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Lesson Info

Finding Your Images in Lightroom

1 Now, let's say you wanted to search 2 for specific images in Lightroom. 3 So you don't know where they are, you don't know 4 what album you put them in, you don't know 5 what date you shot them on. 6 You don't even know which people are in them, 7 or maybe you know which people are in 'em, 8 but there's too many people in your people list 9 and so you can't find them. 10 What we're gonna do is we're going 11 to search our catalog instead of hunting 12 and going directly to the place that we know they exist. 13 We're gonna search by asking Lightroom 14 to deliver information to us. 15 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go up to the top 16 of our Lightroom organization panel on the left-hand side 17 and I'm gonna click on all photos. 18 So once I've got all photos 19 and you can see that there's 100,000 photos 20 up here in Lightroom. 21 So now I'm gonna search 100,000 photos 22 for very specific things 23 and I'm gonna do that up here in the top-middle area 24 of Lightroom. 25 You ca...

n see it says Search all photos. 26 If I happen to be in one of my albums, 27 so like let's say I went down 28 to this HDR geometry album. 29 Now if I go up to the top, I'm only gonna be searching 30 through the HDR and geometry album. 31 So I wanna search all photos 32 because I really don't know 33 where this photo is I'm looking for. 34 And so now, I'm gonna go up to this top area here 35 and I'm gonna click on that top area. 36 When I do that, it's gonna open up a search window 37 or a search dropdown, 38 and you can see that I can search by a lot 39 of different things, like for instance, star ratings, flags. 40 I can search by camera settings, I can search by metadata 41 or file type, the orientation. 42 So vertical or horizontal extension, 43 like is it a PSD or a TIFF or what is it? 44 Also, I can see certain people. 45 Now it's just showing me some suggested people at the moment 46 and I can click on this little arrow to see more, 47 but I can also type in those people's names. 48 So for instance, my son, his name is Britain, 49 so I'm gonna type in Britain 50 and now I can see people with the name Britain. 51 So I'm gonna type in Britain 52 and notice that it gave me one search term Britain, 53 and it's in a little box, but I can still add to that. 54 So now I can say I wanna search by a location. 55 So I'm gonna say Italy 56 and notice that I can search by the location of Italy, 57 or I can search by keyword Italy. 58 Two different things. 59 So if I added the word 60 or the key word Italy for some reason, or Italian Alps, 61 I can click on that and it's a keyword. 62 It's not necessarily a place, 63 but if I have a geotag location 64 on the camera itself, then I can look for Rome 65 or I can look for Italy. 66 So I'm gonna click on Rome, Italy. 67 So now I'm looking for him in a very specific place 68 and I can zoom back out 69 and apparently, I don't think I have anything with him 70 and Rome, Italy, but I can type in Italy again 71 and I'm just gonna say there, okay, 72 so I didn't have the specific area tagged, 73 but I did have Italy inside of the keywords. 74 So now, I have all of the images that I was looking for 75 of my son in Italy. 76 Now, I can also do something even cooler. 77 Not only can I search for very specific things inside 78 of my metadata, like locations and keywords 79 and F stops. 80 So like I can click on the lens or the focal length. 81 So if I click on focal length, then it gives me all 82 of the different focal lengths inside 83 of this entire collection of all photographs. 84 And I have no idea. 85 I didn't realize that I'd shot something 86 with a 500 millimeter lens. 87 So I'm gonna click on it and see what that is. 88 So it's gonna show me all the images 89 with a 500 millimeter lens, a wedding that I shot 90 with a 500 millimeter lens. 91 I think I do remember that now. 92 Okay, so I was able to find something 93 with a 500 millimeter lens, 94 but what I'm going to do is I'm gonna search all photos 95 and I'm gonna again search for my son Britain. 96 So this is all of the photos of my son. 97 And now, I can actually type in a word that is going 98 to then be visually searched by Lightroom. 99 So this is an AI feature inside of Lightroom. 100 Remember that all of your images are in the cloud as well. 101 And so Lightroom, even while your computer is off, 102 Lightroom web can be churning 103 through on a regular basis your images 104 and can be cataloging the information inside there. 105 So each of your images is kind of auto tagged with boat 106 and water and mountain and all that kind of stuff 107 because those are visual elements 108 that the artificial intelligence 109 in the cloud machine learning has been churning over 110 for months and months and months and so, 111 and it's been churning over not only your photos, 112 but all the billions of photos that are out there inside 113 of the Lightroom ecosystem for everybody. 114 And so it's learning from those photos 115 so that when you send in a request 116 and ask for Lightroom to find something for you, it knows 117 what those things look like. 118 So now I'm going to search for that specific term 119 and what I wanna look for is a horse. 120 I know that I have a portrait of my son next to a horse, 121 so I'm gonna type in H-O-R-S-E 122 and notice that I have options to look 123 for keywords of horses 124 or I can just have it visually search for horses. 125 So that's what this search option here is for. 126 So I can either look for specific keywords 127 or I can look for a horse itself. 128 So, I'm gonna have it visually look for a horse 129 and there they are. 130 So I've got Britain with a horse, that's pretty awesome. 131 Now, sometimes, if I'm looking for something 132 and I know I have images of my son 133 and I'm just gonna go back by hitting G, I've gone back 134 to the grid and I know that I have him with 135 some chickens, so I'm gonna type in chicken 136 or maybe I should type in hen, let's see, hen 137 and I am going to click on the search option for hen, 138 nope, I don't see it. 139 I'm gonna try chicken 140 and hit enter and I don't see it. 141 So this is what happens when 142 for some reason the AI doesn't recognize a chicken 143 and I'm not sure why that is, 144 but I could probably, let's see if I 145 actually put a keyword in there. 