# How Does LR define 'Edit Date'



## rjwilner (Sep 21, 2020)

I'm trying to create a Collection that will capture all the files I've performed actual photo editing on within last 'X' days. I've employed the following parameter row to define the task...
- *'Edit Date' , 'is in the last', 'some number', 'days'* ( I plugin the desired number of days I wish to review each time)

When I plugged in 30 as the number of days, there were 7k+ images included in the Collection. Now, I have been doing a lot of editing lately, but not nearly _that_ much.  So clearly, my definition of what constitutes an 'edit' is decidedly different than how LR defines it. And I'm hoping someone can provide a little insight into what LR thinks should be included.

As some explanatory info...., I have been redoing my keyword structure in recent times, so it's not hard for me to believe I may have 'touched' 7K+ files and the metadata has been changed as a result of such activity. But there are a bajillion metadata changes that could occur to a file that have nothing to do with 'photo editing'. And that's ok if I can whittle things down with add'l parameter rows.

So, I'm wondering if there's another parameter row I can add to the Collection definition to filter the included images down to something closer to actual 'photo edits' performed. I've tried adding a row defined as 'Has Edits' / 'is true'. And that narrows the list down to 800+, but is clearly still catching some files I know I did not touch from a 'photo editing' perspective.

Any thoughts on other approaches that might be taken?


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## johnrellis (Sep 21, 2020)

Right, Edit Date is the date/time that anything about the photo has changed (develop settings, meta data), including some changes silently made when LR does a major upgrade. So your keyword changes changed metadata, which changed Edit Date.

You’re probably getting so many hits when you add Has Edits because it’s finding photos with develop changes from a long time ago that also had recent keyword edits.

I don’t think there’s any way to find photos with changes to develop settings in the last n days, without including photos whose metadata has changed.


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## rjwilner (Sep 21, 2020)

johnrellis said:


> .....
> I don’t think there’s any way to find photos with changes to develop settings in the last n days, without including photos whose metadata has changed.



Thanks. I was sorta beginning to accept that might be the case. When I was building the (Smart?) Collection and selecting the data piece to assess, I found the 'Has Edits' (and/or 'Has Adjustments') elements under the 'Develop' category, and was hoping I just needed to find a means of filtering that resulting list down to a time period of my preference.


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 21, 2020)

You should be able to do what you want with a Smart Collection using something like this example:




The first part selects all images edited in the last 7 days, and in this context "Edits" includes both develop and metadata changes. So the second part refines that initial selection to include only those edited images which have "Adjustments" (i.e. most develop edits) or have been "Cropped" (for some reason a "crop" is not regarded as an "adjustment".


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## johnrellis (Sep 21, 2020)

Jim, those criteria will match a photo that was last edited in develop a year ago but whose keywords changed yesterday.  When Rjwilner tried something similar, he said he got way too many such photos, since he had recently changed their keywords.


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 22, 2020)

Oops, yes of course!


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## rjwilner (Sep 22, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> You should be able to do what you want with a Smart Collection using something like this example:
> 
> View attachment 15262
> .....



Even if your example doesn't work for my current situation, I am intrigued by its 'multi-level' construction. I didn't know it was possible to do that and can't seem to figure out how to accomplish the 'Any of the following are true' piece.  Can you share how that's done?


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 22, 2020)

Yes, it's quite simple. Press and hold the Alt/Opt key while clicking on the "+" at the end of the existing entry will bring up the "Any of the following...." option.


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## rjwilner (Sep 22, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> Yes, it's quite simple. Press and hold the Alt/Opt key while clicking on the "+" at the end of the existing entry will bring up the "Any of the following...." option.



Thanks a bunch! That's going to wind up being more help than if your example for the original problem had worked. I've already spent a good portion of the am refining Collections that had been somewhat 'generalist' in what they captured to providing much more specific results.

Thanks again!


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## coachejp (Sep 24, 2020)

I have 400+ Sunset pictures and I am trying to set up collections of Fall,Winter,Spring  and Summer. I can not get the date filter to cooperate. It keeps defaulting to the present date. I need to handle the month and year separately. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Ed


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## rjwilner (Sep 24, 2020)

coachejp said:


> I have 400+ Sunset pictures and I am trying to set up collections of Fall,Winter,Spring  and Summer. I can not get the date filter to cooperate. It keeps defaulting to the present date. I need to handle the month and year separately. Any help would be appreciated.



I keyword my files with Date/Time/Seaason info on import. Any date related Collections are then built based on those keywords. The attached illustrates the keyword structure.


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## johnrellis (Sep 24, 2020)

_"I can not get the date filter to cooperate. It keeps defaulting to the present date."_

I'm not sure what you're trying. Can you post a screenshot of the filter or smart collection you're trying that's defaulting to the present date?


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## johnrellis (Sep 24, 2020)

_"I have 400+ Sunset pictures and I am trying to set up collections of Fall,Winter,Spring and Summer."_

In general, there's no practical way to use smart collections or the Library filter bar to identify automatically the season of a photo based on capture date. But you can do a manual call of, say, all fall pics taken between 9/21 and 12/21 using the Date column of the Library filter bar.  

Open the Metadata browser, configure it to have just the Date column, and then expand each year to show the days in September and the days in December.  Click the first day after 9/21 and shift-click the last day before 12/21.  You have to do this for each year.  

But once you've set it up, you can save it as a filter preset:


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## johnrellis (Sep 24, 2020)

If you find yourself doing this a lot, you could use the Any Filter plugin to write a filter that will do this for all years (similar to a smart collection).  But if you're just doing this once, the manual method I described above will take less time.  The Any Filter filter for finding all Fall pics:


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## coachejp (Oct 1, 2020)

-


johnrellis said:


> If you find yourself doing this a lot, you could use the Any Filter plugin to write a filter that will do this for all years (similar to a smart collection).  But if you're just doing this once, the manual method I described above will take less time.  The Any Filter filter for finding all Fall pics:
> 
> View attachment 15269





johnrellis said:


> _"I have 400+ Sunset pictures and I am trying to set up collections of Fall,Winter,Spring and Summer."_
> 
> In general, there's no practical way to use smart collections or the Library filter bar to identify automatically the season of a photo based on capture date. But you can do a manual call of, say, all fall pics taken between 9/21 and 12/21 using the Date column of the Library filter bar.
> 
> ...


John,
Thanks for taking the time to help.


johnrellis said:


> _"I have 400+ Sunset pictures and I am trying to set up collections of Fall,Winter,Spring and Summer."_
> 
> In general, there's no practical way to use smart collections or the Library filter bar to identify automatically the season of a photo based on capture date. But you can do a manual call of, say, all fall pics taken between 9/21 and 12/21 using the Date column of the Library filter bar.
> 
> ...


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## coachejp (Oct 1, 2020)

John, 
I asked a? above I tried to copy  here but no luck . could  you  respond  down hear?


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## johnrellis (Oct 1, 2020)

_"I asked a? above I tried to copy here but no luck . could you respond down hear?"_

I tried to answer your question -- perhaps you can rephrase it and provide more detail?


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## coachejp (Oct 1, 2020)

johnrellis said:


> _"I asked a? above I tried to copy here but no luck . could you respond down hear?"_
> 
> I tried to answer your question -- perhaps you can rephrase it and provide more detail?


You showed me how to use the Metadata date column set to hierarchical  .After I isolate the fall months do I put the pics that come up in a collection. And then keep adding to that collection for each year?


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