Search and filter

The search row filters the grid as you type. It reads plain words and field:value terms, offers suggestions as you go, and can also list every camera, lens or keyword in your catalog with counts.

Search the grid

1. In the grid, choose View › Search, press Ctrl+F (by default), or click the magnifier in the toolbar. The cursor lands in the search field.
2. Type. The grid updates after a short pause; Enter runs the search at once.
3. Press Esc to clear the field, and Esc again to hide the row.

The magnifier glows while a search is filtering the grid, even when the row is hidden. The × in the toolbar clears the search and every filter chip. The photo count reads “N of M photos” while the search hides some. The search is not kept when you quit; your last ten searches in each catalog are, and appear when you click the empty field or press Down.

This source (the default) searches only what the grid is showing: the folder or collection. All photos searches the whole catalog. Click a different folder while on All photos and the search narrows to that folder.

How a search reads

• A plain word matches file names, captions, keywords and place names. Quote a phrase: "golden hour".
• field:value narrows by one field, for example iso:>1600.
• Terms are joined by AND: lens:24-70 iso:>1600 needs both.
• A comma means either: make:fuji,nikon.
• A leading - excludes: -edited, -kw:rejected.
• none finds photos missing the value: lens:none.
• Case doesn’t matter, also beyond English letters: giessen finds Gießen.
• There are no parentheses.

Values can be numbers, ranges and comparisons: 35, 24-70, >200, <=2.8. Dates take years, months and days: 2024, 2024-06, 2024-06-15, 2023..2024-01, >2024 (from 2025 on). Add = for an exact match on text fields, as in lens:="35mm f/1.4", and * for a keyword prefix, as in kw:ice*.

A term that can’t be read gets a wavy underline; point at it for the reason. A term still being typed, such as iso:>, is ignored.

Fields

Field	Finds	Examples
kw: (keyword:, tag:)	A keyword	kw:iceland, kw:ice*
content: (ai:)	What the photo shows	content:"fog over water"
place:	City, region or country	place:iceland
city:, region: (state:), country:	One part of the place	country:japan
type:	File type: raw, jpeg, tiff, png, exr, bmp, webp	type:raw
ext:	File extension	ext:nef
make:, model: (camera:), lens:	Camera and lens	lens:24-70
focal:	Focal length in mm	focal:35, focal:24-70, focal:>200
f: (aperture:)	Aperture	f:2.8, f:<2.8
iso:	ISO	iso:>3200
shutter:	Shutter speed	shutter:1/60, shutter:<1/60, shutter:>1s
date:	Date taken	date:2024-06
mp:	Megapixels	mp:>40
long: (px:)	Long edge in pixels	long:>6000
rating: (stars:)	Star rating	rating:>=3, rating:2-4, rating:none
flag:	Pick or reject	flag:pick
label:	Color label	label:red

These words need no value:

Word	Finds
edited	Photos with saved adjustments
missing	Photos whose file is missing
stacked	Photos in a stack
copy	Virtual copies
gps	Photos with GPS coordinates
raw	RAW files

Click ? in the search row for this list inside DarkRay. Camera and lens names match either the name your camera wrote or the tidier name DarkRay shows (“Nikon” for “NIKON CORPORATION”).

Get suggestions

As you type, a list offers field names (le suggests lens:) and, after a colon, the values in your catalog, most common first. Tab takes the highlighted suggestion, or the first. Enter takes a suggestion only if you highlighted one; otherwise it runs the search.

Browse with value columns

Click the arrow button in the search row to open four columns under it. Each lists the values of one field in the current scope, with how many photos have each: by default Camera, Lens, Focal length and Keyword. Change a column’s field from its header. Click a value to show only those photos, Ctrl-click to add more values, and click All to clear the column. Each column counts what remains after the other columns’ choices, so it keeps showing its other values.

You can pick Camera, Camera make, Lens, Focal length, Aperture, ISO, Shutter speed, Date (years, then months), File type, Keyword, Country, Region, City, Rating, Color label and Flag.

Use the filter chips

The Rating chip, the color dots and the Edited chip in the toolbar are shortcuts for the terms rating:>=3, label:red and edited. Click one and the term appears in the search field; type the term and the chip lights up.

Search by what a photo shows

content: finds photos by what is in them, with no keywords needed: content:"fog over water", content:dog,cat. The best matches come first, and the toolbar’s sort control reads Relevance until you pick a field to sort by. -content:dog leaves matches out.

It works from a content index that DarkRay builds in the background for each photo (see Add keywords). A photo that isn’t indexed yet can’t match. Run File › Build Content Index to index everything now. The first content: search of a session takes a moment while the model loads.

Note

Stacks are matched photo by photo. The best match is the cover, and its chip reads, for example, “2 of 5”.

Technical details: speed and indexing

Searches on a catalog of 13,000 photos take a few milliseconds for a field term and about 16 ms for a bare word; at 100,000 photos, about 28 ms and 160 ms. Size terms (mp:, long:) and plain words scan the whole table.

Content search uses a SigLIP 2 image-and-text model. Indexing runs on the processor by default (about 15 photos a second on the test machine) or on the graphics card (about 140); set this and whether new photos are indexed automatically under AI Models › Content search in Preferences. Photos whose pixel size DarkRay hasn’t read yet don’t match size terms until it has. [CHECK: whether the beta ships the content model]