Organization/Smart Collection Advice

Hello
I have a couple of hundred product videos that were shot over the years that I need to organize. Currently they are organized very loosely in multiple events and are not titled (except for from the camera). The events are basically divided into accessories, products in action, and customers. The problem I am having is some videos have multiple products and one product might be in multiple events making them difficult to find.
Is there a simple way to see all videos marked with a keyword in multiple events? I have tried smart collection but every time I do that I get an error "Operation could not be completed. No other information is available about the problem."
Any suggestions of how to make this easier would be great. I don't mind re-organizing the events, but with so many videos and adding them often it seems like there needs to be some sort of event structure, but so far the only option I can see is putting them all in one big event and using keywords. It seems a little excessive.
Thanks for the help.

Hi Matt.
First tell FCP X that you want to search on keywords. Like the next screen shot.
Then specify what you want displayed.
This searched across two events in one library.
Russ

Similar Messages

Smart Collections: an ommission!?

Hi,
How do I create a smart collection that is based on another Collection, i.e. tests if an image exists or does not exist in a specified collection?
When designed my workflow for Lightroom I realised that the Workflow is simply a series of concecutive sets. (I use the term 'set' in the mathematical sense.) The various stages in the workflow directly corresponding to sets. Each stage has an associated set, that is a subset of the previous stage's set. Assuming the workflow stages are imported, selected, edited, approved and published. Then the selected collection is a subset of imported, and rejected is the imported set with selected removed. The edited set is the a subset of the selected set. And so on. Published provides a slight complication in that it is not one set, but multiple sets, split into a number of sets based on the published destination of the image.
When I came to try and set this up in Lightroom I found a difficulty, Lightroom does not appear to allow you to create a smart set condition that tests if an image is in or is not in another collection. I am slightly taken aback at this ommission. It seems to me that this is a fundamental tool for using smart collections.
OR have I missed something I have only been using Lightroom seriously for a couple of weeks.
Ciao RIc Evans

In my version of Lightroom 5, Smart Collections does indeed allow you to include photos in a specific Collection or Collections. I'm not sure why you state the opposite.
By the way, I now provide a completely unsolicited opinion: I think following Kelby's advice on organizing is a mistake for most people. I think his advice is poor, and that better advice on organizing can be found at The DAM Book | The DAM Book or Organizing Your Photos with Lightroom 5 | The DAM Book. In particular, if your organizing needs are exactly the same as Kelby, who does discrete professional photo shoots and which have little overlapping content and as a result he has little need to search across photo shoots by content, and you search only for "winner shots", then maybe his advice is good. For the rest of us, who organize by the content of the photo (keywords, other metadata and collections), I think Kelby is way off target.

I would like to see a "user order" sort option for Smart Collections

I use LR to set up Collections to use for web output and typically use key wording to organize which photos will be included in any web gallery. Right now I have to make that into a regular collection so I can rearrange the collection to appear the way I want to present things. I would prefer to be able to utilize Smart Collections so any photos I want to add will be included automatically when I set up the proper keywords. New additions should be at the end of the current order and the user should be able to move that around in the presentation order as desired.

I absolutely agree. I used a similar function in Aperature all the time. It was the main reason I originally chose Aperature over LightRoom till Lightroom came out with the latest edition that included Smart Collections, and was I disappointed to find that it wasn't as powerful as Aperature's Smart Folders options.
Both programs have their strengths and their weaknesses... and this time around I think Lightroom has the advantage, but Aperature still wins on Smart Collections customization ability and power.

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?

Saving Smart Collections

Hello all,
I've recently upgraded from CS4 to CS6, when I uninstalled my cs4 package I realsed I'd just lost all my smart collections in Bridge. However a colleuge of mine has these same smart collections set up in his Bridge CS6, so I was wondering if theres any way of exporting or saving the samrt collections so I can import them to my bridge? Or any saved preference cache that I can copy?
It'll take a couple of hours to set up all the collections so any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers.

Collections are just a bunch of address to your photos. So no, you can not transfer them. Now smart collections are a little better, but they are still just address locations for the photos, and not the photos themselves.
You can go into the location of your CS4 and copy the collection and paste into CS6 and see if it works. That location is C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Bridge CS4. Note that appdata is a hidden file.

