# Search added to Lightroom web



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 18, 2016)

Nice, Adobe introducing 'Technology Preview' to test new functionality, starting with search: Introducing Technology Previews and Search in Lightroom on the web


----------



## PhilBurton (Mar 18, 2016)

Nice.  Do you need a CC license to use this Preview?

Phil


----------



## Conrad Chavez (Mar 18, 2016)

PhilBurton said:


> Nice.  Do you need a CC license to use this Preview?


Yes, because the Search technology preview is only in the web browser version of Lightroom, and that's only available through Creative Cloud.


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 18, 2016)

Yes, Lightroom mobile is part of the CC subscription model only


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 18, 2016)

I've written up some thoughts on it here.


----------



## jrsforums (Mar 19, 2016)

Thanks John, nice start.

Will all photos eventually include entire library?  Any plans to limit to organization groups in structure, such as 'current pictures' 'picture Archives'?  Also, great granularity....not just month/year, but month/week, month/day, month/job....however the library structure is organized.  Ability to jump to date group, without flipping through all.

Thanks, John


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 19, 2016)

I got 17 mistakes out of 39 images found by the word 'flower'. Extremely poor if you consider that the correct images all have a keyword 'flower', so they were easy to find... Lightroom found several images of birds, a leopard, a herd of wildebeests and some landscapes.


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 19, 2016)

jrsforums said:


> Will all photos eventually include entire library?



If you sync all your photos, it does so already. I think it does need to be refined so you can search individual collections, and lots of others too, but one has to consider how much one needs to do in LrWeb. What if this tech also found its way into desktop, for example?

John


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 19, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> I got 17 mistakes out of 39 images found by the word 'flower'. Extremely poor if you consider that the correct images all have a keyword 'flower', so they were easy to find... Lightroom found several images of birds, a leopard, a herd of wildebeests and some landscapes.


Did you search in Dutch or English Johan?
I search on several words in Dutch without any results. The word was in the keywords so i was dissapointed too.
Then i tried to search with English words and the results were much better. Because these words ware not part of the metadata it has to be te result of the image-recognition algoritm


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 19, 2016)

I searched in English, because that is the only option for the time being. BTW, my keywords are all English and I normally run Lightroom in English as well...

I did a second search, this time for 'water'. The results were better (many images found that indeed show water in all kinds of ways, but this time too they have a keyword 'water'), but also images were not a single pixel is blue, so it's a total mystery how Lightroom could possibly see 'water' in there.


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 19, 2016)

I also have the "problem" that my photos are well-keyworded and captioned, and it seems to have a thesaurus-like way of searching. So "vehicle" isn't in my metadata, but searching for it found pictures of cars. My guess is because "car" is a keyword there. So you need to think quite laterally. For example, I tried "summer" and it found green / yellow / blue images, or try searching for "yellow" or an emotion like "happiness".


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 19, 2016)

My results are not representative of course but one test was to find photo's of a swimingpool. I searched for 'zwem' and 'zwembad' and found no results. All photo's had these keywords added to them so they should be found.
However, when searched on 'swim' they were found! And i'm not using English keywords, Dutch only.


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 19, 2016)

Try searching for "pool" or "swimming", or just "blue".


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 19, 2016)

Let me show you some of the photos Lightroom found when searching for 'water'...


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 19, 2016)

Some more 'water' images...


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 20, 2016)

Not even close, are they? What's your system language - and does the browser have a setting that might impact the search?


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 20, 2016)

I don't see how that would influence the resuls. I used Safari on my iPad Mini 3, system language set to English.

BTW, have you ever tried Goggle Photos? Google Photos has the same technology, but the difference is that it actually works, even without keywords.


----------



## Jim Wilde (Mar 20, 2016)

I'm not convinced that keywords are actually synced, or if they are they're not included in the search. From a very brief test, it seems to me that Caption is the only metadata item being searched, though of course content is also being examined.

Would be interested in others findings.


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 20, 2016)

It's of course the content search that matters here. Searching on keywords or captions is already possible. Content search is basically the same technology as face recognition, except that faces have predictable patterns and so they are easier to recognize than say an elephant. Googles technology is quite impressive, this technology preview less so.


----------



## Jim Wilde (Mar 20, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> Searching on keywords or captions is already possible.



In LRWebView? What have I missed?


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 20, 2016)

Jim Wilde said:


> In LRWebView? What have I missed?



I didn't mean it's already possible *in LRWebView*, I mean it's not part of a 'technology preview' because that technology already exists for many years. A 'technology preview' is about new technology, not implementing existing technology.


----------



## Jim Wilde (Mar 20, 2016)

OK, thanks for clarifying.


----------



## DGStinner (Mar 20, 2016)

It would be nice if they allowed us to select images which don't match the search term and report them in order to fine tune the algorithm.


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 20, 2016)

Jim Wilde said:


> I'm not convinced that keywords are actually synced,



They are, Jim, I have reasons to know


----------



## DGStinner (Mar 20, 2016)

I'm not so convinced. I have photos of my cat with her name as one of the keywords.  When I search for her name, no images are returned.


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 18, 2016)

Nice, Adobe introducing 'Technology Preview' to test new functionality, starting with search: Introducing Technology Previews and Search in Lightroom on the web


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 20, 2016)

DGStinner said:


> I'm not so convinced. I have photos of my cat with her name as one of the keywords.  When I search for her name, no images are returned.



That doesn't prove anything. The algorithm searches for known things (probably with the help of a huge database of images). It could also use the help of keywords if present, but it first needs to know what thing it is supposed to search for. The name of your cat isn't a known thing however, that's why it doesn't return anything. Remember that this is a 'technology preview'. It's not the final search algorithm for the next version of Lightroom.


----------



## Jim Wilde (Mar 20, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> They are, Jim, I have reasons to know



Good to know....so shouldn't be too difficult to include them in the search.


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 20, 2016)

Jim Wilde said:


> I'm not convinced that keywords are actually synced, or if they are they're not included in the search. From a very brief test, it seems to me that Caption is the only metadata item being searched, though of course content is also being examined.
> 
> Would be interested in others findings.


 I found the same. Photo's with 'keywords' in the caption field are found but photo's with only 'keywords' in the keyword field are not.


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 20, 2016)

DGStinner said:


> It would be nice if they allowed us to select images which don't match the search term and report them in order to fine tune the algorithm.


That would be logic i think!


----------



## johnbeardy (Mar 22, 2016)

Jim Wilde said:


> I'm not convinced that keywords are actually synced, or if they are they're not included in the search. From a very brief test, it seems to me that Caption is the only metadata item being searched, though of course content is also being examined.



I've done a few tests and AFAICS keywords aren't included in the search. They are definitely synced though.


----------



## Jim Wilde (Mar 22, 2016)

johnbeardy said:


> I've done a few tests and AFAICS keywords aren't included in the search.



Yep, that's the conclusion I came to. Hopefully in a later update.


----------



## rob211 (Apr 30, 2016)

BTW, if you want to make use of your searches, rather than just marvelling at some of the results, then use the "select" tool to mark some, and then copy them to a new collection, like "clouds search" if say you were searching on clouds. that appears as a collection in the LR Mobile collection set back in Lr on the desktop, and you can then apply keywords or do whatever you wish with them.

A clumsy workaround, but Lr Mobile app can't even DO keywords...aargh.

And Google has no way to apply the info AFAIK, although the searching is a bit better.


----------

