Lightroom General Organisation

Hi All,

I started writing this post explaining the various categories of my images but that just became too long winded. So instead I'll just say what I'm having a problem with and see if there's any easy solution. Maybe how I categorise things will come into it later.

Basically the problem is I cannot have stacks in collections. I treat the main lightroom "All Photographs" bin as a dumping ground for all my images that I want to keep. I then split this mass of photos into various collections - for Display, to be processed, processing complete, posted online, family, specific events, etc

The problem comes when for example I have 20-30 shots which are part of a pano I want to display but I want to stack them because I dont want to see all the individual images involved with a shot - but its in a collection so I cant. Its not just panos, there are a lot of other images that I want to be able to stack - different processed versions of the same shot are another type. I also pretty much only use Photoshop CS5 for all my editing and none of the tools in Lightroom - except possibly some basic corrections before exporting to PS for processing.

Is there a way to further group images together arbitrarily inside collections that I can possibly use? What I think I need is a way to have "sub-groups" - whether this is in folders or collections or some other way I dont know. Any insight/ideas greatly appreciated

(I'd rather not use separate catalogs if I can help it as I want to only use one catalog for a specific time period as I have done in the past. For example I know that all images from 2009 are in one catalog and no-where els).

Cheers.

Can you not flag the images somehow, then go back to 'all photographs', stack them there? As long as the images are in the same folder on your HDD LR will stack them.

You can 'flag' photos, you can give a star 'rating' to photos, you can give a 'color' assignment to photos...then you can have LR show you 'flagged' photos, or show you photos with a certain rating, or show you photos with a given 'color'.

Wilt, yes you can, I mwenat can he not use that to identify images in his collections to then stack in 'all photos'.. Lots of things you can't do in collections (like delete images!)

It all depends on what the OP truly means by the reference to 'stacking'! He states "What I think I need is a way to have "sub-groups", and assigning colors and ratings and 'flagging' are all forms of grouping, after all.

Thanks guys. I hadnt really explored flagging or stars but have used them briefly (albeit temporarily). Grouping by colour sounds interesting though....

Here's an example - say I have 20 final shots which are comprised of 10 shots/exposures/whatev​er each. That means I have a total of 220 images - of which I'm only really intertested in 20 but I want to be able to access the other 200 easily without searching - which stacking does perfectly.

Flagging might work but then if I flag those 200 shots - how do I know which photos belong with each other if they all have the same flag?

Grouping by colour might be worth a look although I do want a descriptor as well so I can just click on one photo and get all of the related photos show up as well. I might forget what group "green" was supposed to signify - whether that meant just one group of 11 photos or the entire group of 220 images (which is a panoramic group say).

stars - again I think this might fall into the same issues as colours - forgetting what 3 stars means - plus I can only have 5 groups (6 if you count no-stars).

Perhaps I need to look at using the tags and keywords in a better way - is there a way to quickly search keywords/tags - for example if I'm looking for images that meet the following criteria:

-Infrared
-Taken on the coast
-Have been processed
-Have not yet been uploaded

I suppose I could have a keyword for each of those categories - the problem is remembering what keywords I have assigned to what - is there a "dictionary" of keywords that I can refer to that I can just click on a get all matches?
Actually thinking about it that would be pretty cool - create your own keywords and then have a set of tickboxes relating to each keyword that would filter down the results - perhaps LR already has some form of this I'm not aware of?

I have to admit I havent delved into keywords or tagging much because the last thing I want to do when looking/processing images is typing reams of words. I have always used collections as a quick easy way to group/organise my images.

I would then only have to look at "all photographs" and a list of my keywords to get what I wanted (which would already be stacked because I'm already looking at all photographs).

EDIT:
I'm starting to look at "Keyword Sets" and wondering if I've answered my own questions....


__

Ever thought of using keywords and smart collections? Very powerful combo

^^^ This.

EOSAddict wrote in post #13058912
Ever thought of using keywords and smart collections? Very powerful combo

No I havent (yet) - thanks for the tip. I assume that smart collections are collections that auto update themselves based on certain attributes (like keywords). Having a think about it I reckon I can approach this in exactly the same way as I did for my music collection in iTunes.

Yep, rule based collections based on any rules you want to set on any combinationof metadata... keywords, file name, folder, camera, file type etc etc

I think you need to look at a combination of all of the above to solve your problem. Smart collections are the way to go and you will have to use key words to be able to use the smart collections. You can also use date or date range, etc, etc.
I do agree however that it is a big short coming in LR that stacks cannot be transferred into collections - it just makes no sense at all.

Well the posts above have cost me about 4 hours solid work but I think it's worth it!

In a nutshell keywords and smart collections are the way to go!

Finally have all my images keyworded and a set of smart collections set up. It works really well and I can now easily see the following:

- what I have yet to review (imported from camera and keyworded on import)
- what's currently in processing
- what's processed but yet to publish (further broken down into flickr, personal website, facebook, etc)

Its saving me a fair bit of time already.

I only have one small issue which is that the keyword operators, (contains, does not contain, etc) do not work for multiple words. For example if I create the rule "does not contain 'in process' ", the rule will exclude any images that have either 'in process' or 'to process' as keywords. It would appear to exclude anything with 'in' or 'process' anywhere in the keywords. The only exception to the is the "contains all" operator which obviously looks for all words - but whether it look sfor all words in any order or the exact phrase I dont know.

I have got around this by changing my wording for workflow steps but it's a niggle (unless there's something I'm missing).

Another feature I'd like is the ability for LR to automatically remove keywords if I add a particular keyword. This would be excellent for moving images through certain statuses in the workflow.

Apart from those, using keywords is absolutely fantastic! Thanks for the tips guys. I still use stacks but the way I'm using keywords and collections I don't really need to access them that much.

Does anyone know any resources for advanced keyword strategies?

rusty,

One way round your keyword inclusion problem might be to do what I do for all my workflow.... all my workflow specific keywards are, for example, @sort, @tag, or @rename.

THen if you set rules based on the whole "@keyword" that might work.

what do you mean by advanced keyword strategies? Hwo to manage your keyword approach and heirarchy??

Hi EOSAddict,

Thanks for the hint on using a special character - I have seen several references to that although I have sort of implemented that by using fairly unique keywords but it might easier to rename them using a special character like the @ symbol - that way I'm pretty sure I wouldnt use them in normal keywording.

As for strategies - I was just wondering if there was any information anwhere that illustrated how to use keywords, collections, operators, hierarchies, etc in a "proper" manner for greatest flexibility. I am quite happy working one out on my own (in fact I've nearly done it) but I just wondered if someone had already documented it to save me reinventing the wheel.

rusty,

do what works for you but gather what evidence you can!

I posted this..

https://photography-on-the.net …=346660&highlig​ht=keyword

A while back and whilst I've tweaked it the general idea remains the same....bear in mind that it was written before smart collections so the management of it is now a whole lot easier.. as is the tagging plugin I have just started to use.