Organizational Tools

The Develop module is the sexy beast everyone likes to spend time in, but the Library module is the most important place for keeping your photo library under control and for finding the photos you want when you need them. I include the import process as part of the Library because that is your first opportunity to keep yourself organized and moving in the right direction, so let’s start there.

The Import Window

Earlier I stated that the main job of the import process was creating records in the catalog file about each imported photo, but the secondary job of importing can involve copying or moving photos to a storage location of your choosing. You need to be in the driver’s seat for this job and ensure that LrC is not placing photos in an undesired location. There are two choices on the import window that determine where your photos will end up. The first choice is along the top of the screen where you choose between Copy as DNG, Copy, Move, or Add.

The two most common choices are Copy and Add. If your photos are coming from a memory card you will choose Copy (Copy as DNG is effectively the same as Copy except it also includes the operation to convert the raw photos to DNG, but for organization purposes it is beyond the scope of this article). If your photos are already exactly where you want them to be stored (because you put them there outside of LrC), then you will choose Add.

A word about Move. I don’t recommend using Move for safety reasons because Move includes a copy operation followed by a delete operation from the original location. It is much safer to use Copy for import, and then once the copy operation is done successfully you can go and manually delete the source files from the original drive if that is what is needed. Move will be unavailable when the source is a memory card, so it would only come into play when source photos are on a hard drive.

When choosing Copy the only other choice you need to make at this time is in the Destination panel. When Add is selected the photos are already in their final location, so the Destination panel is not included.

When configuring the options in the Destination panel you have two choices to make. The first is where do you want the photos to be stored and the second is how do you want them to be organized at that location. Keeping in mind that the settings in the Import window apply to ALL photos being imported at this time you want to choose a location that works for all photos being imported. The default setting in the Organize drop-down menu at the top of the panel is By date, which includes options for your choice of date format in the drop-down menu below it.

The nice things about the By date organize option is that it is fully automated using the creation date of each photo to create corresponding folders within the folder selected in the Destination panel and it scales nicely into the future. That said, dates alone may not give you enough information to find your photos easily in the future. I work around this limitation by simply renaming the date-based folders after import (using the Folders panel) to include additional meaningful information along with the date. This way I don’t have to think about organizing my photos during the Import window, can let the automation of folder creation save me time, and get the benefit of dates added to each folder so that they sort in a meaningful way within the Folders panel.

All that said, if your system utilizes the Into one folder option in the Organize drop-down menu, and that works for your brain, then don’t let me stop you from using that option. I recognize the benefits of putting your photos in custom named folders from the outset, and I know many who use that option.

Additionally, I recommend standardizing on the top-level location for all newly imported photos. In my case, I copy all new photos to a folder structure within the Pictures folder of my internal drive with the same top-level parent folder selected for all imports (and let LrC create the subfolders within it). This way I don’t have to spend any time thinking about where to put photos at this time, and best of all, can create an import preset that includes the settings in the Destination panel (as well as all the panels above it). Over time, I use the Folders panel to move folders to a larger external drive to maintain space on the internal drive.

To create an import preset, configure all desired import settings (in all panels), then click the Import Preset drop-down menu at the very bottom of the screen and choose Save Current Settings as New Preset. You can create as many of these import presets as your workflow requires. These are huge time savers and allow for consistency in your organizational efforts. For each subsequent import job, simply choose your desired import preset and everything is done. After a quick visual confirmation all you need to do is click the Import button and LrC does the rest.

The Library Module

Once the import process begins your view returns to the Library, and as the photos fill your screen you can turn your attention to the Folders panel to confirm the photos are going exactly where you designated. The Folders panel is one of the most powerful tools for organizing your photos over time. It is here that you can move folders into new folders and drives, rename folders, remove folders, create subfolders and more. For example, I mentioned that I rename all newly created folders during import to include a meaningful name in addition to the date. Here’s how to do this:

Step One: Right-click the folder you want to rename.

Step Two: Choose Rename from the contextual menu.

Step Three: Enter a meaningful name in the Rename Folder dialog box that appears and click Save.

