You just need to dig a little deeper in the Smart Collection rules.

After you set the star ratings, you'll also need to specify the folder, like this:



Make sure you got Match: set to All so that all of your filters are applied, not just any one of them.

Thank you.

I tried that.

Do I need to write something in the blank cell nect to Contains?

What would I write?

But just leaving it like your screenshot does not seem to work. I'll try again.

Oh my goodness. Yes you need to enter at least part of the name of the actual folder you want to see photos from. For example, "vacation" or "Tony's B-day." The more specific your entry, the less likely you are to have other matching content show up.

Yeah this just does not work.

Unless I have to specify something in the blank cell....I don't know what I'd put in there, so if that's it, please let me know what to try.

Thanks for helping.

Yep!!

I get it.

That's pretty much a useless feature!! I does work, but if you want to limit the filtering to a specific folder, you have to write as least one word of your folder name to get it to confine the filtering to that folder.

That effectively means, in order to quickly filter by star rating on your current working folder, you need to create a rule each and every time. I would decribe that as ussless....

BUT, you can filter by star rating that applies no rules, but what good is that?

SO, here's another good example of Cyberlink software getting right up to the 3 yard line and.....nope. This program is more frustratng thn it is useful on account of sommany examples of "almost....".

Arrrggg!!!!

Quote I get it.

That's pretty much a useless feature!! I does work, but if you want to limit the filtering to a specific folder, you have to write as least one word of your folder name to get it to confine the filtering to that folder.

I agree that it is an extra step to get what you're looking for, but in my opinion, it's far from useless.

How are you defining the "current working folder"? PhD knows which clips you've imported and the programmers have intentionally removed any external folder limitations. In other words, they've flattened the workspace so you see all imported content regardless of where it physically resides.

In your case, you do want to rely on physical folders to separate content, so if you created a Smart Collection you would need to type in some part of that folder's name.

Another way to do that is to create a new project file and only import photos from one folder. That way there won't be any other content appearing when you sort by ratings.

These are just the first 2 ways I thought of for doing what you want, but if you'd like to let Cyberlink know that you'd like to have an easier way to sort ratings by folder without using the Smart Collection tool, you can let them know by using Rate Us & Provide Suggestions under the Help menu.

I kinda see a way around this (or through it)....

What I do is save the new batch of photos to a folder, then I make a copy of that folder. The new copied folder is what I then import into PhD.

Then I FLAG or Reject (with flag) the clear "in" and "out" shots. Then I delete to the recycle bin the rejected photos leaving with with only the photos I want to work with. Then, from there I put my stars on each photo.

What I then did was flag rejected everything that was not a 4 or 5 star photo and deleted the less than 4 star shots.

The remaining files in my copied folder are the only shots I'll wok with where I them import them into Affinity Photo for final edit.

The problem again I have with PhD is that if I export a selection of photos (3 star-only or whatever) I have to export it as a TIFF, PNG or JPG. Yet another 3 yard line fail for PhD!!!! WHY NOT OFFER NATIVE FILE EXPORT!!!!????!!!!

This sorting problem would not be an issue had there been a way to export the file as is. It would even be okay to export a COPY of the file to a new folder AS IS in the native format, but again PhD takes the ball down the the 3 yard line and heads off to the locker room!!

What I have works, but just makes Lightroom so much more tempting to go back too

Thanks for the help. I do appreciate it even though I'm complaining a lot. Its NOT you. Again, thank you for replying to my question.

Obviously I can't do anything about increasing the formats available for the Export or Print or Save As options, but I'm missing why you wouldn't need to sort the pics if you could export them in their native format. Are you going to be doing any editing at all in PhD, or are you simply using it to rate and select clips?

If you're doing any editing in PhD, you'll always have to export to a non-native format and you could try this first option.

Workflow #1: PhD always makes virtual copies and never (automatically) makes any changes to your source clips, so there's no reason to make copies of photos (or folders of photos) and then delete the unwanted ones.

Skip that step and simply get rid of the virtual copies in PhD. None of your original clips will be impacted UNLESS you choose Move to Recycle Bin instead of the default Remove from Library option.

When you're finished, export the edited clips to the folder of your choice.

Workflow #2: If you do want to keep the files in their native format after rating them and won't be doing any editing in PhD, then go ahead with your current step of making a copy of the folder and then use Move to Recycle Bin after rating the images.

That leave you with native copies of your only selected clips in the copied folder, and then you could move on to your other apps.

Hopefully one of these will make life easier for you!

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Yep!

Workflow 2:

About of third of my photos are DSLR scanned imaged of film negatives in 35mm and 4x5 large format. Those need to be inverted (make a positive image from the negative). It does not appear that PhD can flip the images for me. That would be super cool, but I don't see that function.

So for the film workflow, its a little different, but it the inversion was a feature of PhD it would be a game changer for me.

As for the other two-thirds of my images, Workflow 2 is the way to go. Yeah I'm just looking for a clean, fast way of sorting through the good, better and best photos. With film that's much less of an issue as those photos are typically varisions of best and amazing with a few 'ooopps" shots on a roll. 4x5 are pretty much almost aways winners and sont need sorting, especually when considering I'm only dealing with about 4 images at a time.

Thanks again!
Adam

Oh you can easily invert, it's just not called that for some reason. See this post for several useful options.

Remember to search the forum as many questions have already been answered.