Requesting Better Results in the Search Box

[SirDavee Profile]

When trying to search for effects using the search box, I get a list of suggested terms. I have to go through each suggestion and see if the effect I want is there. This is very time consuming. It would be much easier for the users if all matching effects are shown immediately. For instance, if i search for "ripple", I get several suggestions to refine the search. I would much prefer to be shown all effects that match the term "ripple" instead of having to manually select each suggestion individually. It is even worse if the search term is "reflect". There are over a dozen suggestions, and only the ones that begin with the letters ripple are shown. It would help if the search term matches anywhere. For me, improving the functionality of the search box would greatly shorten my editing time.

[Richard Briggs Profile]

I agree. In general the whole mechanism for finding certain types of effect has not kept pace with the (unexpected?) popularity of the product and the sheer number of effects. It may have worked OK with 100 effects but 3000+? I think there are two problems:

a) poor tagging/naming of effects by contributors. So you search on, say, 'motion' and you get effects that have no hint of motion.

b) the search mechanism itself where I echo the previous comments.

Richard

[eadams Profile]

I agree that the search functionality is in need of improvement.

Additionally, I wish the program had an easy way to tag an effect as a favorite, similar to the way Lightroom lets you tag favorite images. I would love to be able to scroll through the Effects Gallery and move the effect to a list of favorite effects simply by highlighting an effect and pressing a hotkey.

Currently, the list of favorite effects is simply a list of names, and I can't remember what most look like. The current favorites list is not very useful. I would like to be able to use my favorites as a filter so that I could scroll through my favorites the same way I currently scroll through the entire gallery. Even if I had tagged a hundred filters as a favorite, it would be a great help.

[admin]

Hi everyone,

This might help: When an effect is authored the author chooses keywords for finding that effect, which will work in addition to the effect name. However, anyone can add keywords by doing the following: Make sure 'Show ratings' is checked in the settings panel. Then find an effect you want to add a keyword to in the gallery, and click where it says "Rate effect" next to the stars. You could even tag them as say 'EadamsFavs', then you or anyone else can search on EadamsFavs. Any tags you add in that way become live in the same way new effects do, so you'll need to update galleries, then wait for them to be processed at this end, which usually happens on a Monday, although, let me know if you'd like it done sooner.

Hope that's of some help.

Kind regards

Tony

[eadams Profile]

Thanks, Tony. I had forgotten how to add tags to an image. Clicking on the words "Rate effect" is not very intuitive since the words look like plain text that wouldn't react to a click.

I will try out your suggestion. I like the idea of letting the community tag effects for their own searches, but I don't like the idea of these user tags being integrated into the live Effects Gallery. In theory it is a great idea - use the power of the community to improve the discoverability of effects. In practice, it is not working at all. Like Richard Briggs said in his above post, users have apparently tagged effects nonsensically, and the poor search results are partly a result of that. It is very frustrating.