To be able to search for files, you need to have a method for adding text, so-called metadata, to each file. Without metadata, you are only able to search for file properties such as file name and file date. By adding metadata to fields, you make it easier to find images because you can search for any information that you include in the file.
As shown in the image above, FotoStation has a search field that lets you enter search strings in a quick and straightforward manner. This field is called the Quick Search field. Searching in this field is often useful when working with smaller archives or when you don’t need to perform a highly specific search. However, it is possible to use logical operators such as AND, OR and NOT in this field if desired. If you enter two words and don’t specify an operator, (e.g. “summer 2005”), FotoStation will assume that you wish to find files with both words present in the metadata, i.e. an AND operator is inserted. Please note that the search is case insensitive, i.e. searching for “summer 2005” and searching for “Summer 2005” will return the same files.
If you would like to search for the string summer 2005, this must be entered as (summer 2005) into the search field, i.e. the string must be enclosed in parentheses. When the search result is displayed, you can click the Clear/Show All button to display all files in the currently selected source.
Note that you can only enter up to 128 characters into the Quick Search field.
Tip: To clear the Quick Search history, open the File menu, choose Preferences, then Clear quick search history. On the Mac, click on the arrow next to the magnifying glass in the Quick Search field and choose Clear.
If you would like to perform more advanced searches, such as searching for a string in a specific metadata field or searching for specific file attributes (size, last edited, etc.), you must use the Advanced Search. This option is accessed either by clicking on the Search button on the toolbar (shown in the image above) or using the shortcut Ctrl + F (Command + F on the Mac).
The Search dialog will open as shown above. You can combine up to four searches (i.e. strings of one or more words) by using the AND, OR and NOT operators shown as checkboxes underneath the search text field. For each of these four searches, you may specify whether you wish to search in all metadata fields or in a specific one.
Note that if you insert two or more words into the search field, you will be searching for files containing this exact combination of characters in this exact order. Thus, inserting George Bush into the search field will only return files with this exact string in any of the metadata fields. Files with the string George W. Bush will not match the search string and hence not be shown. Please note that the search is case insensitive, i.e. searching for George Bush or george bush will return the same files.
On the right-hand side of the search text field you find two dropdown lists. The first list lets you access previously entered searches. From the second dropdown list you can choose Field is empty, which inserts xnoword into the text field. This option is used when you would like to find files where one specific metadata field or all metadata fields are empty. This option can of course be combined with other searches.
In addition to the xnoword option, you have other advanced search options for Index Manager archives. See the subtopic Advanced Index Manager search options for more information regarding these options.
Image Attributes
Note that you must click on the arrow on the left-hand side of the Image Attributes label to show the advanced image options. Accessing an Index Manager archive gives you access to even more specific search options. See the subtopic Index Manager-specific search criteria for more information regarding these options.
The image attributes are:
Select the desired date option from the dropdown list. For most of these options you also need to enter one or two dates into the text field. This can be done by clicking on the dropdown button found on the right-hand side of the field and selecting a date from the calendar that opens.
The options are:
Any File Date: All files, independent of date, will be included in the search.
File Date After: Only files with date after the date selected will be included in the search.
File Date Before: Only files with date before the date selected will be included in the search.
File Date Is: Only files with the exact file date will be included in the search
File Date Between: Only files with date between the two selected dates will be included in the search.
Not File Date Between: Files with date that is not between the two selected dates will be included in the search.
IPTC Date After: Only files with date after the date selected will be included in the search.
IPTC Date Before: Only files with date before the date selected will be included in the search.
IPTC Date Is: Only files with the exact file date will be included in the search
IPTC Date Between: Only files with date between the two selected dates will be included in the search.
Not IPTC Date Between: Files with date that is not between the two selected dates will be included in the search.
Release Date After: Only files with release date (IPTC field no. 30) after the date selected will be included in the search.
Release Date Before: Only files with release date before the date selected will be included in the search.
Release Date Is: Only files with the exact release date will be included in the search
Release Date Between: Only files with release date between the two selected dates will be included in the search.
Not Release Date Between: Files with release date that is not between the two selected dates will be included in the search.
Select the desired size option from the dropdown list. For most of these options you also need to enter one or two numbers into the text field. Please note the difference between file size and image size. File size is the size the file has when it is stored on the hard disk. The file will normally contain the image together with the meta data. The image size is the size of the uncompressed image when e.g. performing high-resolution editing.
The options for the size attributes are:
Any File Size: All files, independent of size, will be included in the search.
File Size Larger Than: Only files larger than the selected size in kilobytes (Kbyte) will be included in the search.
File Size Smaller Than: Only files smaller than the selected size in Kbyte, will be included in the search.
