Search for Multiple Keywords

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Today’s Question: In Lightroom Classic can you search for two keywords at the same time. For example, can I do a search on “birding” and “New Mexico” so only the images come up that have both those keywords?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can search for images that contain both keywords by using the “Contain All” option with the Text search option on the Library Filter bar.

More Detail: The Library Filter bar in Lightroom Classic provides a variety of ways you can search for specific images. One of the things that makes these filtering options so helpful is that you can search in multiple folders or collections, and even search across your entire catalog of photos.

When searching for images based on keywords, I recommend using the Text option for the Library Filter bar. If you don’t see the Library Filter bar at the top of the grid view display, first choose View > Show Filter Bar from the menu (or press the backslash key on the keyboard while in the Library module).

Choose Text from the set of four options for the search criteria, and then set the first popup to Keywords. This enables you to search the Keywords field specifically, rather than other searchable metadata fields. From the second popup choose “Contain All”, so that only photos that include all keywords you enter will be included in the search results.

Note that you could also search using other options for dealing with multiple keywords. For example, the “Contain” option will include any image that includes any of the keywords you enter. So, in this case using “Contain” would include images that have “birding” as a keyword but not “New Mexico”, as well as those that include “New Mexico” but not “birding”.

With the second popup set to “Contain All”, you can enter multiple keywords in the search field, and only photos that contain all of the keywords you’ve entered will be included in the search results.