smart collection not working

[someothername]

I've been trying to work with Beardsley's set of collections and have come across something that I almost think worked before and doesn't work now. I add to the Current work collection the contents of the folder I'm going to work on. Then I go through and flag, reject or ignore every frame. But now, the smart collection that is supposed to show the flagged items says zero are flagged, zero are rejected and all are still flagged.

I am almost sure that the first time I used this method, everything worked as it should.

And what's worse, when I removed the items from the collection, the flags that had been clearly showing when I was in the collection disappeared. The one edit and crop that I'd performed came through ok, though, as did one that I'd put a star on. The keywords and captions that I applied while in the collection also came through.

(Just did it again and this time it seems to be working correctly. The difference was that this time, instead of right clicking on the Current work collection and adding selected photos, I selected all then dragged and dropped them on the collection...)


Is there some step that I am forgetting to do?

Puzzled,

 

[Denis Pagé]

Is there some step that I am forgetting to do?

Flags are local by design. What is a pick in one collection may not be one in another...

 

[someothername]

Flags are local by design. What is a pick in one collection may not be one in another...

Then something must be wrong with the engine that handles the scripts for smart collections.

I'm looking at a collection that has 57 images in it. This is the "'.'' Current work" collection. It does not show any flags at all. The home folder has the same 57 images and 27 of them have pick flags and 4 have reject flags.

The smart collection "'.21 Flagged" shows the 27 images that have flags in the home folder, but the collection itself does not show any flags. The edit collection box is attached.

I can change a flag in the collection and it does not impact the smart collection, nor does it do anything to the flags in the home folder. But if I change the flag in the home folder, it immediately shows up in the smart collection. Also if I change it while in the smart collection, it is reflected in the home folder.

What was the reasoning behind making the flags behave so differently than stars? (or keywords or develop settings)

 

[Brad Snyder]

To deliberately provide the specific capability to rate images differently in different organizational views.

The canonical example is two collections; "Bride's Mother's Picks" and "Groom's Mother's Picks". Each with the same candidate images, and vastly different rating perceptions.


I haven't worked very much with Smart Collections based on picks in collections, so I can't contribute much to the immediate discussion.

 

[someothername]

To deliberately provide the specific capability to rate images differently in different organizational views.

The canonical example is two collections; "Bride's Mother's Picks" and "Groom's Mother's Picks". Each with the same candidate images, and vastly different rating perceptions.


I haven't worked very much with Smart Collections based on picks in collections, so I can't contribute much to the immediate discussion.

You can make two collections like that, and the flags only apply to that collection, but stars and colors get applied to the home folder as well as to both collections. I can certainly see making two collections and removing from them as needed to narrow down to the picks.

But the basic problem I'm having has to do with using smart collection to look at the flagged items in a regular collection.

I made another pair of test collections and put in them the images from a small folder that has only 6 images. I built a smart collection and it is showing the 27 items flagged from the home folder of an entirely different collection, the one I had started this exercise with! I changed the order of the conditions and the same thing happened.

I looked in the settings folder, but the only smart collection templates I found there are the ones that came with LR. I do not see any of the ones I've created.


as a side note, if you create a collection with virtual images, it creates copies of those virtual images in your home folder. If you do it again, to make another collection, it makes more virtual images. How do I get rid of all those extra virtual images without having to select each one. I'm pretty sure I only made two collections with virtual images to test out how the flagging and colors would work, but now I have a home folder with three virtual images for each photo. So now, in the original home folder I have a photo whose "show in collection" shows "'.' Current work", the first virtual image shows "_test2collection", the second also shows "_test2collection" and the third one shows "_test1collection". When I go to test1 collection, I see just one copy of each photo as a virtual copy, but when I go to test2, i find 2 virtual copies of each one.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

The canonical example is two collections; "Bride's Mother's Picks" and "Groom's Mother's Picks". Each with the same candidate images, and vastly different rating perceptions.

Brilliant example Brad! I might have to borrow that one....!

 

[someothername]

Brilliant example Brad! I might have to borrow that one....!

In my testing, though, the ratings will carry across collections unless you build your collection with virtual images. The problem I have is that the second collection then has double virtual images...

 

[Brad Snyder]

For Ratings true. I mispoke, I used the word ratings, when I intended 'picks'. I thought this was clear from the context, but then again, '*I* knew what I meant'.

 

[someothername]

I still have the problem I started with.

I went through a folder and flagged 163 photos. I created virtual copies of the flagged ones, then selected the virtual copies and right clicked on the collection '.'' Current work and added the selected photos.

At this point, when I go to Current work, no flags show, which I guess is what is supposed to happen. However, the collection "'.21 Flagged" which is supposed to be the flagged images in Current work, shows 163 flagged.

I go through Current work, developing and marking as rejected those I feel didn't make the cut. But now the collection "'.21 Flagged" still shows 163 Flagged and the collection '.23 Delete Reject shows ', even though there are about 5' flagged as rejected that I can see in the collection.

If I go to the folder, I see both the original flagged ones as flagged, and all the virtual as flagged picks. No rejects showing.

If I create a new smart collection with one rule being contains "Current work" the only thing I can get to show is the rule for flag being set to pick. It won't show me the rejects or the unflagged, even though in the collection "Current work" I only see unflagged and rejects at this point.

 

[johnbeardy]

I hate being called Beardsley - reminds me of the Quasimodo of the Mersey and the Tyne....

Anyway, what you're finding is that Lightroom's smart collections are half-baked. Some work as one wants and as expected, but there are too many bugs and omissions. And if I can't explain the difference between "Contains All" and "Contains Words"....

For example, right now I'm looking at a single image in Current Work, and it's Flagged within that collection. But it isn't picked up by the smart collection which supposedly looks for CW and Flagged. That's because LR isn't calculating "in CW and flagged in CW" - instead it's calculating "in CW and flagged in its folder".

I'm not sure it explains your situation, but you're right in applying common sense and checking the results of smart collections. I think my collections are as good as they can be, and my glass is half full

John

 

[someothername]

My sincere apologies, there are some "nicknames" people call me that I don't like either. Well, think of it as a compliment, perhaps I was confusing you with Aubrey Beardsley.

For now I'll just use the pick/reject flag on the original folder to sort out what I want to work further with. And wait for the SDK to be expanded to the point where I can actually work with smart collections in code.

Except for the GUID, the templates look pretty easy to work with if I knew what the properties were. But apparently new templates are stored in the database and I haven't the time to dig them out of there.

I hate being called Beardsley - reminds me of the Quasimodo of the Mersey and the Tyne....

Anyway, what you're finding is that Lightroom's smart collections are half-baked. Some work as one wants and as expected, but there are too many bugs and omissions. And if I can't explain the difference between "Contains All" and "Contains Words"....

For example, right now I'm looking at a single image in Current Work, and it's Flagged within that collection. But it isn't picked up by the smart collection which supposedly looks for CW and Flagged. That's because LR isn't calculating "in CW and flagged in CW" - instead it's calculating "in CW and flagged in its folder".

I'm not sure it explains your situation, but you're right in applying common sense and checking the results of smart collections. I think my collections are as good as they can be, and my glass is half full

John

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Except for the GUID, the templates look pretty easy to work with if I knew what the properties were. But apparently new templates are stored in the database and I haven't the time to dig them out of there.

If you right click on a smart collection, you can 'export smart collection settings' to a file and open in a text editor, and then reimport later. Obviously try it on a new catalog in case you mess things up, as I'm guessing it'd be tough to remove a corrupted one that you'd imported.