Lightroom (6) "on this day"

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I've been using Lr for years but never worked much with 'smart' collections - I'm sure this is possible but I can't see how to do this ...

How do I create a query to show any photo's taken 'on this day'? (not today, but 9th October xxxx - does Lr accept wildcards?)

I could write it quicker in SQL than I can work it out on Lr (it is a database afterall!)

I would be delighted for someone to point out that button I've never pressed at this moment in time :)
 
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In Library mode, select the Metadata option along the very top of the window where it displays Library Filter:
You can set custom filters not just for date but ISO or Aperature for example
 
I could write it quicker in SQL than I can work it out on Lr (it is a database afterall!)

The lrcat file is an SQLite database as far as I'm aware.

I'm guessing you found Match: Date>Capture Date? This allows you to do a fair bit.

I also wrote an article about how to delve into the database (from outside LR) here.
If you're capable, you can thus write your own queries. My article is for non-technical people who want to extract csvs to Excel or similar so I suspect you'd find it extremely straightforward. I find it useful to discover (for example) which month I take most of my photos in. To do counts against lenses and/or focal lengths to see how popular certain ones are.

The downside is that it's done outside of Lightroom which means the best you'd hope for is a bunch of image IDs. It's great for counts but bad for finding images. Of course, you could get really clever and script adding a keyword to the entries that match "October" to all photos taken in October - no matter the year - for example. But that would mean meddling with your live lrcat file which you may or may not be comfortable doing.

tl;dr - no easy way that I've found. But now I've typed all this out, someone will come along and point out which button needs to be pressed :)
 
Thanks for the replies - I'm at work now but will take a longer look at your suggestions later :)
 
The only way I can see the you acheiving this is to change the file name of the image on import to a date/time format.

Eg. For an Image taken now, the image would be called 1110201807403401 where 11 is the date, 10 is the month, 2018 is the year, 07 the hour, 40 minutes, 34 seconds and then the last two digits, a sequence number just in case you have more than one photo with the exact same date/time stamp.

Then to create your smart collection you tell it to include all images with file name starting 1110 to display images taken on 11th October
 
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The lrcat file is an SQLite database as far as I'm aware.

I'm guessing you found Match: Date>Capture Date? This allows you to do a fair bit.

I also wrote an article about how to delve into the database (from outside LR) here.
If you're capable, you can thus write your own queries. My article is for non-technical people who want to extract csvs to Excel or similar so I suspect you'd find it extremely straightforward. I find it useful to discover (for example) which month I take most of my photos in. To do counts against lenses and/or focal lengths to see how popular certain ones are.

The downside is that it's done outside of Lightroom which means the best you'd hope for is a bunch of image IDs. It's great for counts but bad for finding images. Of course, you could get really clever and script adding a keyword to the entries that match "October" to all photos taken in October - no matter the year - for example. But that would mean meddling with your live lrcat file which you may or may not be comfortable doing.

tl;dr - no easy way that I've found. But now I've typed all this out, someone will come along and point out which button needs to be pressed :)

it is indeed a sqlite database and I have gone in there in the past to fix corruptions. But all in all I would not recommend this, its a mess!

Would be nice if you included the schema (or link to one) in your article.

Regardless I wouldn't suggest this option, better to familiarise oneself with the library tab as suggested above :)
In my library the files are also organised in folders with respective dates. You can find these on left side column. I think LR6 does this by default since I don't remember doing anything special for it. So just select the folder by date and you have all photos taken on that date.
 
Would be nice if you included the schema (or link to one) in your article.

I think I got my info from just digging around. The fact I had to look up what a schema was probably tells you all you need to know :)

Finding a specific date is easy - you can do that from the Smart collection if you know the date. My understanding of the OP was dates like birthdays (for example) "All photos taken on 9th October, all years" so that you could see all the photos taken on someone's birthday over the years.
 
I think I got my info from just digging around. The fact I had to look up what a schema was probably tells you all you need to know :)

Finding a specific date is easy - you can do that from the Smart collection if you know the date. My understanding of the OP was dates like birthdays (for example) "All photos taken on 9th October, all years" so that you could see all the photos taken on someone's birthday over the years.

ah my bad :facepalm:

well depends on how many years back his 9th October folders go. You can select multiple folders by holding down command (mac) or ctrl (windows). If there aren't too many this is probably quicker and easier.
if OP has like 10 years worth of 9th Oct folders then it won't be fun ;)
 
Yep, my catalogue is around 10 years old so 10 birthdays for example.

It would be nice to be able use a wildcard in a 'Smart' collection e.g. 09/10/#### but I don't believe Lr supports that.
 
I think Elliot's suggestion is probably best. A VB script or somesuch to go through your MyPictuers folder and rename everything. That would probably screw up your image ratings, colour labels, manual collections and any other catalogue specific stuff though.

In short. Wildcarding would be a fab addition.
 
I think Elliot's suggestion is probably best. A VB script or somesuch to go through your MyPictuers folder and rename everything. That would probably screw up your image ratings, colour labels, manual collections and any other catalogue specific stuff though.

In short. Wildcarding would be a fab addition.

Not least of which, the library will not find any image in the 'correct' (its version of correct) folder
 
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