Smart Collections and History "criteria"

Hi!
I'm working on a workflow. I often go out to PS. Is there a way to create a Smart collection that stores files that have been EXPORTED to PS?
My next step, can the files HISTORY be accessed with the Search or Smart Collection criteria? Example, A particular image may have 5-6 virtual copies. I want to find the copy that I printed. I can see in the history that it PRINTED. I'd like a smart collection that stores only files that have been printed.
If the History can't be acceseed. Is there anyway to write the history to the meta data orsomething in the file?
I also export to Nik plug ins. Can that be used as a criteria? When the file comes back from NIK or any filter, Is that tagged someway I can find it via search or Smart collection?
I rely too much on memory and guessing and would prefer, keeping a record in my Smart collections of my workflow.
Thanks
Alex

I don't think that using the Lightroom command Edit In ... leaves any indication in the History panel of the original photograph.
If you want to find the photos that have been edited via an external program ... since Lightroom appends "-Edit" to the file name, you could search for those, via smart collection or otherwise. Alternatively, since Lightroom keeps the base name the same (e.g. DSC_0001), you could search for all photos with DSC_0001 in the file name to see if there is a version named DSC_0001-edit
History cannot be written to the XMP metadata.
I don't know about searching for photos that have been printed, as I don't print locally.

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Smart Collection & Edit History

Is there a work around to include various states of the edit history in the smart collection. Say for example, I want to create a smart collection to contain all of my exported to Hard Drive images.
I'm testing out Lr/Gmail plugin and seeing that there is a field where you can create a smart collection with the option of Lr/Gmail = true/false. That mean there is a way to add extra option into smart collection. Do you know any plugin out there that can do this? Thank you in advance.

That plug-in creates a custom field and populates it. There's no way to query the History steps through Lightroom's UI or through a plug-in. One lives in hope.

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)
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Smart collection and folder names with "_"

I have problems when making Smart Collections based on folder names
My folder name is 2009_11_20 Mist
When I make a Smart collection with "Folder" Stars with 2009
I get a lot of files
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When I change the 2009 to Mist and the "Starts with" to "Contains" again I get the desired files.
When I change the 2009 to 2009_11 and the "Starts with" to "Contains" again I get no files.
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It's a bug. The usual workaround is to use hyphen as the separator in your folder names instead of an underscore.

Smart Collection and copyright

I see how to set up a smart collection for copyright status. But I do not see how to set up a smart collection or filter that selects on whether the copyright field itself has been filled in (contains the © copyright symbol).
Is there any way to do that? It seems to me that a flag saying an image is copyrighted is not terribly effective of the copyright statement itself is omitted.

Guy – I am having a very similar issue in this discussion:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/656942?tstart=0
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Smart Collections and Exporting

I've searched for an answer and couldn't find one so here is my question.
Is there a way to have an image automatically go in to a smart collection when exporting to a specific folder? I have a folder on my desktop that I export every image I want to upload to flickr. I'd like very much for these to also be added to a smart collection. For the life of me, I can't seem to figure out how to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

leighton w wrote:
Thanks Rob, but I was really wondering if a copy of the original raw file could be added. But I'll have to try this to see if I like it. Thanks again!
Right now I'm using the target collection option, but I have to try and remember to hit the b-key when I export.
Oh - I misunderstood, thanks for clarifying.
In that case, it's even simpler, just assign a Flickr keyword to the raw prior to exporting and (assuming the keyword is picked up by your smart collection), the same raw will be there to export to Flickr too. - no need for a real or even virtual copy of the raw.
Or have I missed the point again .
PS - If you want to assure it's automated, so you don't forget, then you can use this feature of Exportant:
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Smart collections and video resolution

I have recently acquired an iPhone, and use it to view podcasts.
But I realised that I actually have video podcasts that don't get synced with my iPhone due to wrong video format or to big resolution.
I know I can convert to the correct format and resolution, and sometimes I do, but some videos I want to keep the high resolution, and then watch them on my macbook pro instead of using the iPhone.
To find out easily what videos wont get synced to the iPhone I thought I would set up a smart folder where they all would reside.
I know how to sort by video format, but I am at a loss figuring how to select the ones with a resolution to big for the iPhone (over 640*480).
I know I can check them individually, but just thought I pop the question here, because if there is a fix to this, then it would be much easier...

