Library Module Complex Searches

[JMarkTurner]

Lightroom's Library module is weak in its search functions. I market some of my work as stock, direct to clients who have very specific requests.

Is there a way to search all photos that contain a specific word in the caption, which were made in specific months (any year), and are in any folder with a specific name? For example, my one of my searches today called for finding all photos with "Pinus" in the caption, photographed during the winter months (November-March), in a garden (I have folders named Gardens under my master "year" folders going back to 1993). Without limiting the search to the months I need, and garden photos only, I had to wade through 3000+ photos to find the handful that fit my client's criteria.

I know I can select individual months, within each year, using the Metadata panel, but it's really tedious to select the months individually within each year. I also know I can select the individual "Gardens" folders and limit my search to those, but again it's very tedious to select each of those separately for each year.

Although it shouldn't matter, I have nearly 300,000 photos in my catalog, running LR Classic CC version 7.5, under Windows 7.

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

I am not a user of Plugins, but there is sure to be one that might do what you need. Such as Any Filter by John Ellis. http://www.johnrellis.com/lightroom/anyfilter.htm

Any Filter Lightroom Plugin

To do your filter in Lightroom may involve some time defining Smart Collections, with something like this-