How to search for photos

[bajadreamer]

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to search for images using words that appear in the file name of an image? For example, I include the location shot in the file name of all the images I process. If I shot the image at San Joaquin Wildlife Reserve, that will be included in the file name. I would like to search, among my 10,000 saved images all those shot at San Joaquin WR. I do not want to know what I should have done when I processed the images (keywords in LR or Photo Mechanic) but rather what I can do now. I use Windows 10. All of my images have been processed, named and saved via Photoshop.
When I use Windows Picture Viewer and search, it will sometimes give me some of the images I have searched for but not all of them.

 

[MrFotoFool]

The best way is to add tags with the name in the metadata of your image. This is not seen in the file name but is embedded. If you have not been doing this before, I am afraid it won't help you with your current search, but if you start doing it then it should help going forward. You can also add tags to photos you have already taken as you come across them.

 

[Mark Hauser]

I've never used it myself but 2 YouTubers I know recommended it.
you can read it once
It automatically lists your images with keywords and can then be selected.

Excire: AI Image Management Software for Mac & PC

Excire - viele intelligente Funktionen unterstützen Sie dabei, Ordnung zu halten und die Fotos zu finden, die Sie gerade suchen.

excire.com

 

[Hooligans Imagery]

Keywording in Lightroom

Very powerful but time consuming. Watching Steve's video LR course convinced me to use it. I think one day there may be AI keywording. ON1 has a program to do it, the first one I am aware of. I think LR is the most advanced for organization but other programs can do it as well. Once you learn the tricks, it is easy to find the all the images.

 

[SandyW]

Well, the above suggestions are better, but it sounds like your only current option is to use Windows to search on part of the file name. I've never liked the built in windows indexing. I use a small program called "everything" from voidtools (donation ware). Excire is a paid database type program that uses AI to apply keywords when importing photos into its database. It has a lot of search options.

 

[EricBowles]

All of my searches pick up both file name and keywords. A day or two ago I was searching in Windows Explorer and it found files using keywords. I made a search of my Pictures folder using the word Sunflower and it picked up 241 files with only about 25 using the file name. Everything else was a keyword.

I keyword, caption and add other IPTC information to all of my photos when I download them. I add additional keywords using Photo Mechanic later. It may not be perfect, but I have keywords on 85-90% of my images over the past 15 years.

 

[bajadreamer]

I appreciate all the comments and thoughts that have been given. I know that I should have taken the time over the years to consistently keyword my images, but alas, did not. Now I have over 10K processed images, mostly of birds, and I would like to be able to search for groups of images, say a specific species or location. I name my processed files by species name and location and then a number. For example, Great Egret San Joaquin WR 3. When I use Windows search, if I type Great Egret, it will find one image only. Not sure why it selects the image it does, but only one will show. I may try the trial version of Excire but it is a little pricey to purchase.

 

[EricBowles]

I appreciate all the comments and thoughts that have been given. I know that I should have taken the time over the years to consistently keyword my images, but alas, did not. Now I have over 10K processed images, mostly of birds, and I would like to be able to search for groups of images, say a specific species or location. I name my processed files by species name and location and then a number. For example, Great Egret San Joaquin WR 3. When I use Windows search, if I type Great Egret, it will find one image only. Not sure why it selects the image it does, but only one will show. I may try the trial version of Excire but it is a little pricey to purchase.

Try loose keywords - egret in addition to great egret, bird, location, and even scientific name. I also add "wading" and other common adjectives. The same goes for location - state, city, and specific location are often useful.

It's a process. It's a lot less important to go back and add keywords to lots of older images when you can just hit some of the main topics by location. More importantly, plan to keyword moving forward.

I probably spend less than 5 minutes on keywords for a shoot - and I only put high level keywords on most images.

