Excire Search 2 Tutorials

A quick introduction to Excire Search 2 plugin

1. Introduction

After downloading the Excire Search plug-in by using the download link included in the confirmation E-Mail, you need to first install Excire Search. As macOS user you first unzip the downloaded ZIP file and mount the corresponding disk image (DMG file).

Then you only need to start the installation program, which will guide you through the installation process. Windows users only need to start the downloaded EXE file and follow the instructions provided by the installer.

2. Registration

After a successful installation you can find an Excire Search entry in your Lightroom Plug-in Manager (File→Plug-in Manager). Navigate to the license section, where you can register your Excire Search software. You only have to enter your email address followed by your personal license key and then press the register button. If you have more than one key, you have to repeat the procedure for each of your keys.

3. Initialization

Before you can use Excire Search you need to initialize the photos in your Lightroom catalog. Therefore please start the corresponding user dialog box by using the menu entry „Initialize Photos“ (Library→Plug-in Extras→Excire Search) or the shortcuts ⌥⌘N (macOS) and Ctrl+Alt+N (Windows). In the dialog box you can specify if you want to initialize the photos of your whole Lightroom catalog or only the photos in your current filmstrip. Furthermore, you may specify whether the whole CPU power should be used for initialization. Disabling this option will make is easier to use the computer for other tasks during initialization.

Since the first initialization of a complete lightroom catalog may take some time, we recommend to run the initialization over night or in smaller batches. Note that the initialization of 10000 photos will take about one hour on a state-of-the-art computer. Initialization can be interrupted and continued at any time. Novel photos imported to your lightroom catalog must be initialized by starting the above initialization process.

4. General Settings

In the Excire Search section of the Lightroom Plug-in Manager a user can specify several parameters that affect the initialization process:

Fast Initialization: if this option is enabled, all photo edits made in Lightroom will be ignored for the sake of faster initialization. Moderate edits should not cause any problems. Note, however, that strong crops and color edits may change the dominant color and the image content: Excire has been taught that skies are blue and if you make them green, it may fail to recognize a landscape.
Prefer Smart Previews in initialization: During initialization smart previews will be preferred if you set this option. This can be useful if you have generated smart previews that are stored on your local SSD and if the access of your original photos is slower.
For stacks, only initialize the top photo: This option should be enabled if you are a timelapse photographer and need to handle photo stacks, which consists of many very similar images. Then only the top photo of a stack will be initialized.

Furthermore a user can select the keyword language, and, if necessary, the Excire Search shortcuts may be restored (only macOS).

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