Dynamic Searching. How?

[hocker]

Oh Hert, please! From the difficulty you appeared to have in understanding my point, I am led to believe that this functionality in IDI is nothing more than a bug... But it works, and yes, we use it. Personally, due to repeat orders, etc, I use it all the time. What is so strange about wanting to query A+B but not C??? It seems a perfectly natural search to want and need to make. You cryptically say that it works in PS but that it's necessary 'to be experienced with the search features'. Ok. I guess YOU are experienced with the search features, so teach me: how do I search for A+B but not C? Let me see it working and I shall start to see PS differently. Of course, once we have this sorted, we'll have to talk about stacking!

[Hert]

A+B but not C??? It seems a perfectly natural search to want and need to make.

Oh Hert, please!

Oh please hocker... that is very simple in PSU, that is not what Geoff is talking about.

[hocker]

But that is almost what I am talking about. And what I opened this topic with.
Very professional reply. Love it!

Perhaps I should have said (A+B) but not (C or D or E or F, etc)
Yes, that is easy to do - but I have to repeat, it presupposes that I know the full range I need to exclude.
I quite often don't.
In IDI I don't need to.

[Hert]

I told you how to do it

In the search box enter:
PersonA+PersonB-PersonC

Alternative:
Add PersonA to dynamic search
Add PersonB to dynamic search
Add PsrsonC to dynamic search
Right click on PersonC to exclude

Hert

[hocker]

That does not give me what I need, as I have told you. Twice.
But ok. I give up.
You obviously are not reading our posts and consider that what the customer wants does not need to be taken very seriously.
PS doesn't do what I need and IDI does. So I shall simply forget about PS and stick with IDI until such time as it becomes unusable, when I shall switch to another system.
I'm signing off from this completely unproductive and time-wasting exchange.

[Hert]

Can you explain to me why you would require a result set that *exactly* matches what you search for? PSU searching is implemented with search engines as the prime example.

When I query Google then I get hundreds, thousands, or millions of results and I filter out myself what is a good hit and what isn't. That is also how you can approach your photo searches. Don't force yourself to get a 100% hit result set. Use the search box, enter a few fragments and be surprised with what it comes up with. With PSU you can fully search over *all* information in your catalog database. Use the search box and make combinations with terms/fragments from catalog labels, category names, file names, camera model name, folder names, color label names, etc. That is where the power is.

Hert

[weidmic]

Hert,

Can you explain to me why you would require a result set that *exactly* matches what you search for?

When I search in google, then I am often happy getting some results I have not directly searched for...

When I use IDimager where I normally know what keywords etc. are used, then I want exactly what I have searched for.
You should not compare the use of the google search engine with the PSU search

1. it is not that mighty
2. it is not learning
3. it is used by a user-base that has a different intention
4. ...

Cheers,
Michael

[Hert]

Michael,,

Is the goal to achieve a perfect result set or to find that image you're looking for. I'm very happy finding my image between 10 images that are *off* hits. If your goal is not the result (finding what I need) but the perfect search (finding what I know is right) then you use different approaches

Hert

[gcoupe]

The ability is to be able to query 1,000's of images ( that may or may not contain named individuals who may appear singly or in groups), and to find photos that have only person A and person B in them.

PSU cannot do this, unless you EXPLICITLY exclude ALL named individuals who are not person A or person B.
IDI can do this with three clicks to set up the search. And I'm sorry to keep on referring to IDI, but it's my point of reference...

[Hert]

Geoff,

So your goal is to build the perfect search. You aren't helped with a result set that contains 90 images of Andy and Cecil and 10 images that have Andy and Cecil and a few others. You can easy filter those out yourself, for example by dragging those 90 to the Image Basket

Hert

[gcoupe]

Er, I suspect that the scenario for some people, and one of the reasons why they chose IDI, is that they end up with 900 images of Andy and Cecil and other people, and want to find the 9 with just Andy and Cecil.

[Hert]

Yes, of those 900 you'll probably quickly see how you can reduce that set drastically with an additional exude. Mark the 9 hits and there you have them.

And if you need this identical search on a daily base then you might consider favorizing the search with the favorites button above the thumbs

Hert
Hert

[gcoupe]

Hert, I'll stop this now. It will be clear to those to whom this scenario matters that PSU won't do it. That will be a factor in their decision as to whether to jump ship or not.

[Hert]

Hert, I'll stop this now. It will be clear to those to whom this scenario matters that PSU won't do it. That will be a factor in their decision as to whether to jump ship or not.

I agree Geoff.

Hert

[tstoddard]

Hert,

I am troubled by your comparison of searching for images in one's personal collection of images to searching for something on Google. There is a huge distinction. When searching Google you are searching the public domain of content for which you have no way of knowing what exists and how it may or may not be described. That content is created and made available by millions of sources who put it there for all sorts of reasons. There is no good way to put all of the metadata Google has available in a structured hierarchy. Google doesn't own or control the data it is searching. Searching a collection like that certainly requires more generic methods.

When searching my own catalog of images, I am the one who put them on my computer and I may have spent a lot of time entering specific metadata and creating a structured hierarchy of labels in order to allow myself to find "exactly" what I'm looking for. One of the most important purposes of having a database that contains information about all of my images is to improve my ability to find them when I want them. If I choose to label my images in great detail so that I can search on very specific criteria, I would like to have the ability to use that level of detail in my searches. I don't think that it's unreasonable for someone to want to return a perfect result set when they have purposely labeled their images in a way that would enable them to return a perfect result set. It is, after all, my collection and my data.

I see some irony in the fact that you have proven in the past that you have the ability to create such functionality in a program and in doing so have "created the monster" to which your customers compare PSU. If you had not done that, they might not be asking you for it in PSU.

I have said before that you have done a great job enabling us to search in many different ways, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement or enhancement to those search methods. I don't know of any other application that offers as much flexibility when searching as PSU. I applaud you for that and I plan to continue to use PSU for that and other reasons. I have been trialing several other alternatives over the last month and haven't found any other product that has a feature set that satisfies as many of my needs as PSU. Some do certain things better but then they lack other functionality that I wouldn't want to be without.

Once more, I will add that I think being able to easily select multiple labels and then to deselect individual labels from the set of selected labels would go a long way toward satisfying people's desire to create perfect result sets. It could also provide other time saving capabilities to PSU.