How to create a list of filenames from selected images in Lightroom

Today I needed to create a text list of the filenames of a selection of raw files in LR, so I could then search for the JPGs I’d also shot (with the same filenames) but had accidentally separated from their raws. This is definitely a niche problem, and boy did it take me ages to work out how to do, but finally I cracked it and immediately made a note in Evernote because I guarantee the next time I need to do this I’ll have forgotten!

Here’s how I did it on a Mac – PC users will need their own word processing apps:

• In Lightroom, select all the files you need to make a list of
• Open a new TextEdit window and switch to Plain Text mode
• Drag all the selected images from LR to TextEdit which should produce a list of the file paths, one per line – if the images themselves show up, make sure you’re in Plain Text mode
• Copy and paste all the text from TextEdit to Pages, or any other Word Processor that supports showing invisible characters
• Use the app’s ‘Show invisible characters’ command, which should reveal the ‘carriage return’ symbol at the end of each line – in Pages this is under the View menu
• Use the Find & Replace command to delete the ‘path’ part of each line (e.g. Volumes/Username/Folder/ ) leaving just the filenames with the filetype extension, but still with an invisible carriage return at the end, which LR won’t like
• If your app supports it, you can remove the carriage return by typing alt-[return key] into the ‘Find’ box to enter a ‘carriage return’, then type a comma and space into the ‘Replace’ box and you’re good to go
• If your app doesn’t support that try selecting one of the carriage return symbols then look for a Find -> Use Selection for Find command in the menus. In Pages it’s under the Edit menu (Command-E). Then you can type the comma and space into the ‘Replace’ box as normal.
• All done! A lovely list of the filenames, all on one line, separated by a comma and space, which you can paste into Lightroom’s text search box to find the images you want.

Like I say, definitely a niche problem this one. But hopefully not a problem any more!