The quick way to get started with Excire Search - with our tutorials
1. Installation
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
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“ under (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. Settings
In the Excire Search section of the Lightroom Plug-in Manager a user can specify several parameters that affect the initialization process:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 set the keyword language, and if necessary, restore the keyboard shortcuts (macOS only).
