AP 1.7 File Open ... Search: new features, pluses/minuses, and puzzles

[LenC]

I love it that searching for an image string is so fast and brings up possible image stuff from everywhere and shows the whole path below BUT

why does it show my iPhoto library originals and not my Photos library ones? The latter is what I use now.

Is there a way to set it not to show my backup drive files unless I want it to, and not show PDFs if I want?

Because of repetition of autoassigned image numbers (IMG_nnnn.jpg) and the issues above,, it takes considerable looking to identify the particular image I want.

[Dan C]

Hi Lenc

The Open dialogue is the default one provided by finder, meaning the search and it's options are controlled by your Mac and not Affinity - if I remember correctly (I don't have a Mac in front of me currently!)

I recommend checking your System settings to change these options!

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

I recommend checking your System settings to change these options!

AFAIK, the search scope is defined (only?) in Finder Preferences > Advanced

[Jeremy Bohn]

On 6/14/2019 at 12:44 PM, LenC said:

why does it show my iPhoto library originals and not my Photos library ones? The latter is what I use now.

If you mean what I think you mean, you have to tell your system that the Photos Library (and not iPhoto) is now the system photo library. 

In Photos, open Preferences, and in the General tab, click Use as System Photo Library. Now everywhere in macOS that uses your photo library will use Photos instead of iPhoto.

[LenC]

I'll do some experimenting and report back on what I find. But why should Search This Mac also search the backup drive?

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, LenC said:

 But why should Search This Mac also search the backup drive?

In my experience This Mac in Search This Mac contains all non-network drives attached to it.  Is your backup drive not a Time Machine drive? Mine is a Time Machine drive and Find doesn't look there but it does look on the other hard dives I have attached to my Mac.

[LenC]

It's a Time Machine backup. That I have never backed up from. Maybe there's another setting somewhere.

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

In my experience This Mac in Search This Mac contains all non-network drives attached to it.

For me, locally attached & mounted drives will be searched with the "This Mac" option, but only if below the header with the search field where it says "Search:" on the left, the drive's name appears & I click it so it turns black & becomes the scope of the search. The details probably differ depending on the version of OSX/macOS the system is running, but on High Sierra that is how it works for me.

41 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Mine is a Time Machine drive and Find doesn't look there...

Same for me.

[Jeremy Bohn]

2 hours ago, LenC said:

It's a Time Machine backup. That I have never backed up from. Maybe there's another setting somewhere.

In System Preference, click on Spotlight. Click the Privacy tab. If your Time Machine hard drive is not in that list, add it.

[LenC]

Wow, Apple's buried preferences! Thanks for that, which worked on one try.  I didn't know Spotlight was so involved in Finder. So, wise one, is there any way to tell it not to look at the many-sub-sub Thumbnails folder in the library since I don't usually want to open them? And, on your previous suggestion, the Photos Preferences General tab shows the correct Photos library after Library Location, but the button Use as System Photo Library is grayed out.

[Jeremy Bohn]

1. I don't know what you mean by "thumbnails folder."

2. If that button is greyed out that means the library is already the system library.

[LenC]

It's buried in an iPhoto library (screen grab), which is the only one my search sees, not the 'system library.'

I don't know why this is in 'Shared'; that was created ages ago. Any suggestion for a quick fix?

 

[R C-R]

18 hours ago, R C-R said:

AFAIK, the search scope is defined (only?) in Finder Preferences > Advanced

Obviously, I was wrong about that. It took longer than it should have for my tired old brain to process the comment by @Jeremy Bohn about looking in Spotlight preferences Privacy tab for items excluded from the search scope. 

[LenC]

The more one looks, the more odd corners turn up. If you press '+' in the window you get dozens of search criteria of possible and unlikely usefulness (e.g., Garage Band). And while we are chatting, is there a programmer's name for this window that is akin to a Finder window inside an app but may have different properties depending on various settings or even the app itself?

[Jeremy Bohn]

1 hour ago, LenC said:

It's buried in an iPhoto library (screen grab), which is the only one my search sees, not the 'system library.'

I don't know why this is in 'Shared'; that was created ages ago. Any suggestion for a quick fix?

 

That's confusing to me. Why is it in Shared? Are you still needing the old iPhoto Library? If not, then delete it - problem solved.

Spotlight Search should not be looking directly into the iPhoto Library like that. It shouldn't appear as a series of folders but just one file, which makes me think something's wrong. If you can't delete it as I suggested, see if you can add the iPhoto Library to the Privacy tab in Spotlight Settings, or maybe even the entire Shared folder?

