Excire Search Help

Excire Search Help: Selection

Excire Search: Pre-purchase questions about hardware, licenses, updates and supported image formats

Processor	Multi-core processor with 64-bit support Older AMD Prozessoren like AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1100T und AMD Phenom(tm) II X (also known as AMD Athlon II X4 640) are not supported. Intel Core 2 Duo processors are not supported. The Mac version is currently only available for Apple devices with Intel processor. Not compatible with devices with M1 processor.
Operating system	macOS 10.14 (or newer) or Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
Lightroom (Classic)	Version 6 (or newer)
Memory	8GB RAM. However, for large catalogs (> 100,000 photos) we recommend 16GB or more
Hard disk	375 MB of free hard disk space for the base installation and additional memory for image signatures. For example, an Adobe Lightroom catalog of 100,000 images requires about another 800 MB of additional memory.

Note: Using this software does not require an active internet connection.

Are there different licenses for macOS and Windows?

No, one license is always valid for both Windows and Mac.

On how many computers can Excire Search be installed?

On up to three computers, no matter if Windows or Mac.

What does an update contain?

Our updates contain bug fixes and minor to medium improvements of the existing functionalities (usage & algorithms). These updates are free of charge. Major changes/extensions or major revisions, so-called upgrades, will be charged. However, existing customers receive a significant discount.

How will I be informed about updates?

There is a built-in update mechanism that automatically informs you when an update is available. Furthermore, we inform about updates on our website and in our newsletter. Therefore, we recommend subscribing to the latter.

Will my images be uploaded to a cloud and analyzed there?

No, our image analysis is performed exclusively locally on a customer’s computer. Neither images nor metadata are sent to a cloud or server. We take copyright and data protection very seriously and are, therefore 100% compliant with applicable regulations.

What image formats are supported?

Excire Search supports all image formats that can be imported into Lightroom Classic. This includes JPG, TIFF, DNG, and various RAW formats.

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Excire Search: Questions about installation, registration and menu entries

How do I install Excire Search?

To install, simply use the downloaded installers for the various platforms. These will guide you comfortably through the installation. After successful installation, you will find a new entry, “Excire Search” in your Lightroom add-on module manager. You can access this via the menu “File -> Add-on module manager”.

How do I uninstall Excire Search?

To uninstall Excire Search from your computer, proceed as follows:

Mac

Re-open the Excire Search installation disk image and double-click “Uninstall.“.
The latest installation disk image can be found here..

Windows

Open the Windows Control Panel and select“Programs”and then“Programs and Features.”Search forExcire Searchin the list of installed programs and select“Uninstall".

macOS: The installation of Excire Search fails. What can I do?

On macOS, the most common cause of a failed installation is that Excire Search was either manually moved after a previous installation, or Excire Search was copied from a backup program to another location.

In both cases, the subsequent update cannot be installed. The failed installation may also cause an error when subsequently launching Lightroom.

How to fix the problem is described here. .

Can Excire Search be moved after installation?

During the installation, any location can be chosen on Windows for the installation. The default path is “C:\Program Files/Excire Search”. On Mac OSX, only the default path (“/Applications/Excire Search”) is possible. Excire Search consists of the Lightroom plugin (excire-search.lrplugin) and a background program. Both are located in the installation directory.

After installation, the program must not be moved to another location.

If the program has been moved, then a later uninstall cannot be done correctly. A later installation of a newer version after a move will result in only the Lightroom plugin being updated, but not the background program.

As a result, Excire Search no longer starts. The error message “Excire Search was not installed correctly. Please reinstall Excire Search.” Contrary to the error message, however, reinstalling does not fix the error.

Fixing the problem:

The problem can only be fixed by either moving Excire Search from its new location back to its default location or (Mac OSX only) deleting it here. This has to be done manually. Then the latest version (see announcements) can be reinstalled.

If you can’t remember where you moved Excire Search to, you can open Terminal on Mac OSX and copy the following command into it:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -dump | grep –only-matching “/.*/excire-search.app “

This should output the path to Excire Search. Any copies that are not in the original installation location (see above) must be deleted for the installation to work again. Alternatively, on both operating systems, you can, of course, use the file manager search (Windows Explorer / Finder).

Where can I enter an Excire Search license key?

You simply enter your license key in the “Excire Search” section in the Lightroom add-on module manager. You can access this via “File → Add-on module manager”.

