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Searching for Images

Lesson 8 from: Lightroom Desktop for the Photo Enthusiast

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

8. Searching for Images

Learn how to find your images with the help of keyword, artificial intelligence and good organization in Lightroom Desktop.
Next Lesson: Merging Images

Lesson Info

Searching for Images

Now let's talk a little bit more about searching and finding images. And I know we've talked mostly about it already. So you've got the general idea but it's important to understand a couple concepts about searching and finding images. The first thing that you need to do to find an image when you're searching for that perfect image is you need to find the closest approximation to where that thing is. And so if you have no idea where this photo is, but you just tend to remember that there was a there was a storm or there was a lighthouse or something like that. But you have no idea when you shot at what year you shot it, then you're gonna go to all photos. So up here in the top left corner, I've gone to all photos and then I'm going to go up to search the photos. Maybe I know who's in the photo but maybe it's not a photo with a person in it. And I'm gonna type in lighthouse because I know there was a lighthouse. Now when you get the search you're going to see different options. So you s...

ee lighthouse with a little search icon but then you also see lighthouse with a keyword icon. So the search icon is looking for lighthouse visually. So that means that the cloud with ai is actually searching visually for a lighthouse. So it's going to yield some results like things that it thinks is a lighthouse, but it's also gonna find lighthouses but it's gonna find lighthouses that you didn't keyword as well. If you go up here and search keywords, it's only going to search for keyword lighthouses, things that you actually input the word lighthouse into. Well, I don't know if I added the keyword to all of these lighthouses. So I'm going to click on lighthouse as a search term for visual search. So I click on that and it's searching for there's all the lighthouses and that's actually a lot of lighthouses. So that's really quite good. I've got lots and lots and it looks like all of them are good except for, so at this point I've got some good lighthouses and I want to make sure that I kind of hang on to those lighthouses. So the best thing for me to do at this point is to go into all of these images and I'm going to select them all. So command a and then I'm going to go through just scanning through and find the ones that aren't actually lighthouses. Like for instance, that bottle, that's not a lighthouse. It looks like one because it's up on a hill like that, but it's not this one is looks like the bottom of the lighthouse kind of like this one over here, but it's not, it's actually a military barracks. So I'm going to pull that one off the rest of that looks like a lighthouse, but it's actually a person on a surfboard or something. Um let's see, I'm scanning through that is just a post. Um this is a bell tower on a church. Let's see that's not a lighthouse, that is not a lighthouse, that is not a lighthouse. So I'm just looking for things that aren't lighthouses that kind of see how it thought that this couple out there on a jetty that that was a lighthouse. That's not um the statue of Liberty is not technically a lighthouse, although I guess you could metaphorically say it's a lighthouse. Um So let's see that one's not, so I'm just scanning through, I know that this is the inside of a building that maybe looks like a lighthouse, but it's not that one is that one is not almost there, that is a light, not a lighthouse. And these there should be a lighthouse on these rocks maybe, but there isn't. Um and there, okay, so I have done the work a, I found all the lighthouses. I then said well I was doing the search, I might as well make it easier to find the actual lighthouses. So I highlighted everything and I removed all of the things that aren't actually lighthouses and now I've got this grid highlighted. I can just simply go over to the keyword area and I can type in a keyword so I can type in light, oops, lighthouse and hit enter and now every one of those photos has an actual keyword that says lighthouse on it. So now the next time I go to search for those images and I type in Light house. Now I can search for the keyword and it gives me legitimate lighthouses as opposed to images that it thinks are lighthouses. Oop! I must have left one in there. So I'm going to hit command d to deselect all these and I'm just going to select the images here that aren't lighthouses and I can come over here and see how when I hover over lighthouse, I can cross out lighthouse. I'm just going to cross it out and now those disappear because remember our search term here is lighthouse. And so it's actively searching, there's another one that's not a lighthouse. I can just go click on it and then now it's gone because it's actively searching for lighthouses. So now that I've found all these lighthouses, maybe I want to find some additional things like for instance people or I want to find a storm. So I can click on S. T. O. R. M. And now I found a lighthouse with well that's not really much of a storm now is it? But it does have clouds and so it did, its best to find something that looks stormy. Or maybe I want to highlight all of these lighthouses because maybe there's a person in them and I can once I highlight all the lighthouses, I can actually go over here to the right and see all the information that is within all of these searches. So you can see these are applied to all his lighthouse. But I also see Adventure Castle, uh, dry tortugas engagement and I see indiana and Danielle Platt. So my wife and my daughter. So I know that India is in there. So now I could actually go up here to this people category. See how there's are they edited? What type of photo that are they? What kind of keywords can I add to this? So I can add to the keywords. But I can also add to the people. So I can just click on, I want to see Indy. And so now I've got a photo of a lighthouse and my daughter in it. If I x that out, then I go back to the regular search and I can say, well I want to see other keywords also. So I'm going to look for a lighthouse that also was shot with a very specific camera or even I could say the lens. And so it gives me when I type in lens it knows I'm looking for a lens. So it tells me here are the lenses that you used on all of these photos. And I want to say, well, you know, I only want to look for Images that were shot with the newest version of my 70-200 because