 

[SandyW]

Excire is pricy! Desktop Rules is another windows search tool that might be worth looking at. Really though, if you are just searching on file names I really think you should look at "everything". It's free unless you want to donate. As Eric mentioned windows has its own tools. They weren't that great in the beginning so I learned and stuck with 3rd party options.

 

[soundbyte]

You might also try Agent Ransack which integrates into Windows Explorer, I have found it very useful as it allows many and varied search options.
I especially like the ability to search for "NOT" a file name in a search as well as searching for text inside a file.
It is free and has a portable version as well.
These images show examples of some of the options available from an earlier version than the most recent version.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[bajadreamer]

Excire is pricy! Desktop Rules is another windows search tool that might be worth looking at. Really though, if you are just searching on file names I really think you should look at "everything". It's free unless you want to donate. As Eric mentioned windows has its own tools. They weren't that great in the beginning so I learned and stuck with 3rd party options.

Just downloaded Everything. I am impressed. I think it will do what I want. Called up "Snowy Egret" and about 100 image files came up instantly.

 

[bajadreamer]

You might also try Agent Ransack which integrates into Windows Explorer, I have found it very useful as it allows many and varied search options.
I especially like the ability to search for "NOT" a file name in a search as well as searching for text inside a file.
It is free and has a portable version as well.
These images show examples of some of the options available from an earlier version than the most recent version.
View attachment 71125
View attachment 71126
View attachment 71127

I will look at this. Thanks for the thoughts.

 

[Palmor]

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to search for images using words that appear in the file name of an image? For example, I include the location shot in the file name of all the images I process. If I shot the image at San Joaquin Wildlife Reserve, that will be included in the file name. I would like to search, among my 10,000 saved images all those shot at San Joaquin WR. I do not want to know what I should have done when I processed the images (keywords in LR or Photo Mechanic) but rather what I can do now. I use Windows 10. All of my images have been processed, named and saved via Photoshop.
When I use Windows Picture Viewer and search, it will sometimes give me some of the images I have searched for but not all of them.

If you have LR you can import the processed files. Once in LR you can search by filename ( then bulk add keywords the search results if you want). If you don't want to do that you can search in file explorer on windows.

 

[AlanB313]

If you are an ebird user, you can search within ebird for photos you may have uploaded by species.
In the ebird.org/explore page, enter a species. If you are logged in to your account, when you then scroll down to "statistics", your observations will show up. Also your photos in the middle column.
I use this for old photos especially before I got (only marginally) better at organizing. It works because I always put most of my better photos on my ebird list.
Once I have the date and location I can find it in my old file "system".

 

[Abinoone]

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to search for images using words that appear in the file name of an image? For example, I include the location shot in the file name of all the images I process. If I shot the image at San Joaquin Wildlife Reserve, that will be included in the file name. I would like to search, among my 10,000 saved images all those shot at San Joaquin WR. I do not want to know what I should have done when I processed the images (keywords in LR or Photo Mechanic) but rather what I can do now. I use Windows 10. All of my images have been processed, named and saved via Photoshop.
When I use Windows Picture Viewer and search, it will sometimes give me some of the images I have searched for but not all of them.

Tagging images with keywords is your best bet but if you’re on an Apple platform, the Photos app in iOS does a pretty good job finding images without the tags - just type in a keyword (“bears”, for example) and it’ll return a lit’s of your (bear) images.

 

[EricBowles]

You know, there is probably a good market for an AI based keywording product in a few years. Some of the automated captioning tools are pretty good right now for a single image, and for birds, eBird's Merlin is already there. Lightroom can already identify and tag people. It's just a matter of time before many keywords are automatically generated at import or ingest - or can be added in background.

 

[marlowtravelsoften]

Last year I finally organized all my photos (5 hard drives worth) by location and year. I added key words in LR also. Just organizing the folders was a HUGE help as I typically remember the location where I take all my photos. At places I take a lot of wildlife photos (such as shorebirds), I further segregate the images by month/year. I do this because I've ran into instances where I went to download files into the main folder and there were duplicates (meaning I had already placed upwards of 10K images in that folder). One of the drawbacks of shooting at 20fps and not culling.

