Comments on: Lightroom 2 Technique: Smart Collections and Worklists

By: Steven Grimm

Steven Grimm — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:37:27 +0000

Thanks for this post — I’d been using keywords for this and finding it a little cumbersome. This seems like it’ll be better and it seems like the whole thing still applies as-is to LR3.

One thought on collection naming: In my existing (keyword-based) smart collections I use numeric prefixes on the collection names to keep them in a particular order in the UI. This would probably be a reasonable thing to use for the smart collections too. That is, if you have a collection named something like, “031 People I know – Reviewed” you can key on “031″ in the smart collection and be fairly well assured you’ll never run into problems with partial matches or the like.

Of course, putting numbers in the name doesn’t imply you have to go through the collections in any particular order in your workflow; it’s just really easy to make sure numbers are unique since any duplicates will sort right next to each other in the collections list.

By: Organising a Lightroom catalog | Timothy Armes' Blog

Organising a Lightroom catalog | Timothy Armes' Blog — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:20:27 +0000

[...] to keep track of which images still need sorting and keywording. I highly recommend reading his blog post on the [...]

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:52:50 +0000

Hi Lisbeth, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at the exact details for smart collection searches, but you might try the “contains all” or “contains words” options.

By: Lisbeth

Lisbeth — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 08:46:08 +0000

Hi Eric
How do I create a smart collection with pictures of Snowwhite if I also have pictures of snow? The problem is, that when I create a smart collection searching for the keyword Snowwhite it includes all pictures with the keyword ‘snow’. And if I say that it shouldn’t include ‘snow’ it excludes all pictures with SNOWwhite and leaves nothing back!!

By: lowflyinghawk

lowflyinghawk — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:43:09 +0000

I seldom use the word “awesome”, but I must say it: this technique is freaking awesome! I have 35,000 family pics taken over around 10 years that I recently imported into LR. unlike PSE6, LR didn’t fall down and die from the load, but organizing them beyond a few coarse-grained collections seemed just about insurmountable until I read your article. I got set up and classified the first 3500 or so in a “family” hierarchy in a couple of hours. thanks to the “reviewed” and “to review” setup I can stop and restart again whenever I’m in the mood. I’ll say it again: awesome!

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:00:11 +0000

Perhaps I need to clarify the article. You can't directly add photos to a smart collection, so the B key is invalid in that context. What I am doing is to use a standard collection and a smart collection as a pair. The smart collection is defined as those photos that are not in the standard collection, and I use the "set as target collection" on the standard collection. In that case, using the B key has the effect of adding the photo to the standard collection and causing that photo to no longer match the criteria for the smart collection.

By: Endre Grüner Ofstad

Endre Grüner Ofstad — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:57:06 +0000

Hi, great system I have just one problem: I miss the “set as target collection” function with Smart Collection. That alternative only works with regular collection. What seems to be the problem?

By: Robert Englebright

Robert Englebright — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:46:10 +0000

I feel like I have followed all the directions correctly, but I am missing how the photos are removed from the Smart Collection after I have done the keywording and pressed the “b” key. After I press the “b” the photos migrate to the target collection but stay in the Smart Collection. I was under the impression from your directions that the photo is removed from the Smart Collection immediately once I press the “b” key. Am I supposed to keyword “flowers»reviewed” after I have pressed the “b” key, and this is when the photos migrate to the target collection?

By: Dave Beedon

Dave Beedon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:16:24 +0000

Eric,
This information will be of great value to me when I start using Lightroom (I ordered it yesterday). The idea of using keywords and collections excites me. From what I have learned so far, Lightroom 2.0 will be a dramatic improvement in capability over my present “dark ages” photo management system. Thank you very much for sharing your system of using keywords and collections!

By: Winston Mitchell

Winston Mitchell — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:15:30 +0000

Eric, I have spent a long time thinking about this problem. I have discovered my real problem with this new method. This method treats a file’s location as data without any record of how it got there. It cannot easily be reconstructed. Also, this “data” can be altered with no visible trace. For an aging dyslexic, such as myself, this is unacceptable.

I thought about a similar method where I would use the painter to apply the appropriate worklist keyword and rejected it for the same reason I can’t use Auto Sync.

What I have settled on is creating a “WorkList” keyword set. This seems to work pretty well. It is still applied via kestroke with the added benefit of instananeous visible feedback and a simpler collection structure.

Thanks for listening.