Ken Lucke wrote:
In article , John
McWilliams wrote:
Ken, or any other Mac user: Can you find your photos via Spotlight
searching on the Metadata key words, or EXIF info, for that matter?
Hmmm, never tried (I just do it in Aperture, which has much more
sophisticated search criteria).

Hang on, let me give it a shot...

Yup. Learched on "lighthouse", and all my pictures that have
"lighthouse" as a keyword showed up, even if the name of the file
didn't contain it (and getting info showed the keyword). Searched on
"digital rebel xt" and digital rebel xti"and all those photos showed
up, with the info showing it as "camera model".

So yeah, Spotlight allows searching by EXIF keyword.

Thanks. Do you still have images you processed in LR, and do they show
up? (Mine don't, so don't know whether it's a localized phenom. or
something else.)

I never entered any keywords in LR, I did it all (evenon the
unrecognized .cr2 files) in Aperture, so there would be no way of
telling. I guess I add some keywords to an image in LR and export it,
just to see. 'ang on....

.... OK, the results: both LR & Aperture append the keywords to any
non-raw exported files, neither append it to the original raw file if
it is exported (or a copy of it is), which is probably as it should be
when they state that they never touch the original file.

So, if you're having problems with LR not appending keywords to
exported images (non-raw) it seems to probably be on your system.

Ooooowwwww. My D'Oh! But, thanks to what you just wrote, I realize that
I was searching on terms that were attached only to the xml sidecars;
that the particular images whose key words I was using Spotlight for on
that computer hadn't been exported. D'Oh!

And, yes, most of my searching will be within Lightroom, but I wanted to
know whatever alternatives there were in case I stopped using it.

--
John McWilliams