I have recently acquired an iPhone, and use it to view podcasts.
But I realised that I actually have video podcasts that don't get synced with my iPhone due to wrong video format or to big resolution.
I know I can convert to the correct format and resolution, and sometimes I do, but some videos I want to keep the high resolution, and then watch them on my macbook pro instead of using the iPhone.
To find out easily what videos wont get synced to the iPhone I thought I would set up a smart folder where they all would reside.
I know how to sort by video format, but I am at a loss figuring how to select the ones with a resolution to big for the iPhone (over 640*480).
I know I can check them individually, but just thought I pop the question here, because if there is a fix to this, then it would be much easier...

How do I move photos in a Smart Collection and keep folder structure?

HI there I am on a trial of Lightroom and loving it so far. One seemingly simple task I would like to try out is moving all my RAW files (which are all mixed up with JPGs and PSDs to a new location and keep the current folder structure.
Currently I have files strcutured like this: <main disk>\<year>\<month>\<filename>.cr2 and I would like to move these to <different disk>\<year>\<month>\<filename>.cr2
The Export functions look as if they will put them all in to one big folder? Any ideas?
Many thanks in advance.

There are several approaches to this problem. You could do this via the Folders panel in LR. You can do just about everything in the Folders panel that you can do in Explorer or Finder. Just create folder and drag and drop.
Another way is to do this outside LR use Explorer (Windows) or FInder (Mac). after you're done then go back into LR and tell LR where to find the moved files. Depending on how many you have this could be a bit tedious.
Another method is to choose the files you want then Export them as a Catalog. When you do this be sure to include the option to export the negatives. Point the new catalog at you other drive. It will recreate the folder structure during the export. Then remove the images from your present catalog. Don't delete from disk just remove. Now import from catalog and choose the newly exported catalog. This time choose the option to add the files without moving them. Once you are sure everything is back and is fine you can use Explorer or Finder to go into your original file structure and delete the files that were moved to the new drive. Be careful to only choose the moved files. If you are separating the RAWs out this should be relatively easy.
I hope that helps!

Smart Collection features I don't see in LR4 beta and wonder why not

I've been playing with the new LR4 beta for all of 10 minutes now, and am disappointed to see that Smart Collections haven't moved forward at all.
Things I'd hoped to see:
In the Edit Smart Collection window, why when you add a new rule does it always default to "Rating"? How is that the most likely thing I want? Sure, make it the default for the first rule, but thereafter, I think it would be a lot more useful if it added another rule of the type on the line you pressed '+' on. That is, if I have a "Keywords...Doesn't Contain" rule and press the '+' button on that line, there's a better chance that I want another such rule than that I want yet another "Rating" rule.
Continuing the previous, I think the second rule added should follow slightly different logic. If the default Rating rule wasn't changed to a different type, the default for the second rule shouldn't be "Rating" again to clone the first rule, but rather pick the second most likely rule type. Does Adobe have usage statistics for people's Smart Collections to draw on?
For Keywords rules, there aren't negative operators to match all of the positive operators. So we have Contains, and Doesn't Contain, but we have Contains All and lack Doesn't Contain Any, and we have Contains Words but not Doesn't Contain Words. You can get the desired effect by nesting the positive version in a "None of the following are true" sub-rule, but this feels clumsy. Either give us a symmetric set of logical operators, or take away the negatives and give a clean way to negate arbitrary rules without nesting rules when not needed.
Nested rule sets aren't discoverable. I stumbled across this feature by accident, and only then because I knew how to do the same in iTunes. I'd rather see a third button to the right of each rule line that gave a way to create a nesting than the current magic Option trick. One of the great things about Lightroom is how discoverable most things are; you scarcely need the manual. This is a sharp corner than needs to be knocked off.
There's still no way to refer to one Smart Collection from another! iTunes has had this since approximately forever. It is very useful to be able to extract common rule sets from multiple Smart Collections and simply refer to it from others. We call this the DRY Principle in programming, and it's a Good Thing.
No new Smart Collection rule types. At minimum, I'd hoped to see rules for megapixels and pixel dimensions. I'd like to be able to find all the pics with a long edge 640 pixels or less, for example. Megapixels is actually less useful, because it can be fooled by high aspect ratio images. A banner 4000 px wide and 100 px tall is "only" 0.4 Mpx, but it probably doesn't need to be any bigger. (Yes, I'm aware of Jeffrey Friedl's plugin. He wants this built into LR4, too. )
We don't even get one new rule having to do with geoencoding. Just off the top of my head, I'd kind of like to have a Smart Collection that found photos taken within 100 feet of my home's lat/long and didn't contain the keyword "home". I have many such Smart Collections in a Collection Set called "Warnings", each of which automatically checks my photos for something that I often forget.
You can't reorder rules or move them into or out of groups. I have Smart Collections with a dozen or so rules, and some with logic nested three levels. When assembling such complex little beasts, it isn't always clear while building it what logic order will give the desired result. You have to iterate, and that often means taking a perfectly good rule and moving it somewhere else. Lacking the ability to reorganize the existing rules, that means creating a new "Rating" rule, changing its type to match, cut-and-pasting the match criteria [if text] and deleting the old rule. Pfagh.
That's enough for now.