Where can I find the Excire Search menu items?

To initialize your photos, go to “Libary → Add-on Module Options → “Initialize Photos…”in the menu. Please note that these entries are located under “Library” and not “File”.

The menu entry Additional Module Options is empty, what now?

In Lightroom, there are several entries called Additional Module Options. Excire Search can be found under “Library → Additional Module Options”..

Excire Search ist nicht (mehr) als Zusatzmodul in Lightroom eingetragen, was nun?

Typically, Excire Search is registered as an add-on module in Lightroom during installation. In Lightroom’s Add-on Module Manager, Excire Search is in the list of add-on modules.

However, in rare cases, this fails. Also, when you update Lightroom, Excire Search may be removed from this list.

To manually add Excire Search as an add-on module in Lightroom, follow these steps:

Go to Lightroom’s Add-on Module Manager(File → Add-on module manager),).
Click on"add"(bottom left).
Select the following folder:

Mac: „/Applications/Excire Search/excire-search.lrplugin“

Windows: „C:\Programme\Excire Search\excire-search.lrplugin“

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Excire Search: Questions about Excire databases and Lightroom Classic catalog

Where can I find the Excire Search database?

Our Excire Search database file is located in the same directory as the corresponding Lightroom catalog, has the same name, and ends with “Excire.excat”, e.g. a catalog “xxx .lrcat” has the Excire Search database “xxx Excire.excat”. Please note the space before the string “Excire”.

Does Excire Search have a data backup?

Excire Search stores the initialized photos’ data in a separate database, which is located next to the Lightroom catalog. A backup of this database is automatically performed before and during each significant initialization. The backup is also located next to the Lightroom catalog.

The Excire Search database and the backup both have the Lightroom catalog’s name, but also have the extensions “Excire.excat” and “Excire.excat.bak” respectively.

When performing a backup of the Lightroom catalog, it is copied to a separate backup folder. By default, this is a subfolder called “Backups”. However, the Excire Search database will not be copied. If such a backup is opened directly, Excire Search will not find its own database, as it expects the database to be next to the catalog.

In this case, Excire Search issues a corresponding message and creates a new, empty database next to the catalog backup. Therefore, we recommend copying the Excire Search database next to the Lightroom catalog backup before opening a backup directly.

Alternatively, to restore a Lightroom catalog, the backup can be copied to the catalog’s original directory, replacing the current catalog with the backed-up catalog.

Since the Excire Search database is already in that directory, it can now be used seamlessly with the restored catalog.

How can I reset the Excire Search database or import a backup?

In rare cases, it may be necessary to reset the Excire Search database or restore from a backup.

Proceed as follows:

Go to Lightroom’s Add-on Module Manager(File → Add-on module manager),and select “Excire Search.”
Click on the“Reset or Restore Database…” button on the right-hand side..
Select whether you want to reset the database or restore a backup (if one exists).

After resetting the Excire Search database, all photos must be reinitialized.

Can I use the same database from multiple computers?

The Excire Search database is always located in the same folder as the Lightroom catalog. For example, if the folder with the Lightroom catalog is copied to a network drive and opened from another computer, Excire Search will also open the corresponding database.

However, using the database from multiple computers at the same time is not possible. Only using it one after the other works.

Note that storing the database, including the previews, on a network drive may impact performance.

However, one license may be used on up to three computers.

What do I need to do if I move my Lightroom Classic catalog?

In addition to the Lightroom catalog, simply copy the Excire Search database file to the appropriate destination directory. The Excire Search database file is located in the same directory as the corresponding Lightroom catalog, has the same name, and ends with “Excire.excat”.

Does Excire Search allow searching multiple catalogs?

Searching across multiple catalogs is not possible because Lightroom strictly separates the catalogs. To search for all your photos, create a master catalog into which you import all your photos.

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Excire Search: Questions about functionality

How can I initialize the photos in my Lightroom catalog?

To initialize your photos, go to Library → Add-on Module Options → “Initialize Photos…”..

What does reinitialize photos mean in the Excire Search menu?

The function“Reinitialize photos…”should be called whenever an image or several images have been edited significantly. Then the mathematical representations are recalculated to fit the current images. Especially if an image section or the image colors have been strongly altered.

In the case of the latter, however, you should first deactivate the“Fast initialization”option in the “Excire Search” section of the add-on module manager.

