Today’s Question: Is it possible in Lightroom Classic to search for photos containing one keyword while excluding photos containing another keyword?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can filter images in Lightroom Classic based on them having one keyword assigned but only if another keyword is not assigned. This can be done by adding an exclamation point to exclude keywords.
More Detail: The text-based filtering options in Lightroom Classic are implemented in a way that doesn’t make it entirely obvious how many options actually exist for searching for photos based on keywords or other metadata fields. One of those “mystery” features is the ability to filter based on an image not having a particular keyword assigned.
For example, let’s assume you want to find photos of buildings but not where those buildings are houses. To get started you can navigate to the folder or collection for the images you want to search, which could even mean choosing the “All Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module if you want to search across your entire Lightroom Classic catalog.
Next, go to the grid view and make sure the Library Filter bar is displayed (choose View > Show Filter Bar from the menu if it isn’t). Go to the Text tab and select “Keywords” from the first popup. Then choose “Contains All” from the second popup. In the text field enter the keywords you want to search by, placing an exclamation point (!) immediately in front of keywords you want excluded from the search result.
In the example above, you would enter “building !house” in the textbox. This would cause the search results to include only photos that have “building” assigned as a keyword, while excluding photos that have “house” assigned as a keyword.
I find this type of search most helpful when I want to search for a category of subjects in photos, while excluding subcategories. That could include things like searching for animals that aren’t birds, vehicles that aren’t buses, or any number of other possible examples.