Ooops, found one new Smart Collection rule: "Metadata Status". One. Want more.

Smart collections - different from 3.4 and 5.3?

Hello,
This is really simple, I used to be able to select a folder (say, all images in 2013) and then control click a smart collection I had created (rated > 1 star) and that would filter my images from 2013 and only display the ones that were rated higher then one star.
Odly, I cannot seem to get this to work in 5.3 (win7 pc fwiw). When I do this, it shows images that aren't from 2013 (the folder I selected). Can anyone explain or enlighten me as to what is going on?
To be clear, I expect to see images from 2013 that are rated > 1 star. If I select a folder with a single unrated image and then control click a "> 1 star" smart collection, it shows the image still. It doesn't seem to filter, it's showing both the contents of the smart collection and my one image.
Any help is greatly appreciated, this is starting to annoy me as this worked in 3.4 and it's something I thought was very useful and intuitive.
Thanks so much!

Adobe changed the behavior in LR 4. Here's what employee Benjamin Warde said about the change:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/multi_selecting_smart_collections_an d_folders_in_library_module_has_changed_for_the_worse
In Lightroom 3, multi-selecting various folders and collections would sometimes show the union, and sometimes show the intersection. The inconsistencies in the behavior were confusing to a lot of people, and caused various problems as well. In Lightroom 4, all such multi-selects now show the union. We certainly recognize that any change (even an ostensible bug fix) can potentially be detrimental to certain workflows, and we appreciate getting this feedback. In the case of the particular use cases described in this thread, it should be fairly easy to do what you want to do using Filters.
That thread has a lot discussion about which behavior was preferrable.   Here's how LR 4 and later behave:
- Selecting multiple sources (folders, collections, smart collections, publish collections) in the left-hand panel unions them (combines them).
- Filters in the Library Filter Bar intersect with (restrict) the selected sources.
- In the Library Filter Bar, in general, different criteria intersect with each other.
- An exception to the previous rule: Selecting multiple items in a column in the Metadata browser unions them, while multiple columns intersect. E.g. selecting two keywords from the same Keyword column filters for photos that have either keyword assigned; adding a Camera column and selecting a particular camera filters for photos taken with that camera and have either keyword assigned.
For many common use cases, including yours, using the Library Filter Bar instead of smart collections can solve your issue.   E.g. select the desired folder and in the Library Filter Bar, add a Label column in the Metadata browser and select the label Blue. Save those filter settings as a preset to make it more convenient to recall them.
Filters don't have the full search capabilities that smart collections do -- they're missing criteria and comparison operators and you can't form full boolean expressions. When you need those extra search capabilities to intersect with sources, workarounds include:
- See Dorin Nicolaescu-Musteață's post in the thread referenced above for a multi-step method that gets the job done with many more clicks.
- Use the Any Filter plugin.