Can the initialization be accelerated?

The duration of initialization depends on several factors. The number of images in the catalog, the number of processed images, the image resolution, and the storage location all affect the runtime. If necessary, the initialization can be interrupted at any time and resumed at a later time.

The “Excire Search – Initialize Photos” dialog also offers the selection option “Maximum CPU usage”. This selection is recommended if the computer is not used for other tasks besides initialization.

Furthermore, there is the by default activated function “Fast initialization” in the add-on module manager. This function has the effect that edited photos are not exported.

In addition, the runtime can be reduced by using an SSD hard disk.

Will my photos be initialized automatically after an import?

An automatic initialization can be activated or deactivated in the plugin settings in the additional module manager.

Why are some of my photos exported during initialization?

Excire Search supports many image formats, including various RAW formats. However, some very new formats are not supported by Excire Search, although you can import these photos into Lightroom.

In these cases, Excire Search automatically performs an export during the initialization of these photos, creating a JPG in a temporary folder. This JPG is used for initialization and then deleted.

Can I also save my Excire Search results in Lightroom?

When searching, you have the option to disable the“Overwrite previous results”option. If this option is disabled, the search results will no longer be displayed in the “Excire Search” collection.

Instead, a new collection is created for each search. This allows you to keep the results from previous searches.

Alternatively, you can copy the photos from a results collection into a new collection to save the search results. Be sure to set the new collection’s sort order to“Custom Order”as well, so that the search results are sorted according to the search.

An error has occurred. What to do now?

If Excire Search shows you an error that occurred, you can send us a bug report by clicking onin the “Log files” section..

You can also send us a bug report after an error has occurred by selecting “Excire Search” on the left side in the add-on module manager(File → Add-on module manager),scrolling down on the right side, and clicking on“Send bug report…”in thein the “Log files” section..

If you do not have access to the menu, you can find the log files under:

Mac: ~/Library/Logs/excire-search

Windows: %appdata%\Excire Search\Logs

These are all files with the extension “.log”. Send them to support@excire.com with a brief description of the error.

On Mac OSX, the easiest way to find to the location of the log files is to select “Go to” → “Go to folder” from the Finder menu. On Windows, you can click in the address bar in Windows Explorer and type or copy the path there.

Were we able to answer your question?

It is a pity that we could not help you so far. You can send a request to our support team via our support email address. Please note that due to the large number of requests, it may take a little time for our team to respond to your request.

To tide you over, we would therefore like to refer you once again to our Tutorials and Trial versions point out. You can test the latter for 14 days free of charge.

	Excire Foto	Excire Foto Trial Version
Multiple databases
JPG, PNG & BMP
RAW formats
Load EXIF data
Load IPTC metadata
IPTC Manager & Editor
Load stars, ratings, label
Load keywords
Save metadata
Export photos
Share via Dropbox
Share via Google Drive
Find similar photos
Find by keyword
Find faces
Find people
Find similar photos with external photo
Find people with external photo
Show GPS data in Google Maps
Assign keywords
Create collections
Assign stars, flags & color labels and search for them

Supported Languages	German & English
Current version	2.2.1

CPU	Multicore processor with 64-bit and AVX support Older AMD processors like AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1100T and AMD Phenom(tm) II X (also known as AMD Athlon II X4 640) are not supported. Intel Core 2 Duo processors are not supported.
Operating System	macOS 10.14 (or newer) or Windows 10 (64-bit) and Windows 11 (64-bit)
Memory	8GB RAM. 16GB or more are recommended.
Storage	The Excire databases use about 250 MB of disc space for 100.000 photos and additional 25GB for previews of highest quality in case that a preview is generated for each photo.

Supported Languages	English & German
Current version	3.1.1

CPU	Multicore processor with 64-bit and AVX support Older AMD processors like AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1100T and AMD Phenom(tm) II X (also known as AMD Athlon II X4 640) are not supported. Intel Core 2 Duo processors are not supported.
Operating System	macOS 10.14 (or newer) or Windows 10 (64-bit) and Windows 11 (64-bit)
Memory	8GB RAM. 16GB or more are recommended.
Storage	The Excire databases use about 250 MB of disc space for 100.000 photos and additional 25GB for previews of highest quality in case that a preview is generated for each photo.

Excire Search Help