Dynamic Searching. How?

[hocker]

Situation: 10,000+ pictures of people, some alone, all with two or three other people.
For person 'A' I have 200 pictures, 25 alone, 65 with person 'B', 15 with person 'C', 26 with persons 'B' and 'C' - well, you get the 'picture'.
Similarly, person 'B' will have a number alone, a number with person 'A' or 'C' or 'D' or 'B'+'D'. And so on.
In IDI V5, they are all in individual labels under the person's name, lumped under the label 'People'.

My question. How do I get the pictures of persons 'A' and 'B' together, without persons 'C' or 'D', etc?

In IDI it was simple, ALT click label 'People' and then CTRL click those I wanted: person 'A' and person 'B'. The result is pictures containing only A+B

In PS I can't do that. (Unless I'm missing something...)
If I ask for person 'A' and Person 'B' I get hundreds of pictures of 'A'+'B' but also including 'C' and 'D' and 'E' and ...
The only way I can see to avoid that, is to go in and make the others as 'not included in search'... Long, labourious and frankly ridiculous.
Of course, I might be the ridiculous one. If you have followed, this admittedly, convoluted explanation, can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

Stephen

[tstoddard]

Stephen,

I have spent some time trying to figure out how to do similar searches with Dynamic Searching and have come to the same conclusion as you. It is very tedious trying to create any sort of complex query or any selection that requires the use of many individual labels. I find the inability to select multiple labels to be very limiting. I hope somebody is able to show us both that we are mistaken and that there is an easier way.

I only experimented with IDI for a few days but one of its features that I found to be very useful was the ability to select multiple labels very quickly and easily and to perform many different actions on those labels. Not just for selecting images but also for making changes to my label structure. I am new to cataloging and am building my catalog as I go, one folder and one image at a time. As my catalog grows, I often find that I need to change the scheme of my label structure. If there are multiple layers within the branch of the structure that I want to change, it becomes very tedious and error prone. Having to go into 30 or 40 individual labels one at a time just to change a "Yes" to a "No" takes some time and there is no easy way to insure that I haven't skipped a label here or there.

I hope that future versions of PSU will incorporate a better way to create complex queries against the database and to manipulate multiple labels simultaneously.

[hocker]

Thanks for that, Tom.
At least it shows me that I am not missing anything.
This is one of the key areas for me, and one which puts IDI above most other similar software on the market.
I shall continue to use V5, at least until I have to get a new PC with an OS that will not run IDI!
Then I'll try again.
Sorry Hert, after years of wonderful customer service, advice and help. Yet another customer will eventually be leaving you.

[Hert]

In the search box type

PersonA+PersonB-PersonC-PersonD

It's just like using a search engine like google or bing

Afterwards you can add the query to ouR favorites by clicking the favorites button above the collection viewer.

Btw, if you persist to use the dynamic search then the tip is to right click on an item to set it to exclude.
Btw2, the biggest challenge for IDI users in PSU is that they want PSU to work he same and hence don't try the simple approach that PSU follows. New users would use the search box from the start, IDI users will not even think about using the search box, simply because the search box in IDI is useless.

Hert

[hocker]

Hert,
To type in '-C-D-E-F-G' etc, or right-clicking on about thirty names is a nonsense because it presupposes that I know which names to exclude... And that goes for both the dynamic search and search boxes. The problem is that I know that I have pictures of A+B, I just don't know any longer (long time ago) who else will come up in the search.
IDI does this so much more elegantly and efficiently. You should have kept it.
But you didn't. I guess you won't keep many customers either.

[Hert]

If all you know is A+B then use that in the search box or dynamic search. Use the filter bar to filter further.

Hert

[hocker]

The filter bar is additive, at least from what I can see. Once again I CANNOT exclude labels - unless I really am being stupid.
And even if the bar allowed me to exclude these labels, it appears to work one label at a time.
Admit it Hert, you've screwed up what was one of the most important aspects of IDI.
Can you at least think about bringing it back - bearing in mind you expect us to pay for this new software?