After reinstalling Photoshop PS6 I cannot any longer save smart collections in Bridge

Hi, after reinstalling Photoshop PS6 I cannot any longer save smart collections in Bridge. I create a smart collection by entering criteria, but when I click on SAVE, it is not saved. In my old installation (before I had to install a new hard disk), that never was a problem.
I am using Windows 7. Before, I used a hrad disk for the system, now I have a SSD, plus seveal hard disks for data storage.
Can anybody help me with advice what the problem is?
That whould be great. Thanx,
Jochen

There is also a Bridge Forum you can search ans ask in Bridge General Discussion

Cannot any longer save new smart collections

Hi, after reinstalling Photoshop CS6 I cannot any longer save smart collections in Bridge. Always I want to create a smart collection by entering criteria, but when I click on SAVE, it is not saved. After some time of waiting, I always have to cancel, to close the pop-up window that should allow me to save the new smart collection. In my old installation (before I had to install a new hard disk), setting up and saving smart collections never was a problem.
ALL updates of CS6 have been installed. And I am under WINDOWS 7. Version of CS6 is: 13.01 x64
Before, I used a regular hard disk for the system, now I have a SSD, plus several hard disks for data storage.
Can anybody help me with advice what the problem is?
That whould be great. Thanx,
Jochen

There is also a Bridge Forum you can search ans ask in Bridge General Discussion

Organizing a smart collection

I have created a smart collection of my photos from various folders in preparation for sending to Blurb Booksmart for an annual retropective. All photos are virtual copies and have metadata and exif data. Is there a simple way to arrange the virtual photos in the smart collection for export strictly by date of capture - oldest to most recent - even though they physically live in different folders? What I would like is an "Arrange By Date" option but have not been able to find such.
Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Besides that, you'll probably need to rename on export to one of the formats that incorporates a sequence number. If they keep their old names, they'll probably get sorted in alphabetical order by whatever place you send them to, and your carefully produced order will be scrambled. Make sure the sequence number is formatted with enough leading zeros.
Hal

Smart Collection date problems

I have some pictures in my catalog that have completely incorrect dates. My step son didn't set the date on his camera and they are in the year 2048. These pictures keep appearing completely out of context and drives me nuts!
For example, they are in the Past Month smart collection. And in the new Past Week smart collection I created. They are not in a This Week or This Month smart collections I just created. I really would like to use "Past Week" as opposed to "This week" but it is useless.
I haven't changed them because I don't know the real date but, alas, I want to keep them. It doesn't look like I can remove the date (which date does LR use anyway?!) in LR. Nor does LR support partial dates. I guess I'm going to have to make something up. Does "Edit Capture Time" now work in LR? I suppose an approximate date would be better than a completely wrong date (but of course I will forget it's not an exact date...)
Any comments, suggestions?
Judy

Just use your smart collection to hold all photos with the date 2048. Then edit the date in the exif data on the first photo, then select all the rest and sync the rest of the photos. I used Edit Capture Time and it worked for me. You might be able to change the date by selecting all of them first, and then doing an edit capture time. One piece of advice though, is to give them a unique keyword before messing with the date. That way if you need to re-do anything you will have a way to collect the photos.
To answer your question, I believe LR uses the capture time when you do a date search.

What is the difference between a keyword collection and a smart collection?

I am trying to figure out how to work with a smart collection.
I have no clue/
May someone with more experience on FCU ProX help me please

With Keyword Collections, you apply descriptions (Keywords) that make organizational sense to you: examples, Close up, Wide Shot, Exterior, Action, and so forth. Smart Collections are made from rules that might include Text, Date, Format, and so forth,
Here's a video with examples,
Russ

Limit a "child" smart collection to only photos found in the "parent" collection set

