I've started to embrace the mobile and web sides of Lightroom a bit more. The ability to access my catalog on the go, easily create and sync collections to show to clients, and cull and make basic edits while standing in line at the market has been a great boon in convenience for me. Adobe seems to be embracing it too, pushing ahead with the introduction of a useful and rather neat feature today.
I like the web and mobile versions of Lightroom. I use them to help clients cull photos, to share my portfolio in person, and to do basic work when needed. Sharing my portfolio is a bit of a two-step process, though; if I'm meeting a wedding client, I need to create a collection of photos that I think are best to show that specific client in the desktop version of Lightroom, then sync them to the web so they're ready to be shown on my mobile device in person. While I've found that I get tremendously positive responses by handing clients an iPad and letting them swipe through images with me, it's a bit cumbersome to get up and running. A new feature could make that process much simpler, however.
Today, Adobe introduced the "Search" functionality as the first feature of its new Technology Previews. Those who have used Gmail Labs will know that Google gives the user the option to beta test features before they are officially integrated into Gmail; this is much akin to that process. Search makes use of Adobe's new image analysis technology to allow users to search any images they have synchronized online, whether that be through Lightroom Mobile, Lightroom on the web, or a synchronized collection in the desktop version.
Adobe was kind enough to give me advance access to the feature, and although it's not yet complete (they plan to add the ability to search metadata and other properties), I was still impressed by its capabilities, particularly its ability to take rather abstract plain English inquiries and generate very accurate results. For example, searching "love" quickly brought up my wedding and maternity photos. Check out some examples below.
A search for "dance."
A search for "river."
A search for "cello."
Now, in fairness, it did mistake a double bass and a violin for a cello a few times, but given that a lot of people see the violin, viola, cello, and double bass as "violin, slightly bigger violin, big, upright violin, and really, really big violin," I'm not going to fault it. The algorithm isn't quite perfect; for instance, searching "horse" indeed found my horse, but it also pulled a few dance pictures in too. It seems to error slightly on the side of choosing too many images, which is fine, as I'd rather have to remove a few from a generated collection than not see them at all. That being said, though, I was highly impressed with its accuracy and ability to discern what should be displayed and what shouldn't.
I'm really excited about this functionality. I'm a big believer in the in-person consultation, and the ability to dynamically generate collections on the fly means I can hone in on specific images I want to share in the moment. This could be highly useful for chance encounters as well.
To access Search, log into Lightroom on the web, click on the menu in the top left corner, and select "Technology Preview." From there, you can toggle Search, which will trigger Lightroom to index your photos (indexing my 1,500 synced photos only took about two minutes). Search is only available in English at the moment, but Adobe plans to expand it to other languages in addition to adding the capabilities mentioned above before its final release. To read more about it, check out their blog post.
Be sure to give the new Search function a try, and let us know your thoughts in the comments!
I don't know if I would find a use for it personally but it is a cool feature nonetheless.
However, the only remaining thing driving a wedge between me and LR at the moment is slow tether rendering. This is hurting them bigtime IMO with regards to competing against Capture1.
Waiting a few seconds for your tether preview to render is not a big deal in my opinion. Capture's big advantage for tethering is the live view.
The search feature sounds pretty nice, especially for those that are lax on their keywording.
That'd be me. :)
I think this is AWESOME. Would be most useful to find something in particular I'd be looking for (I wouldn't treat this as a way to create collections, as I rarely want to include "ALL" or even "MOST" of the photos I have of a particular subject -- but awesome for general search!).