[gcoupe]

Hert, what you suggest doesn't work.

If I want to find pictures that only have Andy and Cecil in them, and no-one else, I can't use PSU to construct that sort of search, whereas with IDI I can...

In IDI, I can start by excluding all the labels under People (by excluding the "People" category itself), and then just turning on the Labels of Andy and Cecil. This gives me pictures that just have Andy and Cecil in them.
In PSU, if I exclude all the labels under People (by excluding the "People" category itself), that seems to override adding the labels for Andy and Cecil to the dynamic search, and I get zero results...

[hocker]

Thank you Geoff. That is exactly what I said when I started this topic.
Tom also agreed.
How many more out there?
Hert, listen to your buying public.
We need this search ability: bring it back.

[Hert]

In PSU, if I exclude all the labels under People (by excluding the "People" category itself), that seems to override adding the labels for Andy and Cecil to the dynamic search, and I get zero results...

That makes sense. People is a higher level of grouping compared to Andy and Cecil. So include everything from Ande and Cecil and exclude People will give no results as Andy and Cecil are excluded by the "no people" addition.

Hert

[tstoddard]

I don't want to beat a dead horse but I will repeat my assertion that the inability to select/deselect multiple labels is at the heart of this issue. If one could do what Geoff has described, which is select all labels in the People category with one click and then deselect individual labels then it would be fairly easy to do the type of search that hocker wants to do. The Dynamic Search interface, combined with the use of Favorites, allows for a lot of flexibility but when dealing with large numbers of labels (possibly nested) that may be changing frequently (new ones being added to categories) creating selection criteria can be difficult.

As I understand it, one of the primary reasons for cataloging image files is to make it faster and easier to search and find them. I have some experience writing SQL statements and designing applications that allow users to interactively query databases so I understand the difficulty of providing gui interfaces to do so. Hert has done a good job of making it pretty easy to search the database but there are still limitations that will frustrate some users. For me, knowing that I have this data and not being able to query it in certain ways is frustrating. An example is not being able to specify a date range. Hierarchical keyword structures are even more difficult to create selection statements against. Hocker's example could involve a label structure containing hundreds of people nested four levels deep in one branch of a category tree. Being able to select every label in the entire branch with one click is incredibly powerful and I hope that Hert will find that it is functionality that warrants inclusion in this program.

[gcoupe]

In PSU, if I exclude all the labels under People (by excluding the "People" category itself), that seems to override adding the labels for Andy and Cecil to the dynamic search, and I get zero results...

That makes sense. People is a higher level of grouping compared to Andy and Cecil. So include everything from Ande and Cecil and exclude People will give no results as Andy and Cecil are excluded by the "no people" addition.

Hert

Hert, do you not appreciate that this is EXACTLY what we can do in IDI - which is why IDI is so superior to PSU in this respect?

[Hert]

Hert, do you not appreciate that this is EXACTLY what we can do in IDI - which is why IDI is so superior to PSU in this respect?

How often do you need to find all photos of Andy and Cecil *but not with ANY OTHER person in the same picture*? To me that is very exotic and doesn't seem like something you would need on a regular base. You can also do this in PSU but you'd have to be more experienced with the search features.

I'm more sensitive to selecting multi catalog labels than supporting a search with specific people in it but without any people in it (sounds like a contradiction there, right...IDI is strong at that)

If someone is missing something and would love it in the application, then it is possible to log a feature request in Mantis.

This forum is about operating PSU, so can we continue talking about existing capabilities of PSU here?

Hert

[Mike Buckley]

How often do you need to find all photos of Andy and Cecil *but not with ANY OTHER person in the same picture*? To me that is very exotic and doesn't seem like something you would need on a regular base.

I disagree, Hert. That doesn't seem to me to be exotic at all.

[Hert]

Mike, then log a feature request for it.