 

[bajadreamer]

If you have LR you can import the processed files. Once in LR you can search by filename ( then bulk add keywords the search results if you want). If you don't want to do that you can search in file explorer on windows.

Thanks for the thoughts. I do have LR but never use it. Yes, I know it can solve a lot of these issues, but it creates others for my workflow.

 

[bajadreamer]

If you are an ebird user, you can search within ebird for photos you may have uploaded by species.
In the ebird.org/explore page, enter a species. If you are logged in to your account, when you then scroll down to "statistics", your observations will show up. Also your photos in the middle column.
I use this for old photos especially before I got (only marginally) better at organizing. It works because I always put most of my better photos on my ebird list.
Once I have the date and location I can find it in my old file "system".

I do use ebird, but only upload pictures of birds that are tagged as "uncommon" or "rare". mainly for documentation.

 

[bajadreamer]

Last year I finally organized all my photos (5 hard drives worth) by location and year. I added key words in LR also. Just organizing the folders was a HUGE help as I typically remember the location where I take all my photos. At places I take a lot of wildlife photos (such as shorebirds), I further segregate the images by month/year. I do this because I've ran into instances where I went to download files into the main folder and there were duplicates (meaning I had already placed upwards of 10K images in that folder). One of the drawbacks of shooting at 20fps and not culling.

Oh, a daunting task. I would need another pandemic lock down to attempt that.

 

[Palmor]

Thanks for the thoughts. I do have LR but never use it. Yes, I know it can solve a lot of these issues, but it creates others for my workflow.

I think it would just be one extra step, to import into LR after you are done. You would just be using it for the catalog features and not editing but maybe there is something else about your workflow I don't know

 

[jeremyjohnsonphotos]

Keywords are the right answer. I'd encourage starting now, on new imports, and iterate on your taxonomy for a bit. Once your keywords have settled, then revisiting past photos in some fashion is helpful.

Archive management is an ongoing thing. I've also found it helpful to categorize by date-location. You don't have to do all the keywords all at once, you could do a broad sweep of location and geography first, then by species.

 

[bajadreamer]

I think it would just be one extra step, to import into LR after you are done. You would just be using it for the catalog features and not editing but maybe there is something else about your workflow I don't know

A thought. I will admit that the organization system I used initially worked well for 1000 images; not so well for 10,000. I have become a member of a number of camera clubs in So California over the last few years. Each of these clubs have different rules about processing images that are entered in their competitions. As a consequence, I have to go back to the original RAW files and re process some of them. That is complicating my organization as the RAW files were not renamed until they went through processing and RAW conversion.

 

[bajadreamer]

Keywords are the right answer. I'd encourage starting now, on new imports, and iterate on your taxonomy for a bit. Once your keywords have settled, then revisiting past photos in some fashion is helpful.

Archive management is an ongoing thing. I've also found it helpful to categorize by date-location. You don't have to do all the keywords all at once, you could do a broad sweep of location and geography first, then by species.

So true. As I explained earlier, this has never been a problem for me in the past. Now however, I have lots of images (over 10K processed to JPEGs and over 100K RAW files). Also I am finding that I need to go back to the original RAW files more often than I did in the past (or at least the master processed file).

 

[RockvilleBob]

Excire is pricy! Desktop Rules is another windows search tool that might be worth looking at. Really though, if you are just searching on file names I really think you should look at "everything". It's free unless you want to donate. As Eric mentioned windows has its own tools. They weren't that great in the beginning so I learned and stuck with 3rd party options.

I just downloaded a trial copy of Excire. How did you find the program? I use Photoshop for editing and only use Lightroom for a catalog and for cataloging LR is not as good as I would like given current technology. I also would like to try Excire for culling/rating. Are you still using Excire? Thanks