If you’re anything like me, then your photo filing system could only be described as a hot mess. Except that I know where everything is, usually, except for the times that I don’t. Sometimes I could really do with a powerful search tool for finding a particular image, and this new Lightroom plugin from Excire could be just the thing I need.

The Excire Search 2024 is a plugin for Lightroom Classic ($189) and seamlessly integrates Excire’s advanced AI image-management software directly into the Lightroom interface.

Previous versions of Excire were a standalone app, however this new version works directly within the Lightroom framework. This makes it much easier to use, and Excire says gives users a “more efficient and streamlined approach to image organization”.

The newest version has incorporated the “most robust features” from the standalone program and added new ones, such as the following:

Search by Text Prompt

Now you can find any photo simply by typing in a text prompt. This is pretty amazing when you think about it. You can just type in “dogs playing on the beach”, for example, and the AI will find all the photos that match that description. Excire Search’s AI is even able to understand abstract concepts such as “happiness” and “sorrow.”

Intelligent Aesthetics Ratings

Again, by using AI, the X-tetics AI feature will save you time by automatically rating and culling images for you. This feature was trained using hundreds of thousands of photos and fine-tuned by real human photographers. It will evaluate images and select your best ones. Sometimes it’s difficult to decide between two very similar images, and this feature could be quite helpful.

Enhanced Auto-Keywording

This new tool analyzes each photo in your Lightroom catalogue and generates relevant keywords to help with searches and categorization. Now you won’t have to put in keywords manually, the AI will do it for you.

Search for duplicates, people, and faces

This feature uses facial recognition technology to find people and faces, so you can hit a search to find images of a particular person. It will also let you search for features such as a smile or certain ages or genders. The duplicates feature will dig out any images that are similar, including images shot in rapid burst.

Price and availability

Excire Search 2024 is available for both Windows and macOS and can be downloaded directly from the Excire website for $189 ($149 limited-time launch price).

Existing Excire Search 2022 users can upgrade to Excire Search 2024 for $59, while existing Excire Search 2 users can upgrade to Excire Search 2024 for $99. A 14-day trial version is also available for download.