Ability to search for a specific value across all TAG'S?

[StarGeek]

I should have realized earlier, but if you need to search across all files and all tags on a regular basis, you should start using a Digital Asset Management (DAM) program, such as Lightroom (paid), Darktable, or DigiKam (both free).

These programs will create a database of all the metadata in the files, making it significantly faster to search through all the metadata. They will still save the data in the file or in an XMP sidecar file, so you're not locked into using only that program.

Exiftool only knows what is in the file it is currently processing and has to read all the files again if you need to do another search. Once you start getting into thousands, tens of thousands, or more files, exiftool is the less optimal solution.

[greybeard]

I should have realized earlier, but if you need to search across all files and all tags on a regular basis, you should start using a Digital Asset Management (DAM) program, such as Lightroom (paid), Darktable, or DigiKam (both free).

These programs will create a database of all the metadata in the files, making it significantly faster to search through all the metadata. They will still save the data in the file or in an XMP sidecar file, so you're not locked into using only that program.

Exiftool only knows what is in the file it is currently processing and has to read all the files again if you need to do another search. Once you start getting into thousands, tens of thousands, or more files, exiftool is the less optimal solution.

Possibly so - I'm not familiar with Darktable or Digikam but Lightroom doesn't have access to the same range of metadata as Exiftool.

Out of curiosity I ran a search of 11,000 images on external drives (with tens of thousands of other non-image files on those drives) and it took less than 40 seconds.

And it didn't involve importing into a DAM.

The search was: -r -FileName -if '$All:All=~/Animal Face/i' -ext jpg -ext raf so it was a full text scan of all tags from all 11,000 jpg and raf files.

Not sub-second response I agree but when you want to search for obscure maker specific metadata then Exiftool is the only way to go.

[StarGeek]

What kind of drives?

I defninately can't get that kind of speed from my drives, mostly 5200 rpms drives.

Imatch (Windows only), created by Mac2 on these forums, uses exiftool on the back end, and you can tell it to index anything that exiftool can read.

[greybeard]

What kind of drives?

I defninately can't get that kind of speed from my drives, mostly 5200 rpms drives.

Imatch (Windows only), created by Mac2 on these forums, uses exiftool on the back end, and you can tell it to index anything that exiftool can read.

These were Samsung T7 SSDs - I'm been migrating my spinning disks off to backup duty - and as prices come down I'll be moving more to the faster Thunderbolt SSDs.

Imatch looks interesting - I wonder if there is something similar for the Mac.