Today’s Question: I had always thought the power of Lightroom Classic was allowing me to search for things, but when searching for a specific photo, I find that if the specific folder it is in is not selected Lightroom Classic doesn’t find the image. I had always thought that if I chose the parent folder of all images, that I could search for it that way, but was disappointed in realizing that I couldn’t.
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can indeed search across all subfolders in Lightroom Classic by enabling the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option, or search across your entire catalog by choosing the “All Photographs” collection.
More Detail: If you have the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option (found on the Library menu) turned off, then searching for images with the various filters on the Library Filter bar will only reveal matching images from within the currently selected folder. It is worth noting, by the way, that you can select and therefore search across more than one folder by selecting multiple folders. You can do so by clicking on the first folder and holding the Shift key while clicking on the last folder to select the full range. You can also hold the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on Macintosh while clicking on a folder to toggle the selection of that folder on or off.
When you turn on the Show Photos in Subfolders option on the Library menu, you’ll see a checkmark icon to the left of the command on the menu so you know it is turned on. This will cause the image count for a parent folder to display the total number of photos within that folder and all subfolders within the folder. That also means that if you select a parent folder, you’ll also be viewing all images from all subfolders. Therefore, you would be searching across all those images if you used the Library Filter bar, for example.
If you want to search across the entire catalog, you can do so very easily by selecting the All Photographs collection found in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. When you find a photo within All Photographs, you can right-click on the image and choose “Go to Folder in Library” to be taken automatically to the folder that contains the image.
I will add that I recommend being careful when using the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option. Because enabling this setting causes a parent folder to appear as though photos from subfolders are contained within that parent folder, it is possible to be fooled into thinking that there are duplicate images. After all, when you browse the parent folder or the subfolder you will see the same images. However, it is not duplication in this case, so if you deleted images you would be deleting the only copies of those photos. I therefore generally recommend leaving the “Show Photos in Subfolders” option turned off except in situations where you are actively making use of it.