File Size Between: Only files with size between the selected sizes in Kbyte will be included in the search.
Image Size Larger Than: Only files with image size larger than the selected size in kilo bytes (Kbyte) will be included in the search.
Image Size Smaller Than: Only files with image size smaller than the selected size in kilo bytes (Kbyte) will be included in the search.
Image Size Between: Only files with image size between the selected sizes in Kbyte will be included in the search.
Image Width Larger Than: Only files with width larger than the selected width in cm or inch (depending on your choice of unit of measure) will be included in the search.
Image Width Smaller Than: Only files with width smaller than the selected width in cm or inch will be included in the search.
Image Width Between: Only files with width between the selected widths in cm or inch will be included in the search.
Image Height Larger Than: Only files with height larger than the selected height in cm or inch will be included in the search.
Image Height Smaller Than: Only files with height smaller than the selected height in cm or inch will be included in the search.
Image Height Between: Only files with height between the selected heights in cm or inch will be included in the search.
Image Resolution Larger Than: Only files with resolution larger than the selected resolution in PPI (pixels per inch) or pixels per cm (depending on your unit of measure choice) will be included in the search.
Image Resolution Smaller Than: Only files with resolution smaller than the selected resolution in PPI (pixels per inch) or pixels per cm will be included in the search.
Image Resolution Between: Only files with resolution between the selected resolutions in PPI (pixels per inch) or pixels per cm will be included in the search.
Pixel Width Larger Than: Only files with pixel width larger than the selected width in pixels will be included in the search.
Pixel Width Smaller Than: Only files with pixel width smaller than the selected width in pixels will be included in the search.
Pixel Width Between: Only files with pixel width between the selected widths in pixels will be included in the search.
Pixel Height Larger Than: Only files with pixel height larger than the selected height in pixels will be included in the search.
Pixel Height Smaller Than: Only files with pixel height smaller than the selected height in pixels will be included in the search.
Pixel Height Between: Only files with pixel height between the selected heights in pixels will be included in the search.
Select the desired color space from the dropdown list.
The options are Don’t Care, Grayscale, RGB/Lab, CMYK and Not Grayscale.
Select the file type that you would like to include in the search. Note that the search will be performed on the file extension, which means that if files have the wrong extension, this will affect search result. For example, a PDF file with a .jpg extension, will not be found when searching for “Adobe PDF”. It will, however, be found in an “Image” search. Since some of these choices include more than one file format, we advise you to read the appendix for a complete list of all supported file formats.
The file type options are Don’t Care, Images, Movies, Adobe PDF, Audio and Office docs.
Select the file’s orientation if you would like to search for files with a specific orientation. Note that this option only applies to image files. If the image doesn’t have an orientation (i.e. the image is a square where the height is equal to the width), then this image will not be included in the search if you select Portrait or Landscape.
FotoStation keeps a log of certain events, i.e. processes that have been applied to images or other files in the archive. Note that the history event in question must be enabled before you can search for it. Also note that FotoStation only logs special events performed from within the program itself. Processes applied in other, external applications are not logged. Up to ten history events are saved for each file. If you would like to view a file’s history log, you can right-click its thumbnail and choose History… from the context menu, or you can click on the History button in the Text Panel.
The options are:
Don’t Care: All files, independent of history events, will be included in the search.
Has Been Printed: Only files that have been printed will be included in the search.
Has Been Edited: Only files that have been edited will be included in the search.
Has Been Texted: Only files where the meta data has been edited in the text editor will be included in the search.
Has Been Opened: Only files that have been opened will be included in the search.
Has Been Dropped: Only files that have been dragged and dropped will be included in the search.
Has Been Sent to Action: Only files that have been sent to an action will be included in the search.
Has Been Cropped: Only files that have been cropped will be included in the search.
Has Been Soft Cropped: Only files that have been soft cropped will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Printed: Only files that have not been printed will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Edited: Only files that have not been edited will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Texted: Only files where the meta data has not been edited in the text editor will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Opened: Only files that have not been opened will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Dropped: Only files that have not been dragged and dropped will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Sent to Action: Only files that have not been sent to an action will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Cropped: Only files that have not been cropped will be included in the search.
Has Not Been Soft Cropped: Only files that have not been soft cropped will be included in the search.
Select the amount of text that you would like to be included in your search. The options are:
Don’t Care: All files, independent of amount of text, will be included in the search.
No Text: Only files that don’t have any text (i.e. meta data) inserted, will be included in the search.
None or Very Small Text: Only files with no text or very little text inserted, will be included in the search.
Normal Text: Only files with normal amount of text, will be included in the search.
