sudden ultra-slow importing issue in LR5.2 - possibly smart collection related?

I've been using LR for almost two years now, and have never seen this before:
This evening I wanted to import a series of images from my card reader using LR (just updated to 5.2 from the 5.2RC); I have ~240 images to import. I always have LR set to convert to DNG on import, and also to save a backup of the original raw file (NEF) onto a separate HDD at the same time. LR has always been pretty fast to carry out this process: normally just a few minutes are required for that amount of images (not including rendering previews once the DNGs are imported). However, today it's suddenly become painfully slow - as I type this, it's so far managed to import a mere 58 images, having so far taken about an hour and twenty minutes! Each image is being added one at a time, with a long pause before the next one clocks up in the 'current import' folder. I've never seen such slow performance with LR before.
I wonder if this is a bug connected to the final release of 5.2? I doubt it, as I would have expected to have heard about this by now, but you never know...
I have recently - in the past few days - set up a number (at least 80) of new smart collections that pick up raw images taken at specific focal lengths, as well as another set picking up specific apertures used for each raw shot in the catalogue (unlike the majority of my pre-existing smart collections, these new collections are purely there for interest really - nice to see which focal lengths are the most used for example - but don't serve as an aid to any specific workflow). In short, I've greatly increased the number of smart collections running in my catalogue. Would having a significant number of smart collections slow down the image ingestion process? For example, is LR updating individual smart collections on the fly as images are imported, and thus having to pick through each collection in order to complete the import (I'd always assumed that this would all be added to a central index in the catalogue that the smart collections feed from, but perhaps there are multiple indexes, one for each smart collection)?
I guess the other possible cause could be a corrupt catalogue, although both the catalogue integrity check and optimisation complete without a hitch and everything else seems to be fine.
I'm on Win7 x64, running the LR catalogue and previews from an SSD (with images stored on a separate HDD), with an i7 3770K CPU, 16GB RAM, and an AMD 5850 Radeon graphics card.
I'd be most grateful to hear the opinions of other LR users.
M

This just started happening to me as well. EVerything was fine and import was what I consider normal until 2 days ago. Had trouble with one camera which kept losing connection. I import from the camera directly...copy as DNG to an internal hard drive. Now all my cameras are importing at a ridiculously slow rate of speed. As far as I know I changed nothing to make this happen. Very odd and cannot find anything about it except for your post. Anyone else out there experiencing this?

When developing an image from a smart collection "has no adjustments" it gets immediately deselected

I am wondering if this could really be the intended LR behaviour?
I start from a smart collection, one of the criteria is "has no adjustments".
Ok, as soon as I move the first slider in develop module, it no longer matches that criterion.
But that should be no reason for LR to force me to immediately stop the develop edits on the selected image.
It immediately unselects, and I stay in Develop module with a grey window and the message "no image selected". (It does not move on to the next image, which still matches the criterion.)
I would expect that when I return to Library module, it would return to the same smart collection where I started, but I would not find my last developed images there, as they no longer match the criterion.
But that LR grabs it immediately out of my develop selection?
Strange enough it stays the same, when I first explicitely selected all images while in Library/smart collection.
My expectation would be that I have this selection fixed to work on in Develop module. Similar to when I select any images from survey view and go to Develop module.
But no, the only workaround I found is:
Start from the smart collection, ctrl a to select all, then arbitrarily click on another collection withput this criterion - selection stays fixed - then move over to Develop module.
This is LR4.1 on Win7.
Definitely my functional specification would be: never take off an image from Develop unless the user moves on to another image.
So ignore from where an image was picked.
Would you consider this a bug? Or a "feature"?
Do you see the same in LR4.2 or 4.3RC? Behaviour on a Mac?
Cornelia

There is a feature request that has been around for a long time to be able to "lock" the contents of a smart collection so you can work on the photos in it, before "releasing" it for recomputed contents.
My workaround is to copy from smart collection to dumb (I encountered this so often that I created a 1-keystroke plugin mini-feature to help). Before that I actually used a private keyword whose presence was enough to hold a photo in a smart collection (set the keyword to work on photos, clear the keyword to release them). Then as long as you add that keyword as criteria to every smart collection you may edit in, and add the keyword to every photo in the collection that you may work on... - yuck.

