# Can't search in the 'Additional Information'' metadata field



## _MZ_ (Mar 30, 2012)

A few days ago I was pointed to the "Any Filter" plugin to help me with this little problem. I can see how Any Filter can come in handy for me in the future but right now it doesn't do me any good. I can't seem to be able to come up with *any* matches trying to search the "Additional Information" field of metadata. I'm pretty sure that 'Any Filter' simply doesn't know how to access that field. An interesting thing is that there are supposedly plug-ins that simply define which portions of the metadata are searchable. In Any Filter there's a button labeled 'Plug-in Metadata'. Am I making stuff up or are there really plugins that can help me out with this little issue? I turned Any Filter inside out but maybe I'm still doing something wrong.

In 'Library Filter:'/Text there's the option: "Any searchable plug-in field". Maybe there's a plugin out there that can define that option to be the "Additional Information" field? I would really like to have a few *proper* 'Smart collections' based on what's inside the "Additional Information" field.

Any suggestions?
Thanks.


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## Hal P Anderson (Mar 30, 2012)

The only "Additional Information" I can find is "Additional Model Info", which you can get at under Any Filter's Rights and Releases category.

If that isn't what you need, you could try contacting John Ellis directly, through his web site.

Hal


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## _MZ_ (Mar 30, 2012)

That's the one. And yes, it works now (kinda). I can input data in that field, run a search with 'Any Filter' and it comes up.

Since I don't use this field for its designated purpose I chose to do with it something else. I have developed a special set of codes and each of my photos is assigned a few of those codes. So far I've been using the 'keywords' field to hold this data. You'd think there are plenty of other fields for that but believe me, they're all taken. I wouldn't have used the 'keywords' unless I absolutely had to. Now these codes are 'piling up' and some of the photos have as many as 8 of them and that's not the end of it... It don't look pretty... I must have some other 'searchable field' for this and obviously it has to be unused.
I pretty much want to be able to build 'Smart collections' based on what 'Any Filter' is able to come up with. I double-click on a collection and there's the: 'Any Filter: Search'. This doesn't seem to work (and I've tried all kinds of tricks). There's also the option: Any Searchable plug-in metadata. Wouldn't it be 100 times easier to use some other plugin that simply defined the "Additional Model Info" as a searchable field? Any thought?


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## johnrellis (Apr 3, 2012)

To test my understanding of what you want to do:   You've coded your images using the IPTC Additional Model Info field, and you want to have saved searches that can call up all images matching a particular code.

To create a saved search in Any Filter to find all images with Additional Model Info equal to "x", create a new filter with the following criterion:

Rights And Releases, Additional Model Info, =, x

Give the filter the name "Code = x".  See here for details on how to do that:

http://www.johnrellis.com/lightroom/anyfilter.htm#editing

To invoke that saved search in the future, do Library > Plug-in Extras > Any Filter > Search, and double-click the name of the saved Any Filter.  See the Keyboard Shorts section of the documentation for how to bring up Any Filter quicker on Mac and Windows.

You asked, "I pretty much want to be able to build 'Smart collections' based on what 'Any Filter' is able to come up with."   Unfortunately, there isn't any way to do that.  The Lightroom Software Development Kit doesn't provide any method to provide LR's smart collections with direct access to additional fields.   As a way to work around that limitation, the Any Filter plugin provides you with the ability to save and name Any Filter criteria, similar to the way you can save Smart Collections.

Another approach is to use the ExifMeta plugin, which will take any metadata field and make it viewable and searchable in LR using smart collections and the Filter Bar, using its own plugin metadata fields.  The advantage of ExifMeta is that you can access those additional fields from smart collections on the Filter Bar directly; the disadvantage is that there is non-trivial delay between the time you modify an image's metadata field in LR and when ExifMeta is able to copy that field into its own mirroring plugin fields.  You also have to ensure that you are writing all metadata changes from the LR catalog back to images promptly.   Also, for numeric plugin metadata fields, LR doesn't let you do numeric comparisons (e.g. > 3).


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 3, 2012)

Welcome aboard John.  Good to see you here!


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