Digital Light & Color

I'm not entirely sure, but I recall that the Browse had a Search tab in PWP3.5 (did it?). While it can be argued that PWP is not really intended to be a cataloger, I'd find it quite useful to have some search capabilities in Browse - file names (with wildcards? within current folder), for instance would cover a lot of ground, including separating file types. If the images could be searched across folders that would be even greater. If some EXIF/IPTC fields used in User Comments or fields from Image Properties could be included, that would positively awesome!

Cheers!

PWP 3.5 did have a search function with features much as you describe. It was removed because we could not justify the work it would take to keep it competitive with the search function built into Windows.

Kiril

Maciej,
I know that this doesn't come close to hitting all the items on your wish list, however it may be of use.
It cannot search within files, but is superfast for folders and file names. I find it, occasionally, a great boon when I've 'mislaid' something.
It - Everything, free from Void Tools.
http://www.voidtools.com/download.php
Mike.

Thanks Mike,

The Everything (portable) is pretty magical. Between Everything, Total Commander search and Nir Sofer's SearchMyFiles there are few file search scenarios that can't be handled.

What I've been trying to find for ages is a simple, portable metadata search, specifically for images. I was hoping not to have an external metadata database. The closest I came to this ideal is a plugin to Total Commander that can actually search in EXIF fields and it actually, mostly works, but handling the results is inconvenient (e.g. once I find all RAW files with say ISO>800, I need to move them somewhere, then use some viewer to triage them, then use some EXIF editor to edit what I want, then move them back where there belong and then use PWP to process them).

I understand what Kiril said above. What I was hoping for was not even a complex search capability, but a 'simple' filter or sort mechanism in PWP Browse that would only use EXIF and IPTC fields already read by Image Properties dialog, or some subset of it. For instance: wouldn't that be awesome to be able to isolate high ISO images in a Browse folder and be able to batch-process them with different NR settings than the rest of the images, right within PWP?

Cheers!

While there is no EXIF search in PWP of the kind Tomczak is suggesting. there are some triage actions you can take manually by running several workflow passes. For example you can review the thumbs and select all dark images and then run them through a dark version of a workflow. The images that are processed will be check marked and therefore skipped by subsequent workflow passes. You can use this technique for any features that you can identify from the thumbnails. So you can also use the technique to separate images with different people into folders or to add appropriate labels to EXIF descriptions.

Incidentally the next update allows you to drag images from a Windows search display into the workflow window, even if the images are located in different folders. This means you will be able to use the capabilities of Windows search to load a workflow with images.

Kiril

Maciej,

Do you know XnView?
http://www.xnview.com/
I have just discovered it recently and im the process to learn.
It should be portable ( http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_p ... w_portable ) and has a quiet nice search function for metadata (not everything now, but its a work in progress).
And with the new to come ability to be able to copy and paste pictures from multiple folders it should be a easy task to copy and paste the search results from XnView to a PWP workflow in a single step.

Thanks Dieter!

Have you figured out how to do boolean operations on EXIF search in XnView? For instance: how do I find images with ISO>=800? I understand that some of the searches can use Regular Expression which I don't quite know how to use - can they even understand 'ordinality' of numerical values?

Maciej,

As far as I figured out the normal version can only serch for a single ISO value, not something like greater then 800 ISO
XnViewMP can do a greater , greater and equal etc. search onm ISO (it's called sensitivity) , focal length etc.

Dieter