This renames the folder in the Folders panel as well as on your drive all in one move while keeping the record in the catalog up to date. By performing all your file management tasks in LrC you keep your files organized and keep the catalog updated. To learn even more about the Folders panel and how to unlock all of its power, be sure to bookmark my article on the Role of the Folders panel.

A powerful benefit to naming your folders with simple, descriptive, and consistent names is that you can utilize the filter at the top of the Folders panel to quickly find all of the folders that match what you type in that field, even across multiple drives. This works with both numbers and names, so if I wanted to see only folders from 2021 I can just type that in the filter and display only the folders that match. Likewise, if I wanted to find all folders containing photos from Yosemite, I just type that in the field and I don’t need to remember when I was there at all.

The key is to be consistent when naming folders so you can get consistent results from the filter. This same trick works in the Library Filter bar for finding photos based on the names you gave the containing folder. Here’s how to do it:

Step One: Click All Photographs in the Catalog panel so the entire library is searched and press G for Grid view if not there already.

Step Two: Click the Text button on the Library Filter to open the text input field.

Step Three: Type the text you want to search on into the field. In my case I typed Yosemite here too.

Your entire library is now searched for that word in all searchable fields, which includes folder names. In this screen capture you can see the folder name displayed on the thumbnail. I find this much faster and simpler than keywording each individual photo. I’ve got nothing against keywording in general if it is needed for a given workflow, but in my experience, it is a non-preferred activity for most people. If keywording is your thing, then take a dive into my controlling keywords article to learn more about them.

With these basic concepts mastered and put into practice you’ll be well on your way to being organized, and can then take it up a notch with becoming more efficient over time.

The post Keys to Getting Organized in Lightroom Classic Part 2 appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

[Editor’s note, this article originally appeared in the September, 2021 issue of Photoshop User Magazine.]

One of the first obstacles to overcome is understanding what all the components of a LrC workflow are so that we can manage them over time. From there, the next hurdle is knowing what organizational tools are available within LrC, and then how to use them. Once people understand the components and the tools, then they can apply them effectively and continue to refine their workflows to become more consistent and efficient. Once you’ve reached that stage of progress you are in control of your photo library, and that’s the place I want to help everyone reach.

What about a specific organizational system? I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a lot of different ways photographers organize their photos and some methods work really well, and some are a horrible, disorganized mess. The three important elements of a successful organizational system appear to be that the system must make sense to the way that person’s brain works, it must scale smoothly into the future as the library grows, and the user must be able to easily find the photos they are looking for when needed. Outside of that, there’s a lot of room for creativity. So, while I will share some of my thoughts on what works for my brain, I recognize that it might not work for yours, so if you have a system that meets the above criteria (like Scott’s SLIM system), then I feel you would get more out of focusing on improving efficiencies within your system than changing the system completely.

The Components

The key components of a LrC workflow that you need to keep in mind are your photos, the catalog (and its associated files), and the presets/templates you use to become more efficient. You also need to understand how these files interact and depend on each other to avoid self-inflicted injury. A firm grasp of each component will put you on the right track to staying organized. Let’s explore each of these components in a bit more detail.

Your Photos

The whole reason you’re doing this is for your photos, and they must be at the center of all your decisions. You must know where your photos are located on your system, have them included in a backup process, and have a plan for managing them over time as you outgrow your current hardware. The place to find them in LrC is the Folders panel in the Library module.

There are two main places where LrC touches your actual photos, with the first being part of the import process and the second being through managing them in the Library module. During the import process you have an opportunity to decide where the photos will be stored, and after import, in the Library module you will find the tools to rename, move, delete, keyword, organize into collections, and find your photos over time. You must have a plan for how you will use these tools to keep your library organized and understand how to use each of these tools. We’ll revisit these tools a little later.

The Catalog

At its heart (or brain?) LrC has a database, called the catalog, that stores information about every photo (and video) that goes through the import process. The main job of the import process is to create a new database record for each photo that includes all the metadata created by the camera, the exact location (path) to where that photo is stored on your system, and any additional metadata you add along the way (like copyright and contact information). You can find where your catalog is located by going to Lightroom Classic > Catalog Settings > General (PC: Edit > Catalog Settings > General).

