# Search Inside Catalogs With Spotlight on Mac



## davidbitton (May 28, 2012)

My wife is a pro-photographer and a Lightroom user; I'm tech support. We like to use small catalogs because they are easier to manage. The problem that arises is files become lost amongst the many catalogs with no way to search _across_ catalogs for a given photo. To remedy the situation, I wrote a Spotlight importer that allows the Mac to index filenames inside LR catalogs. Here is a quick screenshot of me searching for the filename "HPDE" and Spotlight locating the catalog referencing this filename.




I packaged up the Importer for install. You can read the technical details in my blog post or jump right to the download package. If you have any questions, feel free to follow up here, however I'd prefer that you add a comment to the blog post. Thanks!


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## clee01l (May 28, 2012)

davidbitton said:


> My wife is a pro-photographer and a Lightroom user; I'm tech support. We like to use small catalogs because they are easier to manage. The problem that arises is files become lost amongst the many catalogs with no way to search _across_ catalogs for a given photo. To remedy the situation, I wrote a Spotlight importer that allows the Mac to index filenames inside LR catalogs. Here is a quick screenshot of me searching for the filename "HPDE" and Spotlight locating the catalog referencing this filename.
> 
> View attachment 2320
> 
> I packaged up the Importer for install. You can read the technical details in my blog post or jump right to the download package. If you have any questions, feel free to follow up here, however I'd prefer that you add a comment to the blog post. Thanks!


Well, David. Welcome to the forum.  Most serious users of LR will tell you that unless you have a legitimate business reason for multiple catalogs, you don't need more than one catalog.  The fact that you have to wrote a special application to get around the problem that could have been solved by maintaining one and one one catalog kind of reinforces the idea that all you need to manage all of your photos with LR is one catalog.   What you currently have in multiple catalogs could so easily be managed in one catalog and multiple collections.  Based upon the information that you have provided, I really don't see a legitimate business need in your case for multiple catalogs. 
I think the idiom that certainly applies here is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".


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## Victoria Bampton (May 29, 2012)

Hi David, welcome to the forum!

While Cletus is absolutely right that we don't usually recommend multiple catalogs, I do know of a lot of working photographers who choose to work that way - and I have to say, that's a very neat workaround!  I don't seem to be able to get through to your blog though - the link's not working - and I'd love to bookmark it.


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## Kiwigeoff (May 29, 2012)

While it looks impressive (I have no knowledge of or desire to learn coding, etc) and I'm sure it is useful, I wouldn't place this type of software on my Mac. Would it not ne as easy for your wife to have a master catalog as well as her smaller ones and so have access to all files at once to make use of the metadata and collections, etc?


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## davidbitton (May 29, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi David, welcome to the forum!
> 
> While Cletus is absolutely right that we don't usually recommend multiple catalogs, I do know of a lot of working photographers who choose to work that way - and I have to say, that's a very neat workaround!  I don't seem to be able to get through to your blog though - the link's not working - and I'd love to bookmark it.



Victoria,
  I just clicked both links in my original post and they are working. Either way, here are the links again:

Blog post: http://www.codenoevil.com/why-i-wrote-a-lightroom-spotlight-importer/
Download: http://cloud.github.com/downloads/C...ightImporter/Lightroom Spotlight Importer.pkg


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## Victoria Bampton (May 29, 2012)

Thanks David, the routing must have had a hiccup this morning.


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