then I know I'm honing in on very specific photos. I know that I took them recently. So I'm gonna click on that and it's going to say, Oh, these are the images that you took. So oh that's the lighthouse that I was looking for. And so now I can take that lighthouse and drag it into my art ideas. And I found the lighthouse I was looking for. The other thing that I can do is I can always highlight all of those. Oops, I clear the entire search so I can always go back to my lighthouse search. And once I have my lighthouses, I can always highlight those and come into this folder or any folder and create an album and call it light houses And include those 199 photos inside of that lighthouse folder. And so now I have an album full of lighthouses, but that was based on a search. So remember that when you're searching, once you've done a search and you're going to kind of feel your way through the search, you start by saying where is it? If I don't know where it is, I started all photos all photos. But if I can narrow it down to a year, just simply click by date and then highlight the year that you know that it was in and then start looking from there because you can hone it down if you know that there are people involved in it. You can always click on people and then you could go to the person you're looking for. And now once you have the person you're looking for, you could start searching within that because the criteria is the person and then other things. Now once you go into people and this is really important when you're searching people, the first thing that happens when you click on a person is it's going to ask you is this the person you're looking for? And this is not the person. So I'm gonna click No neither is that neither is that it just asks a couple. So every time you come to the person search area it's going to give you as soon as you click on a person it's going to say is this person the person you're looking for and you'll say yes or no yes or no yes or no. Usually like four or five of them at tops. And it's that's just educating the system. So take the time to do it. If for some reason you get to one that you cannot tell. And this happens a lot. Like you look at it and you're like I don't know, that might be her, that might not be her. Just go over to the right hand side and there will be a little X. Just click X. And it will stop asking you questions and then you can go through and look at the photos and then maybe the next time it will show you a different photos so that you're not confused as to what? Because you don't want to answer the question wrong because it'll teach the computer wrong. So make sure you know, it's that person, if it's not X out of the system and don't let it ask you anymore questions. So just so you can see that in play. If I click on my son Jackson, it's asking me is this Jackson? Yes, that's Jackson. Is that Jackson? Yes, it's Jackson. But if I didn't know, I could always go right over here to that X. And click on that X. Now this photo here thinks that it's Jackson, but it's not it's actually his cousins. And so I'm gonna go over here and get rid of Jackson off of this one because that's not him. So I'm going to remove that out of there so that we don't think that that's Jackson. And that will also further educate the system. To say this photo doesn't have Jackson in it. So that's really important to help train your system when it asks you questions about, is this person, the person you're looking for, answer the questions because it helps train the artificial intelligence. So when you're searching, remember to go from bigger to smaller, look for the smallest area that you know where the photo you're looking for exists. That may be all photos that may be a certain year that maybe a certain month or maybe it's in a specific album. But try and find the closest area, get as close to it as you can before you start searching. So that you get really valid searches and then go into the search area and start looking for uh specific people, specific cameras, specific lenses that you happen to remember or you can search in visual terms. And so lighthouse or tree or castle. And then once you have that you can start further honing that search down based on five stars, four stars, three stars or even additional information. Additional people, additional items. I know that there was castle with a tree with a red dress, a woman in a red dress. So you can start honing that search and at one point you will find the image you're looking for. If it yields a search that's completely void of images, then you know that the artificial intelligence is having a hard time finding that photo and you're gonna have to reimagine your search. And so now stop looking for the red dress and start looking for the tree. And if you find a photo and you say, oh yes, I remember this photo was taken on the same day as the photo of the person that I'm looking for. That's great because now all you have to do is right click that photo And then you're gonna go to show photos from the same date when you do that. It's going to take you to that date. And now, oh it was on Saturday May four when I shot these images. So now I can kind of scroll through and boom and there's the photo shoot that I was looking for. So I found it but now once I found it, I need to make it possible for myself to find it again. And so now I just need to highlight all of the images that were yielded in this searching process. And I either need to go in and add keywords here and notice that it sees there's a face, I could add a name to that face or I can add a keyword and say this is a model and I could say that it is a photo shoot and it was in Hawaii and she has dark hair. Uh what is that? Brown hair? Brown hair. So now I could find the brown haired model in Hawaii at a photo shoot because I could search for those keywords. So if you find something, make sure you do a little bit of key wording so that you can find the image anytime you want it. You don't want to have to go through this search twice. Um and that's all I need is just a little bit of information to know uh what I'm looking for the next time I'm looking for. It. Never search something twice without adding a little information to it. So you can find it really easily the next time

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Jean McMillan
 

Thoroughly enjoyed your class, have learned so much about how take my Ipad to another level, now can't wait to put it all into practise!

Red Tulip
 

Sometimes it's hard to know what the instructor is pointing to so it's easy to get confused. Better job is needed in explaining what you are pointing to.

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