Each time you launch LrC you are opening that database and looking at its contents. All the work you do in LrC (every keyword, color label, collection membership, virtual copy, edit, etc.) is written to that database as you do the work in real time. By default, LrC does not write any of that information to your photos at all. For these reasons you can see that it is very important to know where your catalog is located, keep it backed up, and know how to restore from disaster if something happens to your catalog file.

Stored alongside the catalog (which has a .lrcat file extension) are several files that protect it from being opened by another program while you have it open, assist it in case of a crash, and store previews of each photo that is being managed by that catalog (called a cache). Together, this collection of files allows you to work with your photos even if they are stored on an offline drive because LrC spends most of its time writing to the catalog and showing you previews of your photos. Your actual photos are never in LrC, but always stored in some folder on some drive on your system that LrC simply references via the path stored in the catalog.

Presets and Templates

The words presets and templates get used interchangeably within LrC, but whatever you call them they are crucial to a consistent and efficient workflow. LrC’s original reason for existing was to provide a more efficient workflow for digital photographers, and there are many points within a workflow, from import to export (and everything in between) that you can leverage presets and templates to make your life easier. The most common example are the presets we use in the Develop module, but you can create import presets, filename templates, metadata templates, text templates, and export presets too. Keeping these files updated, organized, and under control are important considerations to managing your photo library over a lifetime.

Now that you’re familiar with the components, next week we’ll dive into the most important organizational tools LrC has to offer.

The post Keys to Getting Organized in Lightroom Classic appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

This can make your Lightroom life soooooooo much easier and faster — having all your images (all of them!) in just one single catalog, and it’s something I’ve been preaching on my Lightroom seminar tour. BTW: thanks to everybody in Washington DC who came out to my seminar there last Friday. One of the best, most-fun crowds to present to of the entire tour. Anyway, combining your catalogs is easy, but I often have people ask this question:

“Which catalog do I use as my main catalog — the one I’ll import all the other ones into?”

My follow-up question is usually, “I’d pick whichever catalog is in the best shape, or the one you find yourself using the most.”

The most frequent response? “Well, that would be ‘none of them. They’re all messed up!”

If that sounds like you, might want to simply start with a fresh catalog
Then, add all your existing catalogs into this nice fresh catalog. Here’s how to do both:

STEP ONE: To start with a fresh new empty catalog; go under the File menu and choose New Catalog (as shown here).

STEP TWO: Go under the File menu again, but this time choose “Import from Another Catalog.” Now go find your other Lightroom catalogs and one by one, add them to this catalog using that “Import from Another Catalog” command.

STEP THREE: Each time you choose a catalog, it brings up a window asking if you want all that stuff from that catalog imported (all your collections and such), and if for some reason you don’t, uncheck any checkboxes next to collections you don’t want to be imported (this list is worth looking at for a sec – this is an excellent time to do some housekeeping and not import Collections you just don’t care about having in Lightroom any longer). If you turn on the “Show Preview” checkbox (as I have here) and you click on any collection, it will show you thumbnails of what’s inside that collection (as seen here).

That’s all there is to it. In just a few minutes (less time than you’d think), all your collections are combined into one single collection, and your Lightroom world just got a whole lot easier, faster, and more organized. It’s a big step and one totally worth taking.

Hope you find that helpful.

Best,

-Scott

The post Combining All Your Lightroom Catalogs Into Just One appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Happy, Friday everybody!

Those of you that come here often, or have been to my live seminars, already know that I recommend a ‘collection-based’ workflow, but I also know a lot of you started with, and are still using a Folder panel based workflow. This tip is for those folks. It’s a new feature that Adobe added back in February in the Lightroom Classic 7.2 update, but it kind of slid in under the radar, so I wanted to make sure folks with a Folder-based workflow would know it was there, ’cause it can be really useful.

The ability to do a Text search for Folders in the Folder Panel, but…
…beyond that, you can also tag Folders you use a lot as “Favorites” and Filter your text search to just your Favorites. Here’s how:

STEP ONE: Go to the Folders panel; right-click (Mac: Ctrl-click) on any folder you use often, and choose Mark Favorite from the pop-up menu (as shown here).

