Search is the first of the four tabs that you'll find in the Photo Mechanic Plus Organizer.
When a search is performed in Photo Mechanic Plus, the results of the search are displayed in a Contact Sheet. A search is done on all Catalogs in the Active Catalogs Panel with their Search checkbox enabled, and your search will be done across all default metadata fields, or the fields that you specify using search semantics.
By default, a quick search searches through the bulleted metadata fields listed in the Searchable Fields... window.
For example, a search in this catalog for “hill” would find all photos with keywords that included “hill” as well as all photos that contained “Jason Hill Photography” in the byline and all photos that contained the letter sequence “hill” anywhere in the file name.
To refine searches, you can search within one or more metadata fields, such as:
| byline hill |
You can also find images that are missing metadata information, such as:
| keywords is empty |
You can keep adding complexity with AND and OR statements such as:
| byline "hill" and rating=5 |
You can also use parenthesis to organize operations, similar to what you would do with mathematical equations:
| city "paris" and (rating = 2 or rating > 4) |
More Search Options
Included in the table later in this article are examples of the Photo Mechanic Plus search query syntax.
Reuse Search Tabs: By default, searches reuse the same search tab so you don’t keep opening new tabs every time you search. You can uncheck this option if you want new tabs, such as when comparing results from searches.
Only Search Contact Sheet Items: Restrict your search to only items in a contact sheet. This option searches for cataloged items that meet your search criteria AND are only in your selected contact sheet. Items that are not in a catalog will not show up in search results.
Use Case Sensitive Search: An option that lets you differentiate between words like Hill and hill in a search with case sensitivity.
Reveal in Context
This is a contextual menu command for search results items. Right-click on an item in search results to reveal this option. Using Reveal in context on a single image opens the folder the image resides within, selects it, and makes it visible.
Search Examples
You can find these examples by navigating to Catalog>Search Examples...
| Search Example | Explanation |
|---|---|
Basic Search | |
| "" | Two quotes with nothing in between returns all images in every catalog that is currently searchable. |
| keywords ocean beach pier | Keywords that contain all the terms: ocean, beach, and pier. |
| keywords ocean or beach or pier | Keywords that contain at least one of the terms: ocean, beach, or pier. |
| keywords not (livestock or wildlife) | Results that do not include either livestock or wildlife in the keywords field. |
| city "new york" | Unless you have case sensitive search enabled, this search shows images with the exact phrase "new york" or "New York" in the city field. Quotes surrounding the phrase keep the words in the phrase together, which means only results with New York rather than also showing items labeled New Haven or York. Note that the city field is a multi-column alias. |
| byline caption "John Smith" | Results with "John Smith" in either the byline or caption field. You can stack multiple fields this way, so long as they are the same type of field (i.e. all text fields or all numeric fields.) |
| rating = 2 or rating > 4 | Ratings equal to 2 or greater than 4. |
| rating <> 0 | The rating field is not equal to 0. |
| location within 6.5mi of 40.730610, -73.935242 | GPS location is within 6.5 miles of the specified coordinate. Possible distance units are mi (miles), km (kilometers), ft (feet), and m (meters). |
| caption is "The whole nine yards." | The caption field contains the exact phrase The whole nine yards. |
| caption is empty | The caption field contains no data. |
| caption is not empty | The caption field contains entry data. |
| collection vehicles/cars | Include results from the hierarchical collection 'vehicles/cars', including any sub-collections. |
Explicit Dates & Times | |
| capturetime = 2004 | The Capture Time field is within the year 2004. |
| capturetime <= 2004-12-03 12:34:56.789 | The Capture Time field must be prior or equal to the specified time on the afternoon of December 3rd, 2004. |
| capturetime between 2004 and 2005 | The Capture Time field must be between year 2004 and 2005. |
| capturetime between 2004 and 2005 | The Capture Time field must be between the times of 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM (in any timezone). |
| capturetime between 10:30 and 15:00 | The Capture Time field must be between the times of 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM (in any timezone). |
| capturetime not between 2001 and 2010 | The Capturetime field must be prior to the year 2001 or after the year 2010. |
Relative Dates and Times | |
| capturetime today | The Capture Time field must be today. |
capturetime > 3 months ago | The Capture Time field evaluates to more recent than 3 months ago. Note: The "ago" clause is optional and can be omitted. |
capturetime <= 4 hours ago | The Capture Time field evaluates to exactly 4 hours ago or sooner. |
| capturetime between 5 days ago and today | The Capture Time field is anytime between 5 days ago and current day. |
| capturetime between yesterday and today | The Capture Time field is anytime between 1 day prior and current day. |
capturetime between 10 minutes ago and now | The Capture Time field is anytime between 10 minutes prior and current time. |
Advanced Syntax | |
| (width >= 1280 and height >= 960) or (width <=128 and height <=64) | Parenthesis can be used for grouping and combining clauses. In this case, the items dimensions must meet one qualifier: 1. Width is greater than or equal to 1280 & height is greater than or equal to 960. or 2. Width is less than or equal to 128 & height is less than or equal to 64. |
| caption ^"The quick brown fox" | The ^ operator anchors the beginning of a field. In this case, the caption must start with the phase "The quick brown fox". |
| caption "the lazy dog."$ | The $ operator anchors at the end of a field.The caption field must end with the phrase "the lazy dog." |
caption ^"The whole nine yards."$ | Both ^ and $ anchors can be combined. In this case, the field must contain the exact phrase The whole nine yards. This is the same search as using: caption is "The whole nine yards." |
| byline (?-¡)StRiCt cAsE ignore case | By default, searches are not case sensitive (i.e. case insensitive). The (?-i) syntax toggles this and makes the search case sensitive, while (?i) returns to default case insensitive searches. |