Smart Collection - "On this day"

[Richie]

Hi all. I've been searching around a bit for an answer to this one... but haven't found one yet (nor have I found anyone else asking the question). I want to create a smart collection that displays photos taken on TODAY'S date (whatever todays date happens to be), regardless of year - ie if today is August 7th 2016, I want my smart collection to show photos from today, as well as August 7th 2015, August 7th 2014, August 7th 2013 etc etc etc. And then if I looked at the same smart collection tomorrow (August 8), it would display all photos taken on August 8th from any year. I realise I can create a smart collection "Capture date" > "Is today"... but this doesn't cover all of what I'm looking to do.
I don't THINK this is possible to do... but want to confirm either way.

In case anyone is interested in why... when I'm feeling nostalgic, I like to see what I was doing on this day 'X' years ago

 

[clee01l]

Welcome to the forum.
Lightroom ( And the structured Query Language (SQL) used to search the LR database) is not flexible in that way.

The best that I have been able to do is create a series of Queries that isolate images by year shot:
{Capture Date}{is in the range}{2001-01-01}to{2001-12-31} etc. This can be a lot of work to set up but the Query is a text file and can be duplicated and edited using some sophisticated text editors These additional templates can then be imported into your Collection panel.

It might be easier to edit an existing smart collection to produce a current listing:
{Capture Date}{is}{2014-08-07}

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Any Filter from John Rellis can do this, except it won't be a smart filter. You have to run it manually. Any Filter Lightroom Plugin

 

[erro]

Easy. I have made a collection that displays photos from around one year back:

Match all:
Capture date is in the last 366 days
Capture date is not in the last 364 days

Adjust the numbers as you please. If you want to go back two years add another statement for 730 days and so on.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Easy. I have made a collection that displays photos from around one year back:

Match all:
Capture date is in the last 366 days
Capture date is not in the last 364 days

Adjust the numbers as you please. If you want to go back two years add another statement for 730 days and so on.

Clever. Now just remember next year that 2016 was a leap year...

 

[clee01l]

Easy. I have made a collection that displays photos from around one year back:

Match all:
Capture date is in the last 366 days
Capture date is not in the last 364 days

Adjust the numbers as you please. If you want to go back two years add another statement for 730 days and so on.

I've been trying to figure out something like this for years! Brilliant!

 

[Richie]

Easy. I have made a collection that displays photos from around one year back:

Match all:
Capture date is in the last 366 days
Capture date is not in the last 364 days

Adjust the numbers as you please. If you want to go back two years add another statement for 730 days and so on.

Thanks that might be close enough As previous reply mentioned, leap years will throw things out just a little bit... But it might be close enough. I might give it a go and so how it's looking once I go back 10 or 15 years

 

[Richie]

Any Filter from John Rellis can do this, except it won't be a smart filter. You have to run it manually. Any Filter Lightroom Plugin

Thanks I'll check that out

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Thanks that might be close enough As previous reply mentioned, leap years will throw things out just a little bit... But it might be close enough. I might give it a go and so how it's looking once I go back 10 or 15 years

You have to remember that leap years influence your calculation from March 1st that same year. If you want to see today (August 9th) one year ago, you have to go back 366 days, because 2016 is a leap year and February 29th 2016 has already passed.

 

[PhilBurton]

Great, insofar as there is no other solution. But the real solution would be the equivalent of the today() function in Excel, which returns today's date in a numerical format. Plugin writers?

Phil

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Great, insofar as there is no other solution. But the real solution would be the equivalent of the today() function in Excel, which returns today's date in a numerical format. Plugin writers?

Like I said earlier: 'Any Filter' can do this.

 

[johnbeardy]

My Search and Replace plugin (the free part) parses out the day, hour, minute etc.

 

[Richie]

Easy. I have made a collection that displays photos from around one year back:

Match all:
Capture date is in the last 366 days
Capture date is not in the last 364 days

Adjust the numbers as you please. If you want to go back two years add another statement for 730 days and so on.

I just tried setting this up and hit a snag when trying to go back 2 years (ie 731 days) as well as 1 year (366 days)... For each year, two rules are required: Date is in the last 366 days AND date is not in the last 365... but then when adding the two rules for the previous year (is in the last 731 days, is not in the last 730) they conflict with the first two, so the result is zero photos in the smart collection (as ALL rules need to be matched).
A solution is to have a seperate smart collection for each year (ie one smart collection going back 366 days, one going back 731 days, one going back 1096 days etc etc) and then put all of those in a collection set... the collection set would then give me the result I'm looking for. Of course... if my brain is working correctly at the moment (not guaranteed)... I believe that some smart collections would need to be edited at some stage once a year (After April 28th?)... because then we would want to go back only be 365 days (for a non-leap year), not 366

Appreciate those who have suggested plugins... would love to go the smart collection route though (not looking promising)

 

[Johan Elzenga]

If you click on the little plus sign that adds criteria while holding the ALT-key, you can add a second set of rules as OR statement, so your smart collection becomes A+B or C+D.

And yes, on March 1, 2017 you have to change the criteria for the first year.

 

[Richie]

If you click on the little plus sign that adds criteria while holding the ALT-key, you can add a second set of rules as OR statement, so your smart collection becomes A+B or C+D.

Well there you go! I just learnt something! Cheers

 

[Richie]

For anyone still following this conversation... or anyone who stumbles across this thread in the future... attached is a screenshot of how I've ended up setting up my smart collection. It's working how I want it to at the moment... we'll see what happens after March 1 when I'll need to fiddle around with the number of days in the rule(s)

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Thanks for sharing that Richie!