STEP TWO: At the top of the Folders panel, right below the title bar, you’ll now find a text field where you can do a text search for Folders — it’s just the one that has been in Collections for a while now). By default, it will search all your folders, but if you click on the magnifying glass icon to the left of the text search field, a menu will pop up where you can choose to just search Favorite Folders (as seen above).

Above: Notice how the search field is narrowed when you choose “Favorite Folders.” Now the list of folders you’re searching through is very small — just those folders you marked as favorite.

NOTE: When you mark a folder as a favorite, Lightroom adds a little star to the bottom right corner of the folder icon (seen above).

Hope you found that helpful.

On Monday, I’m in Hartford teaching Lightroom…
…and a couple hundred photographers are already signed up to spend the day with me learning Lightroom like a boss. If you live up that way, or know a photographer who does, come on out and join me. (details and tickets)

After Hartford, it’s Salt Lake City
You can come out, too! (details and tickets)

After that, I’ll be teaching Lightroom for 3 days at the Photoshop World Conference in Orlando (May 31 – June 2) 
You can come to that, too! You’ll be learning from me, and Matt Kloskowski, Serge Ramelli, Lightroom Killer Tip’s own Rob Sylvan, Julieanne Kost, Terry White, and more! You’ll learn about Lightroom in three-days than you have in three years. Come and be a part of the world’s biggest Lightroom training event. Details and tickets here. 

Have a nice weekend, ya’ll.

Best,

-Scott

The post Another Hidden New Lightroom Feature: Favorite Folder Search appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Really helpful, right? Thanks, Benjamin!!!

Hope you have a great Tuesday!

-Scott

P.S. Mark your calendars now — Photoshop World Conference 2018 is in Orlando, Florida next year, and the best prices on tickets for the three-day Lightroom/Photoshop/Graphics/Photography learning event are available now. Tickets and info here. 

The post Finding People Without Keywording appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Hi gang, and greetings from beautiful Nashville, Tennessee (I’m here today for my Lightroom On Tour seminar). First, and shout-out and big thanks to all the wonderful photographers who came out to my seminar in Richmond on Wednesday (nearly 300 strong!). Great crowd, and so much fun to present to (here’s a shot from the seminar above – photo by Dave Gales).

Anyway, one thing I’ve been getting a lot of questions about on the tour is about creating Collections from your Folders (It’s something I encourage on the tour — more on that another time), and I showed how to make the conversion in a recent post here on the blog, but today we’re tackling what happens when you try to convert a nested folder into a Collection. The ideal thing would be that it automatically creates a Collection Set for you, and puts all the nested folders into collections inside of that. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way, so here’s what you can do.

Above: Here’s a folder for 2006 seen in the Folders panel. That’s the folder we want to create a Collection from, and you can see it’s one main folder (2006) and it has 3 subfolders inside).

Above: If you just drag that Folder down to the Collections panel, it will create a Collection for you automatically, but it takes those folders and combines them into just one collection (as seen above), so you lose the folder structure and everything’s just tossed in there together.

Above: Here’s one way to get around that. Before you drag anything; go to the Collections panel and create a new “Collection Set” (click the + sign at the top right corner of the panel and choose ‘New Collection Set’). When the New Collection Set window appears, name it 2006. Now, go back to the Folders panel and drag each folder — one at a time — and drag them into the 2006 Collection Set, and you’ll retain the same structure and organization because each of those folders will now create their own collections (as seen above).

Now, with all that being said, I wouldn’t name that folder 2006 (I would give it a much more descriptive plain English name), and I wouldn’t be organizing by date in the first place (for a whole host of reasons, but yes that is for another day, or it’s for today  if you’re here in Nashville at my seminar).

Hope you found that helpful, and here’s wishing you a totally organized, collection-filled with easy to use names, kinda day.

