Most photographers use a combination of Folders and Collections to organize their images in Lightroom Classic. A Folder will typically hold all of the images from a specific shoot, client, or date for example, whereas a Collection is used to combine groups of images together “virtually”. For example, I might have twenty Folders, each one containing landscapes from different location shoots. I would create a Collection and add my favorite image(s) from each shoot to the Collection in order to create a custom sort order, sync with Lightroom mobile, show to a client, post on my portfolio etc. without moving the original images from their Folders and/or duplicating the images on the hard drive.
You can create as many Collections as you need, add as many photographs to each Collection as you want (even adding the same photograph to multiple Collections), and add Collection Sets to help organize the Collections. And, if you make changes to an image, the changes are automatically updated across Collections.
Note: Another way to think about Folders and Collections would be to compare a folder to a record that contains 20 songs, if we don’t want to listen to them all, we can make a “collection” and add only the songs that we like from the record. We can even add songs from several records to the same collection to create a custom “mix” of songs.
Here are several tips/shortcuts for working with collections:
Quick Collection — Quick Collection (in the Catalog panel), was designed to create a temporary collection of images.
- Tapping the “B” key adds the selected image(s) to a Quick Collection. Tap “B” again to remove the image(s).
- Command + B (Mac) | Control + B (Win) will display the contents of a Quick Collection. Tapping it again returns you to your previous location (folder, collection etc.).
- Command + Shift + B (Mac) | Control + Shift + B (Win) will delete the contents (clear) of a Quick Collection.
- Command + Option + B (Mac) | Control + Alt + B (Win) will convert (or save) a Quick Collection to a regular Collection.
- Click the plus (+) icon on the Collection Panel header to choose to sort Collections by Name or by Kind.
- Clicking on a Collection Set will display ALL of the images within ALL of the Set’s collections.
- Click the plus (+) icon on the Collections panel and select Create Collection.
- Use the shortcut: Command + N (Mac) | Control + N (Win).
- Control -click (Mac) | right -click (Win) on the Collection Set (in the Collections panel), that you want the new collection to be contained within, and choose Create Collection (Lightroom Classic will automatically choose the correct Collection Set in the Location area of the Create Collection dialog).
- Cmd + Shift + Option + Return (Mac) | Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Backspace (Win) removes an image from a Collection and moves the image(s) to the Trash (Mac) | Recycle Bin (Win).
- When in Loupe view (in a Collection) tapping the Delete/Backspace key will remove the active photo from the Collection but not from the folder/catalog.
- When in Loupe view (in a Collection) Shift + Delete (Mac) | Shift +Backspace (Win) will remove all selected photos from the Collection but not from the folder/catalog.
- To convert a folder with subfolders to a Collection Set with collections that maintain the same hierarchy as the folders, Control -click (Mac) or Right -click on the parent folder (the one that has subfolders) and choose Create Collection Set “folder name”.
- To create a single collection of all of the photos from a parent folder (including images within subfolders), Control -click (Mac) or Right -click on the parent folder and choose Create Collection “folder name”.
- To create a new Smart Collection, click the plus icon on the Collections panel and select Create Smart Collection or, Control -click (Mac) | right -click (Win) on the Collection Set that you want the new collection to be contained within, and choose Create Smart Collection (Lightroom Classic will automatically choose the correct Collection Set in the Location area of the Create Smart Collection dialog).
- One way to use Smart Collections is to double check if “tasks” in a workflow have been completed. For example, creating a Smart Collection which displays all images that are missing keywords will let you quickly see if you’re neglected to apply that important information to your photographs. There are plenty of additional Smart Collection search parameters that you can choose from as well, including (but not limited to) date range, folder, treatment, aspect ratio, has adjustments, has Depth Map etc., so be sure to take a minute and check out all of the possibilities!
- To further refine the search criteria for a Smart Collection, hold Option (Mac) | Alt (Win) while in the New Smart Collection dialog. The plus (+) icon will change to a hash/pound sign. Click the hash/pound sign to add to add additional rule options (Any/All/None of the following are true).
- Tapping the Delete/Backspace key when in a Smart Collection will display a dialog instructing you to change the photo’s metadata of the image so that it no longer matches that of the Smart Collection’s “rules” (for example you might need to remove a star rating or add a keyword).
- Control -click (Mac) | right -click (Win) a Smart Collection to Import/Export Smart Collection settings.
- To duplicate a collection within a Collection Set or to duplicate the collection into a different Collection Set, Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) the collection on top of the Collection Set icon (watch for the highlight) and release.
- Or, use the Painter tool to add images to a Collection. Control -click (Mac) | right -click (Win) on a Collection and choose “Set as Target Collection”. Then, select the Painter tool and choose “Target Collection” from the list of Paint options. Clicking on an image in the grid will add the image to the Target Collection (click –drag across multiple images to add them to the Target Collection).
- After a collection has been created, or to change the Target Collection, Control -click (Mac) / Right -click (Win) a collection and enable/disable “Set as Target Collection”.
- Shooting tethered (File > Tethered Capture > Start Tethered Capture)
- Importing images (File > Import > File Handling)
- Importing images via a watched folder (File > Auto Import > Auto Import Settings)
Note: if you have created Smart Collections based on images that have a color label (such as “red”) and then change the name of the images color label (to “Portfolios”, for example), all images that were previously labeled with the color red will change to the color white and any smart collections that are set to match “Color Label > Is > Red” will become empty (although they can still be found by selecting the metadata tab in the Library Filter bar and setting the column to Label).
Collections Panel — The Collections panel is available across Lightroom Classic’s modules (Develop, Print, Book, etc.), enabling you to quickly change from one Collection of image to another without having to first return to the Library. Export a Collection as a Catalog — Control -click (Mac) | right – click (Win) a Collection Set and choose Export this Collection as a Catalog. This video (How to Remove Unwanted Collections when Exporting Catalogs in Lightroom Classic) demonstrates how to quickly clean up an exported catalog of any extraneous collections.- Control -click (Mac) | right – click (Win) a Smart Collection to import and export Smart Collection settings.
- Then, click in the empty well to the left of the collections to enable syncing for a collection (Lightroom Classic creates Smart Previews of the image and upload them to the cloud). Click the icon again to stop syncing the collection.
- When deleting photos from a synced collection, Lightroom displays the following warning dialog:
- If you want to remove the photo(s) from the collection, yet still have them accessible via the All Synced Photographs view on your mobile devices, choose “Yes”. If you want Lightroom to remove the photo(s) from the collection as well as from All Synced Photograph, click “No”. Note: To set Lightroom’s default behavior (and skip this dialog), check the “Don’t show again” checkbox, and select your option. From then on, Lightroom will do whatever you elected to do this time. For example, if you click “No” with the “don’t show again” checkbox checked, then it will do “No” in the future, without asking you. You can reset this warning in Lightroom’s Preferences > General > Prompts: Reset all warning dialog.
- In this Quick Tip (Rapidly Reordering Photos in Collections), you’ll find out how to quickly reorder photos by selecting multiple images rather than the time-consuming technique of dragging (and dragging, and dragging!) photos into position.
- In this video (Creating Custom Collections of Images), you’ll learn how to create virtual groups of images using Collections, Smart Collections, and Collection Sets in Lightroom.
- In this Quick Tip – Workgin with Smart Collections in Lightroom Classic, you’ll discover how to work with Smart collections.
- In this Quick Tip – How to quickly add Photographs to a Collection in Lightroom, you’ll learn how to quickly add photos to a Target Collection using a single keystroke.
- In this Quick Tip, you’ll see how to view your best photos from the past six months in Lightroom Classic.