Natural language search for Lightroom Classic

Yes, the Lightroom plugin is completely free with any Photoreka account. You only pay once for each batch of photos you analyze; there is no subscription.

The plugin works with Adobe Lightroom Classic 13.0 and above (desktop version). It's not compatible with the cloud-based Lightroom CC at this time.

Lightroom's native search relies on manually entered keywords, star ratings, and metadata. Photoreka's plugin uses computer vision AI to understand the actual visual content of your photos—you can search for 'golden hour portrait with shallow depth of field' even if you never tagged a single image. It's the difference between searching a filing cabinet by label and describing a memory.

Excire Search is a well-known Lightroom plugin built on CLIP-based embeddings, which works well for short keyword prompts. Its main constraint is the model's context window (~77 tokens, roughly 50 words): long or detailed descriptions get silently truncated, and there's only one search mode — so all results are associative by proximity, with no way to enforce genuinely specific conditions. Photoreka's plugin connects to the full Photoreka platform, giving you three search modes — Broad (direct embedding similarity), Adaptive (for cultural and stylistic references: automatically expands your query with the right visual nuances), and Precise (logical inference that actually verifies conditions) — with no query length limit. Results can be enriched with AI insights, and you can continue refining through ChatLab's LLM vision layer. The plugin also unlocks the 3D Atlas and full curation toolset. Read the full Excire Search vs Photoreka comparison →

No. The plugin only reads your catalog and metadata. It never modifies your original files, catalog structure, or existing metadata. Your Lightroom library remains completely intact.

The plugin uses AI to analyze your photos' visual content. You can search using everyday language like 'sunset photos with mountains' or 'black and white portraits' and it will find relevant images based on their actual content, not just keywords.

Your full-resolution photos stay on your computer. The plugin only sends small previews and metadata to Photoreka for analysis. You maintain complete control over your original files.

Initial analysis and search require an internet connection. However, once your photos are analyzed, you can browse previously analyzed content offline within Lightroom.

Analysis speed depends on your catalog size and internet connection. Typically, the plugin processes around 1000 photos in one hour. You can continue working in Lightroom while analysis runs in the background.

The synchronization works on your unique identifiers, which means changes in file names or locations are tracked and updated automatically.

Photoreka is built for the photos you kept, not every photo you shot: a curated body of work of up to 50,000 photos. Think of it as a studio, not a warehouse. In Lightroom that usually means your flagged picks, your rated selects or a few key collections, not your whole import history. Lightroom's Assisted Culling or a culler like Aftershoot handles the first pass (blur, blinks, duplicates); Photoreka works on what survives it: search by mood and reference, artistic scoring, clusters and sequences. Every photo is read in the context of the rest of your catalog, so the analysis goes deeper when the starting point already has intention.