Best,

-Scott 

The post Keeping Your Folder Structure When Converting Folders Into Collections appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

You guys know I’ve been touring the US with my “Shoot Like a Pro: Reloaded” tour (which comes to an end in Dallas next month), and I hear from so many people out there whose Lightroom life is a mess (their words). Not because they don’t know how to use the Develop Module, they tell me “I don’t know where my photos are!” and “I can’t find anything” and “I’m confused about catalogs” and basically they tell me they’re at the point where they just want to start over from scratch with Lightroom , but they’re in “too deep!” They’re frustrated, upset, and some are actually ready to bail on Lightroom altogether, because they believe they’ll never really know:

(a) Where their images are really stored
(b) If their images are really backed up
(c) or how to find their images without a lot of effort

That’s why I created this course — this simplified organizational system. It’s designed for regular everyday Lightroom users. It’s  not for Lightroom experts who are have a plan that works in place; it’s not people who contribute stock images, it’s not for working journalists; it’s not for users who enjoy complex systems. It’s for “everybody else.”  Regular photographers who just want a really simple way to organize and backup their images, and their catalog, and be able to find their images without a ton of effort and planning up front, so they can stop all the worrying and frustration and really enjoy Lightroom again.

Spoiler Alert: It all starts long before you ever launch Lightroom.

The response has been incredible!
The course has only been online 5-days, and we already have an avalanche of positive feedback from people who are already incorporating “The System” or planning on moving to it. I hear it’s the most feedback we’ve received on any class (and we have over 600 online classes!).

Help is on the way!
The response has been so big, that we’re going to do a special KelbyOne Members-Only Webcast that would be a Live Q&A for people looking for help transitioning to The System (everybody’s current set-up is different, so I want to help in any way I can and I thought answering these types of questions live might help some folks along the way). I’ll share the date for the live Webcast as soon as it’s nailed down (don’t worry —  if you can’t make the live Webcast, we archive all of these Webcasts for members to watch any time). Anyway, more on that soon.

In the meantime — if this class sounds like something that might help you (and you don’t fall into the categories I mentioned above, which need a different type of organization), I hope give it a look.

Here’s the link to my SLIM System course. (By the way — if you’re not already a KelbyOne member, you can still watch it free: just sign up for the 10-day trial and watch it right now).

One more thing…
Check back here tomorrow for something new here at LRKT. I think you’re gonna dig it.

Best,

-Scott

The post My “Simplified Lightroom Image Management” System Online Course is Here [The SLIM System] appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

[NOTE: This feature also works in Folders, where it was first introduced. Thanks to reader MattS for the reminder.]

STEP ONE: Here’s a collection of photos I took a couple of years ago in Amsterdam, and although you’re only seeing 24 photos here on screen, if you kept scrolling down and scrolling down you’d see that there are actually 444 photos in this collection. These photos were shot at a handful of different locations and times. To have Lightroom automatically sort them into tidy stacks of photos for you, right-click on any photo, and from the pop-up menu that appears, go under Stacking and choose “Auto-Stack by Capture time” as shown above.

What Auto Stack Does (this is important)
The idea behind Auto Stacking by Capture time is that while you’re shooting a particular subject or location, you’ll be shooting pretty consistently, with perhaps only a few seconds, up to a minute to two between images. Then, maybe you walk to another area, or get on a train or bus, and there’s this “gap” of time between when you stopped shooting, and the next time you start shooting (when you get off the train or bus). That’s the gap it’s looking for to determine what gets stacked together.

For example, let’s say you’re doing a portrait session. You’re firing a lot of shots, then your subject goes to change outfits. That gap of time of time, between when you stopped shooting, and when your subject returns in a new outfit and you start shooting again, is what Lightroom uses to determine that the first group of shots you took should be stacked into one group — under one thumbnail. So how does Lightroom know how much time should elapse before it auto-stacks a group of images into a stack? You tell it — using the dialog you see in the step below.

STEP TWO: When you choose “Auto-Stack by Capture Time” it brings up the dialog you see above which lets you choose how much time would need to have passed until it groups together a new stack of photos, and after a few seconds (be a little patient here — it has to do some math) it displays a readout in the lower left corner of how many stacks will be created. In this example, at 1-minute between images, it will creates 36 stacks and 4 photos aren’t sure where they go (time wise), so they won’t go anywhere. I didn’t shoot in 36 different places, so this is way more stacks than I need, so I would slide the slider to the right for less stacks with more images in each stack.