Question regarding stacks, searches and smart collections

Apologies if this is considered a 'basic' question - but I hope that someone can help me.
I'm currently in the process of upgrading/migrating a reasonably large Photoshop Elements 6 catalog where I've made extensive use of hierarchical folder structures, keywords and star ratings to quickly locate photos using a range a different techniques.I've successfully upgrade/migrated the Photoshope Elements catalog into Lightroom 3 and as part of the verification that everything has come across OK - I've done some comparisons of catalog searches in Elements and Lightroom and seem to be getting some strange results which I'm not sure if this is simply how things work or if I'm doing something wrong. I think part of the issue is caused by the fact that Elements always does destructive edits - so I never edited original photos in Elements so made extensive use of copied photos and stacks - but this didn't seem to cause any issues as Elements seem to keep things straight.
In Elements, the result of a query or Smart Collection might return 18 stacks of photos (with most of the stacks containing multiple photos) - but for most purposes Elements simply treated this as 18 seperate photos and simply ignored all of the photos under the top of the stacks.
Now in Lightroom I get different results depending on how the photos are identified. If I use either a keyword or rating search using the 'Right Hand' panel - I get a photo count returned which is always much higher than 18 but Lightroom seems to retain the stacks so only displays 18 different stacks, However, if I put the same search criteria into a Lightroom Smart Collection - it retrives and displays ALL of the photos in the 18 stacks (so it displays 2-3 times more photos) and I can't seem to find a way to get the Smart Collection to honour these stacks. I know that I could probably alter each of my photo stacks and change the rating or keyword of all of the photos under the top of the stack - but trust me this is a huge amount of work!!
Is this simply the way Lightroom works? I can partially understand and accept the way direct keyword or rating searches work using the 'Right Hand' panel - although the photo counts are different from what I've got used to in Elements the way the photos are actually displayed is not that different. However, what really confuses me is the completely different way Smart Collections work when compared to the 'equivalent' direct query. Have I missed something? Or is this some form of technical issue/bug/future enhancement request?
Also, on a slightly related issue - I've noticed that keywords with spaces (or other special characters) seem to cause issues for Lightroom - while Elements seems to cope with these OK. From the reading I've done it looks like one of the most common suggestions is to simply remove the spaces (..etc.) in the keywords - is that what most people would recommend??
Any help, advice or other suggestions would be appreciated.
Kind Regards .... Jerry

I'm currently in the process of upgrading/migrating a reasonably large Photoshop Elements 6 catalog where I've made extensive use of hierarchical folder structures, keywords and star ratings to quickly locate photos using a range a different techniques
Please tell us EXACTLY the steps you are using to move your PSE catalog to Lightroom.
However, if I put the same search criteria into a Lightroom Smart Collection - it retrives and displays ALL of the photos in the 18 stacks (so it displays 2-3 times more photos) and I can't seem to find a way to get the Smart Collection to honour these stacks. I know that I could probably alter each of my photo stacks and change the rating or keyword of all of the photos under the top of the stack - but trust me this is a huge amount of work!!
I believe this is how Lightroom was designed to work. Smart collections don't recognize that some photos are at the bottom of the stack.
Also, on a slightly related issue - I've noticed that keywords with spaces (or other special characters) seem to cause issues for Lightroom - while Elements seems to cope with these OK. From the reading I've done it looks like one of the most common suggestions is to simply remove the spaces (..etc.) in the keywords - is that what most people would recommend??
I have no trouble whatsoever using keywords that have spaces in them. I have keywords that are "New York", "New Jersey", "Union Pacific Railroad", etc. Special characters, such as a comma, will probably cause trouble. Exactly what are you doing where spaces in keywords are not working properly?

How to move your b-rolls into (sub-event folder) separate folders or smart collection inside the same event?

When ever you create an event how can you create folders inside the event for different folders of b-roll? The reason why I ask is becuase when you create events, there becomes way too many events making a clutter. I have tried to cut, copy, import, and other ways after creating a smart collection or folder inside an event to create, I guess to say a sub-event inside and event. But it will only copy the b-roll into the main event only, not the folders or smart collections. An example would be in class you will have several events for projects, but I want to have one event that is broken up into several folders or smart collections for each project. Instead of having all 10 of your events open and displayed. This way you can create an Event Folder named Class Projects, then open up the Class Projects event folder and inside you can have several folders for each of the separate b-rolls for each certain project. I am wanting to do this instead of having 10 different kinds of b-roll footage all in one event, which is difficult to search through.