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

Smart Collection default templates

In my Lightroom presets folder I see a folder named Smart Collection Templates
http://www.pbase.com/hdproman/image/101633642
These five templates do not show up in Lightroom
I have created a Smart Collection Set and all the Smart Collections to show photos taken during a particular year and the Recently Modified by Floyd smart collection.
http://www.pbase.com/hdproman/image/101726162
A search of my hard drive reveals my custom presets such as develop, export, slideshow, etc: except the smart collection presets created by me.
If I open one of the default presets such as the Recently Modified template in a text editor such as Word Pad this is what is inside.
http://www.pbase.com/hdproman/image/101749582
Its interesting that touch time is not on my list of criteria.
http://www.pbase.com/hdproman/image/101749851
Maybe the whole problem here is I am using a PC and maybe these default smart collections are for Mac only.
My smart collection Recently Modified by Floyd looks like this.
http://www.pbase.com/hdproman/image/101749852
This is a question that I have not found any answers; luckily it is not really all that important. I just like to solve computer mysteries.
What do you know that I am missing?

John, creating a new catalogue shows the five default smart collections. I should mention my working catalogue was converted from Lightroom version 1. This must be why I never saw the default smart collections as Lightroom version 1 did not have smart collections.
When I right click the import dialog takes me to the Smart Collection Templates folder and I see the five default smart collections. Each template has the extension .lrtemplate and the File of type: shows Supported Files [*.lrsmcol] as the import file type. If I import any of these files I get an error. If I export any smart collections created by me it gets this *.lrsmcol extension and I am able to import this template into any Lightroom catalogue.
I now understand how to create my own smart collections and having the defaults does not matter. My original question was how to create the Recently Modifiedsmart collection which the NAPP help desk answered for me.
Anyway this topic is taking too much of my time and further research is wasted effort.
Thanks for your reply

LR3 smart collection not updating

I shoot for a college and I have smart collection setup to show me my best shots for each sport. There are some images that won't appear in my smart collection and I can't figure out why. All the other sports collection work fine. This collection does show me some of the images, but not all based on my criteria. Yes, I've checked that the criteria is correct. Any ideas as to why this is happeneing? How can I fix this? is this a program error or bug?

Thank you.
I don't see that you're doing anything wrong in the SC definition. That file should be selected.
There are a couple of things that you might try:
--Delete the SC and re-create it. I've seen cases where collections were working wierdly and re-doing them helped.
--Try filtering for those things in the Grid view. You can devote two or more columns to Keywords. If you select several keywords in the same column, you get an "or" relationship. Selecting keywords in different columns gives an "and" relationship. Assuming this works, you can click the double-headed arrow at the end of the filter bar and save the filter as a preset.
Hal

Question about smart collections

I know how to create a smart collection by, first, sorting media by "type." But... how do I simply create a "new" smart collection, and then just "drag" what clips I want into said collection?
Yes... I was able to make a new smart collection, but I can't figure out how to simply drag-and-drop the clips I want into the smart collection. I sense it is something simple, but I can't grasp it as of yet.

You can't. A smart collection is, by definition, based on the criteria for the collection. Dragging a clip into that collection cannot give the clip the criteria for the collection. For instance, if you had a smart collection for audio clips, you could not drag a video file into in and miraculously make it an audio file.
What you want is keyword collections.

Smart Collections BCS4: Multiple drives???

Hello everyone,
I am trying to create a Smart Collection that gathers images from several external HDs. It seems I can only select one drive...
Anyone managed to work this?
Thanks for any help.

You may want to add a feature request for this option, maybe something as the possibility to add another disk criteria with a plus sign as it is already in the find criteria.
You can however create a smart collection for one disk, fill in the desired find criteria and after that action create an other new smart collection and choose another device using the browse option. (the first time the disk starts indexing, depending on the amount of content this can take a while). Using new smart collection does not change the find criteria so you only have to save it.
Then you can drag the content of each smart collection to 1 new simple collection. Hope this is a workaround that is useful for you :-)

Smart Collections and History "criteria"

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