A question on the Adobe forums asked if there was a way to make a Smart Collection that could gather together images from a specific date regardless of the year. In this case they specified January 1st.
After trying a few ways, it was obvious that the lack of a ‘Contains’ option in date meant that wouldn’t work. I tried a few variation of date format in the EXIF criteria. No joy.
Smart Collections are not the only way to sieve the metadata in Lightroom. You also have the Filter Bar (Shortcut \). Start by going to All Photographs in the Catalog panel.
By changing the first column to read Month, you can choose January. Then change the second column to Date and choose the 1st. The main area will show all the images from that date, no matter the year.
If you want this to be repeatable, go to the end of the Filter Bar where it says ‘Custom Filter’. Click this and from the menu choose Save Current Settings as New Preset.
Name it and select from the list when you need access. This also offers a quick way to have the Filter Bar set up to access any required date.
