Lightroom Searching!!!

[petebarnes]

Ok, I've looked all over for a solution to this but can't seem to find it and I'm loathed to ask because I've done it in the past but now seem to have forgotten so I thought I'd try here.

USING LIGHTROOM

Say I have 3000 odd photos and I want to randomly select say 1/3 of them how would I go about doing this?

I can't say select the top third as I want a random selection not a big chunk

I try and isolate photos by capture time so if I say search for photos taken at time xx:xx:54 should select all the photos taken on the 54th second of each minute but it also searches focal length resulting in a load of shots taken at 54mm. You can only search "selectable metadata" nothing more specific.:bonk:

Any ideas would be welcome, I'm sure there is a way to do it.

 

[Tyke Tiler]

Hmmmmm, maybe there could be something to help you out in the smart collections facility?

 

[petebarnes]

It's the same problem though, "searchable metadata" is too broad, I've tried putting criteria ends with ":54" thinking the : would be included but it still includes 54mm results.

It's really for an indiscriminate deletion of very similar shots after I have picked the keepers, in theory I could just get rid of them all but theres a little voice saying I shouldn't do that. I can do it after the export and select columns of files in windows, that way getting rid of every third shot but I'd prefer to do it before the export. I'd be good to select columns of photos in the grid view in library but you can't do this without individually clicking on each one.

 

[swanseamale47]

Why not just back them up to dvd and delete altogether if your not really planing on using them again anyway, that way you'd still have them around just in case but they'd free up drive space for you.

 

[Tyke Tiler]

It's the same problem though, "searchable metadata" is too broad, I've tried putting criteria ends with ":54" thinking the : would be included but it still includes 54mm results.

It's really for an indiscriminate deletion of very similar shots after I have picked the keepers, in theory I could just get rid of them all but theres a little voice saying I shouldn't do that. I can do it after the export and select columns of files in windows, that way getting rid of every third shot but I'd prefer to do it before the export. I'd be good to select columns of photos in the grid view in library but you can't do this without individually clicking on each one.

I know what you mean mate, that little voice telling us to keep everything can be a pain in the arse at times.

I exercise a much more ruthless keeping procedure these days though being about to buy my fourth Ext. HD.

I know it's monotonous but in the library module, go through them, press x on every image that you don't want to keep, then in attributes, select all the rejected images and scrub em

Wherever possible, for example on import, supervise and reject anything that's not of any use at all.

Easier said than done I know.

 

[Craikeybaby]

If I have 2 or 3 similar shots, I choose the best one (p) then refine the selection, all the picks go unflagged and the unflagged go to reject flag, then delete the rejects.

Having said that I have 2 separate copies of every image I've ever imported into Lightroom, so can get back to them if needed.