Actually you CAN create folders INSIDE an Event to place keyword/smart/anaysis colletions in.
Remember, you can apply Favorite/Rejected tags to whole clips, as well as ranges inside of clips. The same is true of keywords.
Related user manual pages here:
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver68416335
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver30ccd91f
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver7a77eb6c

Reading Advanced Metadata in Smart Collections, not working in Bridge CS6

In Bridge CS5 you could make an Smart collection that were looking for: All metadata > contains > "here we add a value from a metadata only visible from the Advanced tab in File info"
But this nolonger works in CS6.
Although I can go to File info and see the metadata value that are visible from Advanced. But the option All metadata, clearly doesn't support the advanced metadata in the file in CS6.
Could this be a bug in CS6?

If any one like to try this yourself and get same or other result, please let me know!
Otherwise this must be a bug to report to Adobe.
I don't have CS5 installed anymore but CS6 is still present while I use Bridge CC for my daily workflow (MacPro MacOSX 10.8.5).
I first copied 4 DNG files from my main folder to a subfolder. Those files I added a name to the IPTC extension persons name and saved.
Checked and this name shows in the IPTC extension persons name field in Metadata panel as well as in Advanced Tab in File Info IPTC Extended Properties / IPTC4xmpExt:PersonInImage(Bag container).
I closed the subfolder and used the smart collection icon to bring up the Find window.
I then selected All metadata and filled in the persons name, had subfolders and non indexed already included and put the source field to the main DNG folder.
The result was almost instant with the 4 files showing.
I then quitted Bridge CC and started Bridge CS6
Since I had not used this for a while and my main folder contained 4500 DNG I set the cache quality icon to embedded only. Selected the same folder and followed the same procedure as in CC.
Naturally it took a bit longer because the files needed to be indexed first, yet after this the result was still the same, the 4 DNG files with the persons name showed in the smart collection.
So on my behalf I can't reproduce your problem and for me it is not a bug also I'm afraid.

Can't view smart collections on a different computer

I've generated about a dozen smart collections from photos on an external drive. This was done on my laptop.
When I try to view the smart collections with the drive mounted to my desktop, I get the error message "collection target folder cannot be found". Sometimes it will say to purge the cache, which I've done several times, but to no avail. I realize the smart collection data is on the laptop's hard drive. Is there a way to put it on the same drive as the photos?
When I go back to the laptop, everything's fine again. Is there a way to view the collections on both computers?

Is there a way to view the collections on both computers?
I'm not sure but I think this is possible. Bridge is very user specific and a collection and a smart collection is nothing but a bunch of aliases. While the files are on the same disk the other end is different.
You might copy the collection file itself (on a Mac: user library / application support / Adobe/ Bridge CSxx / collections to the other system in the same location but besides I still don't know if this would work it is also a bit of a PITA to keep searching and copying those files.
My workflow would be to create new folders on the external disk and select the collection in the content window. Then use select all and copy (or move, whatever workflow suites you) the files to those new location. Those new folders could be selected in both machines. Not ideal but for the moment I can't think of anything better

How to move entire Collections to a new catalog, including hierarchy, smart collections and also Publish set ups?

I want to move a large number of Collections, including all their hierarchy and smart collection settting, plus the photos, to a new catalog. I can only find a way of importing the actual photos themselves from the old catalog.
Also is there a way to have the publish settings migrated to the new catalog too?

Thanks for that.
I agree that a single catalog is the standard approach (all my personal photography is contained in a single catalog over the years). However this is for a large corporate event which we hold each year. This year I want to use extensively the face recognition and I don't want it assessing or confusing people with those who attended the event last year. The even is over 4 days and results in several thousand images from multiple photographers. It's just cleaner to keep the events in their own catalogs for now (good for archiving and backing up too)
Thanks again. Appreciate your help.

Smart collections lost after loading LR 3.3

Since updating to LR 3.3 I am unable to access my smart collections. The collection tiltles and numbers of images are still there but when I click on one I get the message "The folder could not be found" but the folders have not been moved. Can I re-establish the links or do I need to go through the laborious process of re-creating them? Any help would be much appreciated.
Jim

Thanks for the video but it hasn't helped. The images do not appear on screen and the locate option does not find them. I now think it has happened because of an upgrade to Windows 7 which seems to have located all my documents in a diffferent file heirarchy. They were located in C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\My Pictures\ but now they are in C:\Users\Jim\My Documents\My Pictures\. From there, the structure is unchanged.
Is there a way I can change the settings in LR on a global basis to take account of this please?
Jim

Bridge Smart Collection Error

I am running Bridge on a Mac and am having an issue in creating smart collections. My image files keyworded in metadata. When I attempt to create a Smart Collection by searching in a folder by the keyword (for example) tree, the smart collection does not find all the images with the keyword tree. I am including all subfolders and non indexed files in the search. Any help would be appreciated.

