Flagged Photos Not Showing In Main Collection Set

I've set up a collection set in LR, with several sub sets beneath it. However, for some reason, one of the sub sets is not showing the flagged photos in the main collection set. I see the flagged photos from the other sub sets, and when I go to the individual sets within the errant sub set the flags show, but they're not "communicating" to the overall collection set, or even to the main sub set.

To better graphically illustrate

Main Collection Set
Collection Set A
Photos a
Photos b
Collection Set B
Photos 1
Photos 2

All of the flagged photos in Collection Set B (Photos 1 and 2) are showing when I filter to flagged in Main Collection Set, but none of the flagged photos under Collection Set A are, i.e., the flagged photos in collections Photos a and Photos b don't get shown when I click Main Collection Set and filter to flagged.

In addition, even when I click Collection Set A and filter to flagged, it returns 0 photos.

Something's odd here, and I can't figure it out. Anyone have some ideas which may help?

If I understand your issue correctly: Flags don't carry over to collections. Labels & ratings do…

AFAIK: That's because flags are intended as a preliminary sorting tool, nothing more.

René Damkot wrote in post #13166965
If I understand your issue correctly: Flags don't carry over to collections. Labels & ratings do…

AFAIK: That's because flags are intended as a preliminary sorting tool, nothing more.

René, they do show within collections, however, and the flagged photos in Collection Set B do show in the Main Collection which is why I'm baffled why Collection Set A doesn't.

That's one of the reasons to do collection sets, so if you have multiple shooting sessions under one general heading, you can sort each session under a separate collection under the collection set, or even multiple layers of sets as I've done, but also show all the shots filtered (by rating, labels and flags) in the overall shooting heading.

So, flags are limited in how they are used and where they are seen.

I know, for example, that if you flag a photo in the Folder, then that flag won't show up if you view the image in a Collection, and vice-versa, flag an image in a collection, and then right-click and choose Go to Folder in Library and the flag won't show up.

I'd have to read up on things -- it's been too long since I've "studied" Lightroom, but I take it that flags are meant to be "local", either to a shoot or to a collection. Other things are global.

What I'm not sure of is what you see in, say, a collection hierarchy. When I flagged a file in a sub-collection it didn't show up in the parent collection.

And then, I see collections where photos are flagged.

My conclusion about that is that if you flag a photo/photos in the Folders, then move them into a collection, that the flag will follow -- in fact I just tried this and it worked. So, in that way the collection will "inherit" the flag metadata, but once the image is in the collection than adding a flag in one set won't copy to the other.

It may seem "dorky" but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

Thanks Tony, that's essentially what happened here. Without realizing what I was doing, I flagged some in the Folders, others in the Collection. Those flagged in the collection only showed in that specific sub-collection I created, those flagged in folders carried over to the main collection when I created the sub-collection from it. A bit confusing, but taught me a valuable lesson about flagging.

A big thanks to a couple folks over on the LR forums at adobe.com who helped me figure it out and solve/correct it. All's well in collection land now.

Well, OK, I don't have a "Main" collection, so didn't know how that would work -- interesting that you could see flags from the Folder in the Main collection -- doesn't seem consistent, but I guess as long as you can figure out how things work, then it's possible how to make things work for you!

To explain in case anyone's wondering...

This was for a safari shoot with multiple locations. To cull the almost 9K photos I first created a collection set (which I'm referring to as the main collection) entitled Southern Africa 2011. Under that, to keep the sites separate, created sub-collection sets entitled South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, etc, then individual site collections under the proper country. It's nesting collection sets in order to have different levels of organization.

I then did additional "pick" selections for blog, print and slideshows, which lived in the country sub-collections as well. So in each country I have Site A, Site A print, Site A blog, Site A slideshow for example.

My goal was to be able to separate out a particular site picks, a country picks or look at the overall set of picks depending on the need. Thus, needed to be able to see the entire set of picks sorted however I wanted - the full set, the full set of print, a country set blog, etc. Since flag was one of the filters I used to drill down, it needed to translate to the "main" collection as well as the color and rating tags.

Probably as clear as mud, but for this wanted to really give Collections a good try rather than just the normal color and rating filters to save me time in the future in grabbing the sets I wanted for a particular purpose.

If I understand what it is you want, I have/had a similar issue when trying to pick images following a model shoot, i.e. selections for

• The photographer
  
• The model
  
• The MUA
  
• The designer
  
• Uncle Tom Cobbly and all
  

DunnoWhen wrote in post #13169725
If I understand what it is you want, I have/had a similar issue when trying to pick images following a model shoot, i.e. selections for

• The photographer
  
• The model
  
• The MUA
  
• The designer
  
• Uncle Tom Cobbly and all

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is a workflow method that I came up with which may give you some ideas. The initial section and that dealing with “Workflow - Selected By” being most appropriate.

Very interesting concepts in there! Will have to read more carefully and see what might work better than my current workflow. I appreciate you sharing.

tonylong wrote in post #13168071
My conclusion about that is that if you flag a photo/photos in the Folders, then move them into a collection, that the flag will follow -- in fact I just tried this and it worked. So, in that way the collection will "inherit" the flag metadata, but once the image is in the collection than adding a flag in one set won't copy to the other.

Gave it a try as well, and for me it does not work this way.
Photos flagged in a folder, are not flagged in a collection.

LR3.4 on OSX.

Same here as René but on Win 7 Pro...

I actually "complained" about this quirk back in August.

Hmm, well, different folks getting different results, curiouser and curiouser!

tonylong wrote in post #13193195
Hmm, well, different folks getting different results, curiouser and curiouser!

Do this Tony:
- Create Collection
- Drag 12 shots in
- In the collection, flag 6
- Go out to the folder and sort by flagged attribute

Tell me what you see. I think you'll find that your six images flagged in the collection will not show up...

Ah, Jay, as I pointed out earlier in the thread, I found that approach didn't "share" the flagging!

What did share the flagging was to Flag in the folder first, then add that image/images to the collection, and that, at least for me, had the flag showing up in both the folder and the collection...see the difference? Try it and let us know if it works that way for you!

Oh, and Jay, I'm interested to know if you ever resolved your problem with getting an Alt-PrtScrn to copy into an image from the clipboard in Photoshop!