Advanced Search

The Advanced Search feature enables you to search for media assets in your account by choosing from a large variety of filtering criteria to help you find assets that meet the design and content needs of your application.

Performing an advanced search

In the Advanced Search, you are provided with a large selection of criteria for filtering your assets. You can set the criteria for your search by clicking on the filters that are displayed in the Advanced Search section, and selecting the relevant values within each filter.

A default set of filters is permanently displayed in the Advanced Search for easy access. You can keep this set of filters, or your administrator can select which filters are displayed (up to 10) and customize their order. This can be set via the Media Library Preference pane.

In any case, you always can add more filters to the set that is initially displayed to search by an even wider variety of criteria.

You can further fine-tune your search by adding your own text in the free text box.

Watch and learn: Perform an advanced search

Read how: Perform an advanced search:

1. Click the navigation menu at the top left and select Search all assets, or use the Global Search. After each global search, the Advanced Search section is automatically displayed.
2. Select values from the drop-down filters in the Advanced Search section.
   • You can select more than one value from a single drop-down, and you can deselect by clicking the value again.
   • You can deselect the choices you made by clicking Clear selection within a drop-down, or by clicking the X on the filter.
3. Optional. Enter text in the free text search box to the left of the filter options.

Adding filters

You can add criteria to your search by adding filters to the ones that appear by default. You can add standard filters as well as custom filters.

• Standard filters represent criterion that are built-in, for example Formats, Asset types, and Orientations.

• Custom filters are based on all the structured metadata fields that your administrator configured for your account.

For your convenience, filters that were Recently used are listed at the top of the + Add more drop-down.

To add filters:

• Click + Add more and select the filter you want to add.

Search by metadata

Custom filters allow you to search by structured metadata fields.

The Context filter allows you to search by contextual metadata.

The filters for Context fields and for the Custom (structured metadata) fields available in your account can be added to your Advanced Search criteria using the + Add more option.

Search by structured metadata

You can add any structured metadata field that was configured by the administrator of your account as a Custom filter, and you can search for assets that contain specific values for those fields.

You can include as many Custom filters as you like in a single search. When you select multiple different Custom filters, they are treated as 'AND' statements, and the results will include only assets that meet all of the different criteria specified.

To filter by a structured metadata field:

1. Add the structured metadata field you want to search by to the Advanced Search filters using the + Add more option.
2. Select the condition to determine how the values you select within the filter are treated.
3. Select the relevant values to find matching assets.

Values within a structured metadata filter

You can choose how the values within the filter are treated, depending the filter's field type:

• Number: Your searches can include the value conditions =, <, <=, >=, and >. You can also search for assets that have Any number as a value in that field.

• Text: Your searches can include the value conditions Contains and Equal to. You can also search for assets that have Any string as a value in that field.

• Date: Your searches can include the value conditions Is, Before, and After. You can also search for assets that contain Any date as a value in that field.

• Multi-select: If you filter by more than one value, you can choose whether they are treated as 'OR' or 'AND' statements. Results of an 'OR' statement will include assets with any of the specified values, while results of an 'AND' statement will include only assets that meet all of the different criteria specified. You can also search for assets that contain Any value in that field.

• Single-select: If you filter by more than one value, you can choose to treat the values as an 'OR' statement within that criterion, so the results will include assets with any of the specified values. You can also search for assets that contain Any value in that field.

For more details on the Advanced Search AND | OR rules and other general search rules, see Search tips and guidelines.

Search by contextual metadata

The Context filter enables you to search by contextual metadata.

To search by contextual metadata

1. Add the Context filter using the + Add more option.
2. Select the condition to determine how the contextual metadata field values you enter within the filter are treated.
3. Enter a contextual metadata key and value pair. Cick + to enter an additional field (you can enter up to 5).
   
4. Click Apply.

Values within the contextual metadata filter

• Enter the full expected value for each field. Only assets that match your entries exactly will be returned.

• If you enter multiple contextual metadata fields in a search, you can choose whether they are treated as 'OR' or 'AND' statements. Results of an 'OR' statement will include assets with any of the specified field/value pairs, while results of an 'AND' statement will include only assets with all of the specified field/value pairs. In the Contextual metadata search image above, your search results would include any assets that have campaign = ABC OR discount_code = blue OR aaa = aaa.

For more details on the Advanced Search AND | OR rules and other general search rules, see Search tips and guidelines.

Filter drill-down

The following sections provides clarification for certain filters.

Dates

You can search by time-related stats associated with your asset:

• Creation date: when the asset was created (first uploaded to Cloudinary).
• Last replaced: when an existing asset was most recently overwritten or replaced. For an asset that was never replaced, this attribute will have the same value as its Creation date.
  
• Date taken: the asset's Exif date.

Orientations

You can filter by image orientation:

• Portrait orientation finds assets with aspect ratios narrower than 1:1.
• Square orientation finds assets with aspect ratio 1:1.
• Landscape orientation finds assets with aspect ratios wider than 1:1, but less than 2:1.
  
• Panorama orientation finds assets with aspect ratios that are at least 2:1

Size and duration

You can search for image and video assets by their size, and you can search for videos by their duration. Enter a range to return assets that match the minimum and maximum you entered, and all values in between. You can also enter only a minimum to return assets that have at least that value, or you can enter only a maximum to return assets that have at most that value. The search is submitted as you type.

• Search by size:

• Search by duration:

Image Analysis (premium feature)

You can search for images based on advanced image analysis including the style of the image, the predominant colors of the image, the number of faces (as determined by Cloudinary's built-in face detection algorithm), or the location of a photo. These criteria are valuable for helping you search for assets that will fit design or content requirements. If these filters are not available in your list of filters in + Add more, contact us for information on upgrading your account to include Tier 2 search capabilities.

Search tips and guidelines

• When no filters are applied, all assets, from all folders in your account, appear in your Advanced Search view. To clear all filters once applied, click the X in the corner of every active filter.
  
• By default, searches find assets in all folders. To search for results only within a specific folder (and its subfolders), click the Folders filter and select a folder.
• When you select multiple different criteria, including all types of filters as well as free text, they are treated as 'AND' statements, and the results will include only assets that meet all of the different criteria specified. Within an individual criterion that supports multiple values (Tags, Formats, Delivery types, etc.), entering multiple values is treated as an 'OR' statement within that criterion, so the results will include assets with any of the specified values.
  For example:
  If you specify both Upload and Fetched URL in the Delivery types criteria, results with either of these types are included in the results. But if you specify Upload for Delivery types and cats for Tags, then only assets that meet BOTH of those criteria are included in the results.
• Filters based on structured metadata fields of type text where you can select between Equal to and Contains:
  • Contains allows you to search for the prefix (first part) of the entire value or the prefix of any distinct element within a value, where elements are separated by a space, hyphen, or underscore. However, you cannot search for the middle or end of a word or element.
    For example, entering cat in the main search bar or in a text search field:
    • Returns assets where the name or one of its attributes has values such as: cat, cats, dogs and cats, 1-cat, dog_cat.
      
    • Will not return assets with values such as scat or scatter, because in these cases, the searched term is not a prefix of either the entire value or of a distinct element.
  • Equal to will search only assets where the value you specified is the entire value.
• If you need to perform a more complex search or with different AND or OR rules than described above, switch to Query Builder.