[LenC]

I'll work on this and get back later. FWIW, this is not Spotlight Search but the bottom of the window I get in AP 1.7 when I do File .. Open ..type in '0533' in the search window (with current settings) and highlight that particular file to show the path.

The Share folder was set up so long ago that I can't recall the motivation. Nothing has been done with the iPhoto library since I moved everything over to Photos back in

- what - 2010? So deleting it should be no problem.

 

[Jeremy Bohn]

2 minutes ago, LenC said:

FWIW, this is not Spotlight Search but the bottom of the window I get in AP 1.7 when I do File .. Open ..type in '0533' in the search window (with current settings) and highlight that particular file to show the path.

This is still a Spotlight Search. Anything using Search in macOS is using Spotlight.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, LenC said:

The Share folder was set up so long ago that I can't recall the motivation.

The /Users/Shared/ folder is a standard one automatically created on the boot volume during the install or first run of OS X. As discussed in this article (among many others), it is commonly used to share files among different user accounts on a Mac.

A few apps also use it as an alternative to (or sometimes in addition to) the more commonly used top level Library > Application Support folder for support & related files to make them accessible to all users of the Mac. However, the Affinity apps, iPhoto, Apple Photos, & most others are not among them. Regardless, you should not try to delete this folder because it could cause problems with your system. Likewise, don't delete any of the subfolders in it unless you are sure they are not used by any app installed on your Mac, or contain files you want to keep.

From the file path shown at the bottom of your screenshot for file IMG_0533.jpg, it came from your iPhoto Library.photolibrary > Thumbnails folder, which is organized by year (2009 for this file), & further by roll number (roll 181 for this file) or by month number or photo album in the photolibrary folder. Thumbnail files are used by apps like iPhoto & Apple Photos in some views, which is why that file is just 240x180 px.

How it (& any other iPhoto thumbnail files like it) got into your /Users/Shared/ folder is anybody's guess, but like @Jeremy Bohn said, since you no longer use iPhoto, you can safely delete those files from the /Users/Shared/ folder, & all subfolders that relate to iPhoto that might be in the /Users/Shared/ folder.

[LenC]

Deleted the iPhoto library, which naturally no longer is searched. But to my surprise, the Photos library is not searched. I guess I don't need that ability much, but would appreciate if someone has an idea to restore that. I had thought that this library search was a new feature of 1.7.

Thanks to all for the suggestions; problems were solved, and something learned.

[R C-R]

52 minutes ago, LenC said:

But to my surprise, the Photos library is not searched. I guess I don't need that ability much, but would appreciate if someone has an idea to restore that. I had thought that this library search was a new feature of 1.7.

I don't think anything has changed in this respect between Affinity Photo 1.6 & 1.7, but as with the other Apple apps that use app-specific libraries & iCloud options for storage, accessing Apple Photos library items without causing any significant problems can be considerably more complicated (& dangerous) than one might expect. This is because these libraries are designed to be managed only by the apps that create them, so opening files in them directly through other apps like Affinity Photo should be avoided. That's why Apple makes it difficult to do so & provides other safer ways to do that.

In the Affinity & several other apps that support it, you can use the Sidebar "Media" item to access the contents of Apple Photos, iPhoto, Photo Booth, etc. Libraries. The Media item should be visible if you scroll the Sidebar (on the left side of open dialog windows) down far enough, but items in that category may not be visible unless you hover the pointer to the right of the word "Media" & click the word "Show" that appears there when you do that.

With the items shown, Click on the Photos item, & the open dialog window will change to a Finder-like view of the various libraries, complete with disclosure triangles for the non-empty ones, like this for Photos:

The lower part of the window (not shown above) will populate with the photos in the respective library categories. It can take a while for this to happen so be patient. This allows you to browse through the contents of the libraries & safely open an item in Affinity or whatever other app supports the Media Sidebar. You can't (or at least should not) save the edited version directly back to the library, which is why "Save" is (or should be) greyed out, leaving the "Save As" option as the only safe way to do that.

Of course, this means you would have to add the saved version back to the Photos library, which is why it is usually better to use the Affinity extensions in Photos to edit library photos ... but that is a subject for a different post. 

[LenC]

I'll digest this tomorrow, but will just note that the motivation for needing this rapid search is that since the introduction of AP I have been exporting quite a few files from Photos to a working directory, and it would be nice to know if I had already done that rather than searching the working directory, since the sorting function (Group) does not always seem to work the way I think it should . If the file is not there, I could copy from the master, do my thing, export to Working and reimport to the library under a different file name. I know that it has been made easier to go directly from Photos to AP since I established that practice, but I just don't have time to master all the intricacies. I will manage fine, and thanks for writing at length.