Smart collections: Use keyword hierarchy in filter criteria?

[CDL]

Is it possible – when defining a filter criteria for a smart collection – to search for a specific keyword WITHIN the keyword hierarchy?

To make this question a little bit clearer, consider the following example: I have a keyword called “Person” which contains sub-keywords with names of persons (i.e. xy ) who are shown in the photo. At the same time I have a keyword called “Event”, which contains sub-keywords like “Marriage”, “Birthday”, … These event sub-keys contain again names to which the event is related (i.e. the birthday of xy). The person itself is in this case not necessarily shown in the photo. The question now is, how can I define a smart collection filter criteria which shows me all photos that actually show person xy. Therefore, is it possible to define a hierarchy filter criteria like for example “contains all” “xy>Person”? A criteria like “Person” AND “xy” is no solution, as in the “Event” photos there may be persons, but which are not necessarily xy. I can only hope that this was clear  

Also, what is the exact difference between “contains all” and “contains words”. If the name of the person xy is made of 2 words (family and first name), will either of the 2 search only for the exact match of the 2 word string?

Thanks very much for any answers.

[john beardsworth]

I'm not sure it is clear, but try to build the smart collection with more than one line. So the overall condition is set to "All" and then one line reads keywords contains xy and the second is keywords contains person.

If I remember correctly “contains all” looks for the words in any order and not together, so will give you the same results whether you search for "red car" or "car red". Again, IIRC “contains words” should really be "contains phrase" - ie the words in the order you've typed.

John

[CDL]

Thanks very much for your answer, John. Unfortunately this won't work because if person xy is not shown in the photo, and if there were photos with ANY persons at an event related to xy (without xy shown in the photo), these photos would also be listed. It would really be necessary to search for xy DIRECTLY LINKED to the corresponding hierarchy (like xy>person). Unfortunately I haven't found yet a possibility to do this. Any other ideas, anyone?

[john beardsworth]

I'm sorry, I really can't work out what you are trying to establish. It could even be that it's the peculiarities of your keyword hierarchy, and/or how you assign keywords, that are making it tough for you. However, you certainly cannot do a search on "xy>person". Make sure the overall setting is appropriate - probably All. Maybe you can also make use of the Alt / option click when you add a line (+) which allows you to nest extra conditions.

John

[CDL]

Thanks very much for your efforts, John. I'm afraid it might (currently) not be possible what I'm trying to do.

I'll try nevertheless to explain it once again in maybe a clearer way: I have a keyword "xy".  This same keyword "xy" may occur as sub-keyword of keyword "Person", but it may also appear as sub-keyword of keyword "Birthday". I would now like to find all those photos (AND ONLY THOSE) where "xy" occurs as sub-keyword of keyword "Person". So, something like "xy>Person" (EXCLUDING "xy>Birthday").

If someone has an idea on how to do this or can say that this is for certain not possible, please let me know. I have not found a way to do this so far.

[john beardsworth]

OK, clearer, and you can't search on xy>person. However, have you tried:

[blockquote]Match all of the following rules
Keywords Contains xy
Keywords Contains Person[/blockquote]

It appears to work as you want.

John

[CDL]

Thanks again, John. As “xy>person” is not possible, I’ve come to the conviction that what I would like to do is not possible either.

Unfortunately your proposal will not work if a photo contains both “aa>Person” and “xy>Birthday” (or in other words, if at the Birthday party of xy a photo is made showing the person aa, this photo will show up as well although person xy is not shown in the picture).

I would find it a good additional feature for a future release of LR if there were the possibility to use keyword hierarchy in keyword filter criteria ;-)

[john beardsworth]

Match all of the following rules
Keywords Contains xy
Keywords Contains Person
Keywords Doesn't Contain Birthday

[CDL]

    I really appreciate that you are not giving up, John, but nevertheless I think that the only solution would be if hierarchical filters were possible and I would really find this a useful feature for a future release.

Unfortunately also the rules above won't work. Imagine that a photo of xy was taken at his own birthday. There would be the keys xy>Person and xy>Birthday at the same time and the photo would not be selected by the filter (although it should, because xy is shown in the photo).

If it is not possible to use hierarchical filters, I think it will not be possible to realize this.

[frugal]

I'm a little confused by your hierarchy, it sounds like it's something like this, let me know if this is right:

Person -> John Doe
Events -> Birthdays -> John Doe

Your problem is then that you might have a picture with the following keywords:

Person -> Sarah Smith, Events -> Birthdays -> John Doe

Just using keywords of Person and John Doe, the picture of Sarah will show up in the smart collection because she was at John's birthday. You have other photos of John at his own birthday so you can't exclude based on Event or Birthdays.

To me, it sounds like the real way to fix this is to fix the keywords hierarchy so that you have something more unique under Events. Something like Events -> Birthdays -> John Doe's birthday (or even better, John Doe's 40th birthday or John Doe's birthday 2008 would allow you to separate each year). Then it should be possible to set up a smart collection with Person and the entire keyword John Doe (I don't have LR so I can't say what the exact wording in LR would be but you want to match the whole keyword, not starts with, ends with or contains this word). Similarly, you could pull out any events related to a certain person by matching Events and keyword contains their name.

[CDL]

@frugal: Absolutely correct as you describe the problem. I think the only workaround at the moment is to modify the keyword structure in a way similar to what you describe, until keyword hierarchy filtering may be possible some day.