I am having the same issue with the Find (Cmd+F) function.
Do you mean the find function in Bridge or using Finder?
To search for files with a certain keyword you best use the find command in Bridge. Besides having included subfolders and non indexed file make sure your source is the main folder where all the subfolders and files you are looking for are saved.
Also check the criteria settings. For keywords best choose the keywords in the first field and 'contains ' in the second field, use the plus sign to add an other keyword to the list if you want to search for multiple keywords
Under results set Match to if any criteria are met. If you have set this to if all criteria are met it only shows the files containing all the searched keywords which also can narrow the search down.
And check if you have read and write permission for the disk the files are on.

Smart Collections Not-so-smart?

I have recently started using smart collections to gather various pictures I have taken of works of art. I have mutliple shots of the same art works, and I want to see all the shots at once in order to delete some and edit others. There are several hundred files in the collection. But each time I make any change to a file (edit or delete it), the entire collection must be re-built (perhaps just re-indexed, but, the panel goes blank it must be re-displayed). This is time consuming and makes working my way through the collection practially impossible. Is there something wrong, or is just the nature of smart collections?

Thanks Curt.
I have avoided the problem by copying all the files in my smart collection into a regular (not "smart") collection.
I was having problems with regular collections, but I eventually solved this problem. (You responded to my post on this issue a couple of weeks back.) Bridge would not remember all the items in a collection after re-starting. All the files were listed in the collection filelist, but the collection would contain only those at the beginning of the list. I discovered the solution by examining the files that caused the problem (i.e., if the collection contained only 57 items after re-starting Bridge, I examined the 58th file named in the filelist). The problematic files all contained apostraphes (') or hyphens (-). Bridge (and Photoshop) allows these characters in filenames, but the filelist is a straight DOS textfile, and so filenames with these characters caused Bridge to stop reading collections files from a filelist as soon at it came across such a character. I used batch renaming to get rid of the offending characters, and now Bridge remembers all the files in my collections.
So, this solved my problem, but it is definitely a bug in the program that Bridge allows characters in filenames that other functions in the program can't recognize.

Update to process version 2010 & smart collection "has adjustments"

Buying the new Lightroom 3 version ofcourse I wanted to profit of the new process version. So I selected all images I had "not adjusted" before and selected Update to Process version 2010. This works great.
However I now have one problem.
I had and have a Smart collection which helps me in my workflow to find all images that have not been touched, so have no adjustments.
This Smart collection has become worthless because of the update to process version 2010 all images have been adjusted.
Ok, this is correct and yet I miss my ability to select images which I have not adjusted.
Once I have set the default process version to 2010 all new images are correctly shown.
Question: how can I select all those images which have only the process version updated, but have no further adjustments?

Changing the process to version 2010 is considered as an adjustment; it will appear in the photo's history in the same way as any other development adjustment. The smart filter condition "Has Adjustments" only has a true or false setting so you can't distinguish the process version adjustment from any other. Instead of using this method to spot the photos I need to work on, I find that I have more control over my workflow by using keywords such as "review", "develop", "print"; you can make these keywords not exportable so that they are not part of the keyword list in exported photos.
Interestingly, when one or more photos are selected in the film strip and the reset button is clicked in develop mode the photo will revert back to its original state, the "Has Adjustments" condition will become false, but the process version will remain at 2010.
If you have a backup of your catalog that precedes the step where you updated the process version of all photos, open this backup, add a keyword of your choice to all the photos that have not been touched, then apply the process version change. You can then change your smart catalog to use this keyword as opposed to the "Has Adjustment" condition and remove the keyword you have set on photos that have not been touched as soon as you are done editing them. IMPORTANT: Any changes you have made following the date and time of the backup will be lost.
If you don't have a backup to go to, you will have to manually identify which photos, which from your point of view, have not been touched.
Some ideas:
If you did not make other edits following the change of the process version, and have not made other edits on that date, you could built a smart collection based on the 'Edit Date" and then reset the develop settings of all the photos in that collection.
Another possible condition is a "Capture Date" range where you know photos haven't been touched yet.
There may be other options, there may be a plugin that can help you, or ultimately there would be means to access the database outside of Lightroom - contact me if you get that desperate to fix this!
http://www.BDLImagery.com

Copy Smart Collection Settings

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