Above: If I were to drag it way over to the left, down to just 20-seconds between each stack, it would create 84 stacks, and leave 10 images unstacked where it didn’t really know where to put them. 84 stacks would only be useful if you shot in 84 different places, so it’s obviously creating lots of unnecessary stacks because a lot of my shots at the first location (a library) had more than 20 seconds between them, because I was moving from floor to floor during the shoot, so to me, those are bad worthless stacks. Ideally, I’d like all the shots from that library stacked into one single stack, and the other locations all be stacked into their stacks. That’s helpful in getting quickly organized).

Above: I dragged it back to the right quite a bit because I shot over a few days in different locations, so I figured if I put at least 30 minutes in between each shoot, that would separate them into nice stacks.

Above: Once I click “Stack” it stacks them into Stacks, but by default the stack are all expanded, so you see everything inside each stack. To see the order the stacking creates, right click on any image, and from the pop-up menu that appears go under Stacking and choose Collapse All Stacks (as shown above) and you’ll see (in the image below), how that tidies everything up.

Above: here’s what it looks like now. Just 7 thumbnails which represent all 444 photos grouped into stacks by the time they were taken (the number of photos in each each is displayed in the upper left corner of the stack thumbnail).

You can see here, it stacked all 143 shots from the library into one nice tidy stack (the first stack). Then to the right of that; some shots from just walking around later in the day went into this stack. Some from the Film Institute Museum building in the next stack. Two shots I accidentally took in my hotel room (doh!), then a portrait shoot I did on stage during my lighting session at the The ProImaging Conference (great event by the way. Absolutely top notch). Then more shots walking around near dusk, and lastly a set of images grouped into a stack that I shot at night. It’s like mini-collections inside my collection.

STEP THREE: To see what’s inside (known as ‘expanding’) any stack, just click-once directly on the little number that appears in the top left corner of the stack’s thumbnail and all the photos inside the stack instantly appear (as seen above). To ‘collapse’ them back again, click on the number again.

Hope this helps to bring some order to your Collection world.

Best,

-Scott

P.S. We released my new KelbyOne.com online course last week called “10 Essential Post Processing Techniques Every Landscape Photographer Needs to Know.” If you get a sec, you can check out the course right here.  

The post Have Lightroom Automatically Organize Your Collection Using “Auto Stack” appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

The first tip is:  Although you chose a new location for your images imported from your camera into Lightroom Mobile, all the images you have in that old folder, in that old location, don’t automatically jump into that new folder — you have to move them yourself. If not, they’ll just live there, marooned, forever like a flying Dutchman folder.

Secondly: When images come in from Lightroom Mobile and they go in to that shiny new folder…don’t just leave them there because there’s no organization there at all. It’s just one big folder with a whole lotta photos — don’t forget to go and actually sort those photos into collections that make sense, or add keywords, so do something so it’s not just one big random folder of images that continues to grow aimlessly (as illustrated above).

OK, I told ya it was a quick follow-up.

Hope you all have a great Tuesday!

-Scott

P.S. If you’re at all curious about the Photoshop World conference, tune in to our free Webcast later today (at 4:00 pm EDT) called “10 Reasons You’ll Wanna Be at Photoshop World” (or something like that). It’ll be fun – here’s the link (hope you can join us – it’s open to everybody). 

The post Two Follow-up Tips To Yesterday’s Lightroom Mobile Post appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

It’s how to find which of the images in your Library aren’t linked back to the original photo (they are missing the link to the original so you can’t edit these images any longer in the Develop module until they get relinked).

In the Library module, go under the Library menu up top and choose ‘Find All Missing Photos,’ as shown above and it brings all of the thumbnails that are unlinked to the original image together right there in the grid. To relink these images click on the little ! icon in the top right corner of the thumbnail. This brings up a standard open dialogue box and you just have to point Lightroom to where that folder of images lives now (maybe it’s on an external drive or you moved it to a back up system) and it will relink them. When you get to that image make sure you choose ‘Find Nearby Images’ – that way it won’t just relink this one photo – it will relink all the related photos in this folder.

Hope you find that helpful and will see you back here tomorrow.

Best,

-Scott

P.S. Hey, if you’re a photographer in the Portland, Oregon area – I’ll be there next week (on Thursday I believe) with my Shoot Like a Pro: Part 2 (reloaded!) seminar. Hope you can come out and join me. 

The post Organizing Tip: Finding Your Missing Images appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.