146 Nope, apparently I didn't even keyword it. 147 But you can see that I've got one here. 148 So if I double click that, there's my son 149 and there's a chicken. 150 So for some reason it doesn't see that, 151 maybe it's because we have some silly little bandanas 152 on the chickens. 153 So maybe chickens 154 with bandanas don't look like chickens anymore 155 to a computer, but, or maybe they're just too small. 156 But this was a Christmas card that we did at one point 157 for three French hens. 158 So we made them French 159 and at one point, we put Berets on them. 160 So, but apparently, they don't look like chickens. 161 So sometimes, the search fails, 162 but in most cases, it's actually does a pretty good job 163 at finding those visual things you're looking for. 164 Now, once you have a set of images 165 that have been brought up, 166 so in this case, we're just searching for images 167 of Britain Plat, then I can actually click on this little, 168 this funnel option here. 169 And when I click on the funnel option, you can see 170 that it brings down a search option of all 171 of the different types of things that are available for me 172 to search within this search term here 173 called Britain Plat. 174 So I can search by things that have three stars and above, 175 and that kinda limits the amount of images I'm looking at. 176 I can look for things only things that were selected, 177 so things that have a a white flag on them. 178 So now I've selected the images 179 and I have three stars and above. 180 I can also click on this little button that says edited 181 so I can drop down 182 and say, yes, I only want images that have been edited. 183 I don't want things that I haven't even gone through yet. 184 So I click on yes, what type? 185 Well, I can look for photos or raw images. 186 I think I'll keep it for both. 187 I can also look at what kind of camera, 188 where the location was, 189 and you can see all the different locations 190 that are available to me inside of this set of images. 191 And then I can look at the sync status. 192 So, is it synchronizing currently? 193 Is it synced and backed up? 194 Which means it's already in the cloud and it's down here. 195 Is the original available offline? 196 Is it down here? 197 Do I have it? 198 So maybe if I'm on a plane flight 199 and I only wanna look at things that are currently available 200 or was it synced from Lightroom Classic. 201 So I can put images originally in Lightroom Classic 202 and then I can sync them over to Lightroom here 203 so that if I wanted to, 204 I could have Lightroom classic be on a desktop computer 205 and then I could have Lightroom the new version 206 of Lightroom on a laptop 207 and I could actually sync them back and forth. 208 So that's a topic for a brand new workshop here 209 on Creative Live called The Streamlined Lightroom workflow. 210 And it's where we talk about all 211 of the versions of Lightroom. 212 So we talk about Lightroom Classic, Lightroom desktop 213 or the new version of Lightroom web 214 and Lightroom mobile and how to use them all together. 215 So we talk about the whole thing, the entire ecosystem. 216 For now, you should know that you can sort by images 217 that you've brought in from Lightroom Classic. 218 You can also look for other people, 219 so you can add other people to this. 220 So for instance, I could say I want to look for things 221 with Britain and with Indie, who's my daughter? 222 Click on that. And now I've got Britain 223 and Indie on this list. 224 So it's adding, not only can I see images of Britain, 225 but I can also see images of Indie. 226 So now I'm kind of adding more people 227 to the pot that I could see. 228 Now, over on the top right hand corner here, 229 you see a grayed out heart 230 and a grayed out quote bubble. 231 Later on, we're gonna talk about sharing our images 232 via albums or specifically, one image at a time. 233 And if someone is looking that at those on the web, 234 they can actually make comments and they can like them. 235 And if they do that, then those would show up here 236 and you'd be able to sort those images by images 237 that have likes or images that have comments on them. 238 So that's how we search for images inside of Lightroom 239 rather than hunting and trying to go find them 240 in the albums that we put them in 241 and having to remember where they are. 242 We can find them here. 243 Now if we find an image that we really like, 244 but we only see one, so we only see the one or two images, 245 but we wanna see the entire set of images that we had 246 shot on that same day, all we have to do is right click 247 that image now 248 and then go up to this option, the third option down 249 and say show photos from the same date. 250 When I click on that option, it's going 251 to show all the images from that same date, 252 and it's actually taken me to November of 2021, 253 Wednesday, November 24th. 254 There it is. 255 Those are the images that were taken on that same date. 256 So if you've given up on looking for a specific photo 257 and you want to find something, you can simply go up 258 to your search area, you can search 259 for a very specific person once you've found 260 that specific person, 261 and maybe you search based on a location. 262 So we're gonna click on here and say Arizona. 263 And then you say, "Oh yes, I found the image 264 I was looking for here. 265 Where is that photo? Right? 266 Click it, go to show photos from the same date, 267 and boom, now you see all the photos that you took on 268 that date, and then you can go and drill down 269 and find that one and work on it. 270 That is a great way to find images. 271 Don't waste time looking 272 through albums extensively trying to find them. 273 Just go to the search, find that image, 274 and then right click it, show the images from the same date, 275 and then you'll be able to find them. 276 Now, if you happen to know 277 what specific album you're looking for 278 and you know where it's organized, then the easiest thing 279 to find photos obviously is to just go to the album. 280 So in our case, I have made an album 281 and that album's called CL Images. 282 So these are the images that I'm going 283 to be using throughout this workshop 284 because I was in the CL images album. 285 The first search term is CL images as an album, 286 and then I can drill down further 287 and find specific things that I'm looking for. 288 And that is searching for your photos in a nutshell.