Specify whether you wish to search for online or offline files, or whether this is irrelevant. (Don’t Care, Online Files and Offline Files)
If you find yourself performing the same search very often, you may want to save this search. This will be especially useful when the search you are performing contains searching for several strings and image attributes. To create a search, open the Search dialog box and enter the search you would like to save. Then, click on the Stored search menu and select the Save current search option. If you are working on an archive that is not connected to Index Manager, all you have to do now is to enter a name for the search and then click on the Finish button. The search is then stored as a local search and will only be available to the current FotoStation client.
If the search that you would like to save is on an Index Manager server, you can create a global search as shown above. This search will then be available to everyone who accesses this indexed archive. Start by opening the Search dialog box and enter the search you would like to save. Then, click on the Stored search menu and select the Save current search option in the dialog window. You are then given the choice between creating a local or a global search. Select the global search option and click on the Next button. Enter a name for the search and then click on the Finish button. The search is then stored on the Index Manager server and will be available to all clients accessing the archive on the Index Manager server.
Selecting a Stored Search
From the Search dialog box, select a search by clicking on the Stored search menu and selecting Open global search or Open local search from the menu, depending on the type of search you are looking for. Select the desired search from the sub menu that appears and then click on the OK button in the dialog box to perform the search.
Note that for global searches, you can also click on the stored search as shown above to perform the search.
In most dialog boxes in FotoStation where you can input text, you can press the F7 key to check your spelling. This functionality relies on the spell-checking feature in Microsoft Office, which means that Office has to be installed on the computer running FotoStation.
When creating custom search strings in a FotoWare client application or using the Archive Agent, you can also insert logical operators directly into the search field. By doing this, you are able to achieve more control over the search and make the search more specific. Make sure that you choose where the search should be performed (in all metadata fields, or in a specific field) when you enter the advanced search directly in the search text field.
Basic searching
When delivering a basic search to Index Manager without a field specification, the search is performed across all fields in the Metadata configuration. A basic search in Index Manager could for example look like this:
Summer holiday 2010
Index Manager interprets this as a string that has to appear in the files' metadata exactly as is. On the Index Manager Status screen in the Operations Center you will see the search string as (summer holiday 2010).
Hence, it may be more practical to search for files where all those words occur, but not necessarily in that exact order. So you may want to rephrase your search and add logical operators to your search string:
summer AND holiday AND 2010
This will search for files where all the three words occur, but not necessarily as a continuous string.
Below you will find a list of logical operators and how they are used in building the search string:
Logical Operators
The logical operators that can be used are:
(apples AND pears): Both apples and pears must be present in the text
(apples OR pears): Either one of the two words apples and pears must be present in the text.
(apples NOT pears): The word apples and not the word pears must be present in the text.
The syntax when using the “near” operator is w/# where # is a number describing how far apart the two words can be.
(apples w/7 pears): The words apples and pears must both appear in the text. In addition, apples and pears can not be more than 7 words apart.
This operator must be used alone in a text field. Use this option if you would like to find files where one specific metadata field or all metadata fields are empty. You can also combine this option with other searches.
A note about the xnoword operator:
The xnoword option must be used in correspondence with how the Index Manager archive is set up. You can only search for an empty field if Index Manager is set up to index this field as empty.
Avoiding ambiguous search strings
When you are performing advanced searches, make sure to insert parentheses if there is the slightest chance that the search is ambiguous. The search string apples AND pears OR orange juice is an example where it is not clear what you are searching for. Amongst others, you could be looking for "apples and pears" or "orange juice". Then you should write (apples AND pears) OR (orange juice), or you are looking for “apples” and “pears or orange” and “juice”. Then you should write apples AND (pears OR orange) AND juice.
Searching in a specific field
With a powerful search engine, it makes good sense being about to single out the field you want to search in. This is done by referring to the field's id according to its definition in the server's Metadata configuration.
Example: Byline / Photographer is field 80. To search for a name in that field, the syntax would be:
(IPTC080 contains (John Smith))
Similarly, if you wanted to find files where the photographer's name is NOT John Smith, you would type the string as follows:
(IPTC080 contains (NOT John Smith))
It's also possible to combine searches across several fields:
(IPTC080 contains (John Smith)) AND (IPTC120 contains (snow AND winter))
This would find files with the name John Smith in the Byline field and where both the words snow and winter occur in the Caption field (no. 120).
Please note: Searches are not case sensitive
Special Characters When Searching
When you are searching, you can make use of some special characters that can help you find what you are looking for. These special characters are:
Example: shoe? will match shoes, but not shoe.
Example: shoe* will match shoe, shoes, shoestring, etc.
Fuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled. Using fuzzy searching to find misspelled words e.g. in the caption field may be quite useful.