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but here it is. I'm starting to organize my pics into Collections, and while some of those collections might be topic/keyword-driven (like a Collection for "spiders" or "flowers"), many of them are for events or "happenings", such as a birthday or Halloween or a trip to Florida. Within each collection set (which I call the "parent"), I'm making "child" collections that narrow down the photos in the set in increasing levels of perfection. This is pretty much what Scott Kelby and others evangelize, and I like the idea. So for instance, I'm working on my child's 3rd birthday party photos, and I really just want the following structure:
Cooper's 3rd birthday [this is a Collection Set]
- All photos [every photo I took, minus the lousy/duplicate ones I deleted after import]
- Picks [the "best" pics - photos I've flagged as a "pick" in Lightroom - which I'm going to upload to Flickr]
What I'm trying to do is simply make "Picks" a Smart Collection that automatically contains any photo in the "Cooper's 3rd birthday" Collection Set that also has a "pick" flag on it. But it seems there's no way to tell Lightroom to limit a Smart Collection to only the photos in the parent Collection Set. Or is there? If I have the "Picks" Smart Collection look for all flagged picks, it searches the whole catalog, not just the "Cooper's 3rd birthday" Collection Set.
(Note: I don't import into folders on my hard drive for different events, I just import everything into folders by month/year, so I can't use a folder name as a search criteria.)
In this case, I see two immediate solutions, both of which are sort of workarounds, not a universal "clean" solution:
Add an additional criteria to search for "picks" that were also captured on the date of the party
Rename the child collection "All photos" to "Cooper's 3rd birthday: all photos" and then use that text as a search criteria for the smart collection
I know that this is a Scott Kelby setup (making sub-collections that are increasingly specific subsets of other children in the Collection Set) and not an Adobe-designed system, but still, it seems like telling a Smart Collection to limit its scope to the Collection Set in which it resides is an obvious feature. I'm inclined to think I'm missing something here.
Any thoughts?

Daniel940 wrote:
Any thoughts?
I think it's a good idea - consider making a feature request here:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new
PS - In general, I like the idea of smart collections being treated as fancy lib filters, so their selection along with other folders and/or collections serves to narrow (like it used to be) instead of broaden (as it does now). Oh well, have a little regress with your progress...

Adobe Bridge CC Smart Collections are not displaying all images in the folder

I'm having an issue with Bridge CC were I setup a smart collection to monitor my new photos. The folder contains over 300 photos, but is only displaying 160. The only condition I set is to have a minium file size of 10kb, so it should bring in all files since most are over 4mb. At first I thought it was a problem with the files themselves (permissions or something) but if I open the folder in bridge it easily displays all of the images easily. Any ideas?

I'm having an issue with Bridge CC were I setup a smart collection to monitor my new photos.
You might want to describe this workflow a bit more. Do you create this from an existing folder or are you adding new photo's?
A Smart Collection does not refreshes it self automatically. You either have to use the edit icon top right of the content panel to save again or deselect and select the collection itself to let it refresh the content.

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?

"Smart Collection" criteria shortfalls

Hello,
While Bridge CC is almost a benefit to our studio, we're finding the "smart collection" criteria entirely crippling.   It's frustrating as there really are just a couple of tiny additions that would make Bridge a life saver to us.
What we're finding severely lacking in the criteria options:
"Path name"    - would be ideal for excluding any files with a specified folder name in the path.
"Newer than"    - x amount of days
"Media type"    - dropdown list of "Video" "Image" "Audio" etc.
"Extensions"     - space delimited list, rather than single file type (".PSD .PNG .JPG") etc
With just one or two of these options the smart collections could actually be useful.
Perhaps I'm just too new to Bridge, and there are workarounds, but certainly nothing obvious. (Filters keep getting reset, labels are binary etc)

What we're finding severely lacking in the criteria options:
"Path name"    - would be ideal for excluding any files with a specified folder name in the path.
"Newer than"    - x amount of days
"Media type"    - dropdown list of "Video" "Image" "Audio" etc.
"Extensions"     - space delimited list, rather than single file type (".PSD .PNG .JPG") etc
With just one or two of these options the smart collections could actually be useful.
This is a user to user to Forum and while these are very good suggestions you might also want to try and post it on the Photoshop family forum which is recommended for feature Requests:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/
But be warned, don't hold your breath waiting for it to get realized. There have been tons of ideas for improvement and with Bridge already at version 6 the most changed result for the past 3 versions is that they removed functionality (AOM, Export panel and Sync windows) instead of adding improvement…

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.

Organization/Smart Collection Advice

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