Indexing and Searching Image files

User Interface Flow

Double clicking on the ImageSearcher application brings up Figure 2. Next, I enter the directory name where the image files are stored or click the "..." button (circled in green) and select the directory where the index will be created. If the index directory does not exist, it is created (Figure 3).

I then enter the date ranges of the images I am interested in viewing (Figure 4). The "Search" text box contains the user comments stored in the images that I am interested in locating. This is optional. Once the search criteria have been entered, I click the "Search Me" button (Figure 4). Any images that satisfy the search criteria will be displayed in the Results panel.

Figure 5 shows the results of a successful search being displayed in the results panel.

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Figure 2: ImageSearcher application startup screen.

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Figure 3: The Image Search Directory and Index Directory Creation locations.

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Figure 4: Search Criteria Selection.

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Figure 5: Results of successful image search.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Lucene.NET and EXIFExtractor libraries can quickly be used to build an application that searches for images according to user-specified criteria, then display those images that match the search conditions on the results panel. Moreover, the application can be easily extended to include other search criteria such as shutter speed and camera make and model.