Month: March 2025

Today’s Question: When importing catalogs into a catalog [in Lightroom Classic] is there an easier way of avoiding duplicate files of the same photos to be imported?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, you don’t have the option to not import suspected duplicates when merging catalogs in Lightroom Classic. However, in this context I wouldn’t recommend skipping duplicate images when merging catalogs.

More Detail: If you have more than one catalog in Lightroom Classic and want to merge them into one, you can use the “Import from Another Catalog” command. However, you don’t have control over how duplicates are handled when merging catalogs.

First off, if the two catalogs contain references to the exact same files with the exact same filenames within the exact same folder, they won’t be imported twice. The duplicates in this context would not be imported, but that’s simply because the files in question are already being managed by the destination catalog. So this is exactly what you would want to have happen, although there is an option to choose which metadata takes precedence between the two.

If, on the other hand, you have more than one copy of the same photos in different locations, the duplicate photos would be imported as part of the process of merging catalogs. However, that’s exactly what I would recommend doing since merging catalogs is part of a process of streamlining your workflow and cleaning things up.

If you were to skip duplicate images when merging catalogs, you would still have duplicate files taking up space on your hard drive, they just wouldn’t be references within your catalog. I therefore think it is best to import the duplicates, and then work on identifying which images are duplicates, which among the duplicates should take precedence, and clean out the duplicates accordingly.

Today’s Question: Which fields are actually searchable [in Lightroom Classic]? I have several folders each containing images of multiple models. I recently updated the metadata for each image to include the model’s name and Instagram handle (“Person Shown” and “Additional Info”, respectively, in IPTC Extension). But I found that text searches of their names from “any searchable field” or “searchable IPTC” returned no results.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Despite the name, the “Any Searchable Field” option for a Text search in Lightroom Classic is not a very broad search at all. This search only includes a subset of the total range of IPTC metadata fields, for example.

More Detail: When you search using the Text option on the Library Filter Bar, the most broad search option is achieved by selecting the “Any Searchable Field” option. However, this does not actually search most metadata fields available. In other words, what makes a field searchable is that Adobe has decided to make it searchable, not the mere fact that the metadata exists within the catalog.

You can find a summary of the metadata fields that are searchable with the Text filter on Adobe’s website here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/finding-photos-catalog.html

If you use the Any Searchable Field option you are searching across all the various options listed in the third step under the “Find photos using the Text filter” heading. That would include all fields shown for “Searchable EXIF” and “Searchable IPTC”, for example. But note that in both cases the actual search is limited to a relatively small number of metadata fields.

In general, I would say that the most dependable way to make sure you can filter and search for photos based on specific text in metadata would be to add that text as Keywords. However, this obviously isn’t an optimal solution in many cases. Therefore, if you want to use other metadata fields I do recommend reviewing the list of searchable metadata fields linked above, so you can be sure to use those fields for any metadata you actually want to be able to search for.

Note, by the way, that when it comes to identifying people I do recommend using keywords in Lightroom Classic. Specifically, I recommend adding the person’s name using the People view option, or by adding a new keyword on the Keyword List while enabling the “Person” option. You can also edit the keyword from the Keyword List so that you can turn off the “Include on Export” checkbox. This would enable you to search for the person by name since keywords are searchable, while also helping to maintain privacy by not allowing that keyword to be included in metadata when you export the image.