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 :-)

Similar Messages

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

Hard Drive Publishing Services and Smart Collections

Hi there,
Total newbie here, so apologies if these are obvious. I haven't had much luck with the various searches I've tried.
Is it possible to publish a smart collection? When I add a rule to my "published smart folder", I only get entries when I specify searches against plain old vanilla collections versus the smart variety. I certainly can use all the same rules from my collections smart folder, but maintaining those rules in one place would be much less error prone, I believe
Is it possible to specify that a smart collection be exported to a sub-folder of the Hard Drive Publish Service? Essentially what I have are smart collections, divided into months. I want each month to export into their own month folders. Each folder then appears as a different album for iPhone/iPad/AppleTV. The only solution I'm seeing right now is to create separate Hard Drive Publish Services, one for each month.
Thanks for any help on these!
-Kevin

1. No. A smart collection (or a smart published folder, which is essentially the same) cannot search in another smart collection. You can only use the new smart published folder and trash your old smart collection to keep things simpler. A smart published folder is essentially a smart collection that resides in the Publish Services panel.
2. Yes, each published folder or smart published folder, as well as a published folder sets, create their own folder on drive. Published folders sets create a level of hierarchy when exported.

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?

Use LR Across Multiple Drives

Hi,
I'm curious to know if LR will support my current image collection, which resides on 2 separate external firewire 800 hard drives. I read somewhere that LR 1.0 would still require a library file to be housed in a single location, and that you could only have a single LR library.
I would like to work with LR using referenced files, rather than importing my images into the database.
Thanks!

Thanks for your quick reply Don. Yes, I have been using LR Beta for awhile now, but I had read that 1.0 did away with having multiple libraries (MacWorld article, I believe).
Good to know when LR 1.0 ships I can use it across multiple drives.
Follow up question for you: You mention it works with files stored on or offline. How do you handle moving files from online to offline storage? Is LR "smart" in that it can detect changes in file locations or does it prompt you the item has been moved?
Thanks!
Tim

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?

Smart Collections By Label Name

Since we have the ability to have multiple label sets, I think it would be better if we could use label names to create smart collections instead of just label colors.

Works for me. I use it to have Smart Collections of my SmugMug Galleries. Do 'Label Text' 'Contains'
. In the image Metadata fill in Label under Rating. I have scads of them and use Collection Sets to emulate the online hierarchy.
Don

Lightroom is not saving metadata. I have done several things to save and I still get the tag that states is is not saved. I have also created 2 smart collections. One showing metadata has been changed and one showing metadata is not up to date. No matter

Lightroom is not saving metadata. I have done several things to save and I still get the tag that states is is not saved. I have also created 2 smart collections. One showing metadata has been changed and one showing metadata is not up to date. No matter what I do it is not showing in LR that it is saved. I spent 2 days with Seth Resnick trying to correct this and we re created my catalog. It was ok, until I imported new images and same problem. Now I have a new problem, when I bring image to PS it saves it but does not bring back to LR. Am I the only one out there who has this problem?

See:
How to use multiple iPods, iPads, or iPhones with one computer
What is the best way to manage multiple...: Apple Support Communities

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.

Lightroom Adobe Revel Smart Collections

Hi There,
when i first tried the export function from LR to Revel i was totally thrilled because most of the time i work with smart collections. i just upoaded them to Revel from LR. From time to time some of the photos belong to more of one smart group. that wasn't any problem until the last 3 or 4 weeks. LR just showed an infobox saying that i will upload a newer version from a photo that is already in my Revel Album. But now LR does not export any photo if it is already in another album. this is a big problem for me, because changes on certain photos will not be updated any more. it is really frustrating that adobe changed this feature because Revel (what i already pay for) becomes almost useless for me. Organizing the photos into Albums in Revel is no option, because i have them already organized in LR.
Anybody with the same problem? Any workarounds? Any official comment from Adobe?
Thanks,
Arne

Pasted from thread http://forums.adobe.com/message/5325344:
"I cannot now get a single image to upload to multiple albums in the same library"
In fact, Add one image to multiple albums is supported by Revel plug-in in Lightroom. Click the “Replace” button will allow the photo to go to multiple albums.
Yes, the prompted dialog is confusing.

Bridge CS5 won't let me create Smart Collection

Hi all -
I am working with CS5 on a PC (Windows 7 Professional/64-bit) and Bridge will not allow me to create a Smart Collection. We want to use Bridge to sort graphics based on the type of graphic they are. We added keywords to the files and can use the filter to sort, but it would be nice if anytime a "timeline" keyworded graphic was added to the folder that it was added to that collection.
I go to the Collections panel, and click on the "Smart Collections" button, fill in my criteria, but when I hit Save nothing happens. All I can do is cancel out of the window. I have tried it on a couple different computers in my office and they all have the same issue. Same thing occurs if I do a search and try to hit the Smart Collection button there, nothing happens. It rolls over, but no action occurs when I click on it. Am I missing something here?

Have all of your Folders been properly Indexed in Bridge?
Select the Parent Folder which holds image files on each of your HDs;
Go to Tools / Cache / Build and Export Cache . . . Export Cache to Folders; and check the box to Export Cache to Folders.
This operation may take quite a long time (you might choose to leave it running over-night) but once done, I think that you will find that making Smart Collections from Keywords works really quickly -- even when files are scattered in multiple folders over many different HDs.

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 Collection Problem

Lightroom 2.2, Mac Pro, Mac OS 10.5.5, 2.8 Quad-Core Intel, 6GB RAM
I went to use the "recently modified" Smart Collection that comes with Lightroom 2, and changed the "Edit Date is in the last" days value from the default (which I think was 2) to 7. When I did that, I got photos in the smart collection which were last edited 2 years ago. I tried fiddling with the edit date settings, but I kept getting items in the collection last edited years ago rather than days ago. I verified this by looking at the metadata for the files in the collection.
I also checked the files last-modified time in the Finder, which matched the meta data, which was a couple of years ago.
Has anyone else seen this? Is there a workaround/fix?
Thanks!
-Eric

I also have a problem Smart Collections. Pre Lightroom, my folder structure on my hard drive for images was date with brief description (ex. 08_0108_NYC). I have keep that system in place since using Lightroom. I tried to set up Smart Collections that would be all folders from each month (ex. "folder name starts with 08_01"). It will show no folders. But if the folder is named with a dash instead of an underscore it works correctly. Smart Collections can find file names with underscores, why not folders?
Thanks,
JB

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.

Smart collection. Get photos out to edit and manipulate

My photos from hard drive are in the smart collection, but I cannot edit or manipulate any of these photos. What do I do?

What steps have you tried? What happens when you try?

Smart Collections BCS4: Multiple drives???

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