But what if we imagine/allow/invent the series of algorithms that 'pluck' a good picture of Usain Bolt from the set of 5MB files without inspecting too many (let's say O(log) or O(log log))?
That's only ~c25/~c5 bits of entropy to sort through, even less if the algorithm were to work in some sort of sparsity domain.
That is to say, however much you pre-sort your data, there will still be a virtual infinity of them still left, all abiding your pre-set conditions, but all still uninteresting.
I don't know what you mean by a 'sorting filter', but what I'm talking about is an algorithm that takes >40Mb of data as input (pictures of Bolt and Athens for example) and uses this data to output ~40Mb of Bolt in Athens.
I mean human artists to be an analogy: humans can 'select' a picture of Athens Bolt without enumerating all others. I don't see why computers couldn't.