Example: ba%nana will match words that start with ba and has at most one difference between it and the word banana. Searching for b%%anana will match words that start with b and have at most two differences between it and the word banana.
Phonic searching looks for a word that sounds like the search word and begins with the same letter. Please note that phonic searching is slower than a regular search and tends to produce quite a high number of search hits, so it is usually a good idea to make selective use of the phonic search option.
Insert the character # in front of the word that you would like to search for phonetically.
Example: #Smith will match Smith, Smithe and Smythe
With word stemming enabled, Index Manager searches for morphological varieties of words, for example different verb tenses or noun plurals. Stemming lists are stored on the Index Manager server.
Insert the character ~ after the word that you would like stemming to work for.
Example: apply~ will match applying, applies and applied
By setting up a thesaurus on the Index Manager server and enabling synonym searching in FotoStation, Index Manager will return hits containing synonyms to the specified search words.
Using a synonym search: Insert the character & after the word that you would like to search for synonyms for.
Example: fast| will match quick, assuming that quick has been defined as a synonym for fast.
Example: (summer 2000~~2006) will return files that contain the phrase summer 2000, summer 2001 and so on up to summer 2006.
This can also be used for date range searches (either the date fields included in the standard XMP specification or custom made date fields) which are converted into the format YYYYMMDD.
For example, to search for files with a release date between Jan 1 2011 and Dec 31 2011, your search string would look like this:
(FQYRD contains (20110101~~20111231))
The FQYRD specifier is used to search in the Release date field. See the table below for more special field specifiers.
Assuming you want to create a search for yesterday's pictures in FotoStation, for example, your can create an autosearch on the archive with the following string:
(FQYFD contains (%%INSDATE-1))
This way, you can use + and - in combination with a number to add to or subtract from a numeric search.
Specifiers for field specific searches
The specifiers below refer to file properties that fall outside the scope of the metadata configuration but you can refer to directly using special codes.
|
Field name |
Specifier |
Data Format |
|
Metadata Field |
IPTCxxx |
xxx if the metadata field number. Ex: 005 for Object Name. |
|
Image Color |
FQYIC |
BW, RGB or CMYK |
|
File Type |
FQYFT |
JPEG, TIFF etc. |
|
Image Resolution |
FQYIR |
Always in pixel / cm |
|
Image width |
FQYIW |
Always in cm |
|
Image height |
FQYIH |
Always in cm |
|
Pixel width |
FQYPW |
|
|
Pixel height |
FQYPH |
|
|
File size |
FQYFS |
In Kbytes |
|
Image size |
FQYIS |
In Kbytes |
|
File name |
FQYFN |
|
|
Folder name |
FQYFLN |
|
|
Full path |
FQYFP |
|
|
Format |
FQYFM |
LANDSCAPE_IMG or PORTRAIT_IMG |
|
Offline status |
FQYOL |
ONLINE or OFFLINE |
|
File date |
FQYFD |
YYYYMMDD |
|
IPTC date |
FQYID |
YYYYMMDD |
|
Release date |
FQYRD |
YYYYMMDD |
Example syntax: (FQYFLN contains (holiday))
This will find files located in folders with the word holiday in the folder name.
Additional fields
The Field Codes topic lists all the EXIF fields and use dynamic operators that can be used when creating searches.
A quick and easy way to find files is to right-click a thumbnail and choose Find in the context menu. The following options are available:
Similar images, Very similar images, Duplicate images: FotoStation can search for images similar to the one you right-clicked. In order to do so, it first has to analyze all images in the folder to create a “profile” of the image data. This can be a very time consuming process, so we advise you to use this function selectively.
Same priority: Finds files with the same Priority as the selected file.
Same event: Finds files taken at the same event by performing an OR-search in Headline, Object Name and the first words in the Caption field.
Same Job ID: Finds files with the same Job ID as the selected file.
Same Image ID: All versions Finds files with the same Image ID as the selected file.
Keywords: Provides a submenu where you can pick keywords from the selected file that you wish to search for in the archive.
Supplemental Category: Provides a submenu with the contents of the supplemental category field of the selected file and search for that content in the archive.
Other text fields: Displays a submenu with all filled-in text fields and lets you search for similar content in the same fields in other files in the archive.
Advanced Search Example: Let’s say you know that you are searching for a picture from a holiday in 2005. You know the pictures are stored in “C:\my pictures\holiday pictures\summer 2005”. In this case, you could search for “summer 2005” in folder name or simply “2005” in full path – both searches would retrieve the picture in question.
On the left-hand side of the Quick Search field you find the icon for data mining which includes the Word list and the Calendar. Learn more about how to use these two functions in the Data Mining topic.