Tags and Boolian Logic

[Douglas J. Mace]

Sometimes when I search by selecting 2 tags say X ... Y, Elements comes back with photos containing X and Y and sometimes it comes back with photos containing X or Y. Is there some way to control this beast so you can get what you want?

[TonyW]

You can't specify searches using Boolean logic directly although there is a logic to the way the beast searches. It does depend on whether you're searching on tags or categories (there's an important difference).

If you search on two Tags A and B the search results are:

Best match = (Tag A AND Tag B)
Close Match = (Tag A OR Tag B) AND NOT (Tag A AND Tag B)

If you search on categories the logic is more complex and I don't pretend to entirely understand it :) .

Tony

[Douglas J. Mace]

Thanks, I had not noticed that you could choose between "Best" and "Close" matches.

[jpgus]

saw your Q and it helped me think through the issue having just needed to do the same to no avail..

You could create a tag the following tags...
X
Y
Q
L
(X AND Y)
(Q AND L)
{(X AND Y) AND (Q AND L)}

You'd have fotos tagged with X, Y, Q, L already.
search on x and y ...checking "best" box
Select ALL on results and drag tag them with new tag (X AND Y) essentially saving that search.

do same for q and L ...

then search on the tags ... (X AND Y) and (Q AND L) checking "best" box

tag that result as {(X AND Y) AND (Q AND L)}

and you will have saved result of Boolean X AND Y AND Q AND L

But I do not think it will be dynamic.. if you add fotos later that are X tagged they will not automatically be part of the new tags unless you go through the drill again... I think...??

Never tried it.. but will next time I need it.