Adobe Lightroom: master the Library module to stay on top of your images

In part 2 of our special Raw Tuesday series within a series on getting to know Adobe Lightroom, we continue our investigation of what Adobe Lightroom offers photographers in terms of photo management with an in-depth look at Lightroom’s Library Module.

A large part of Adobe Lightroom’s job is keeping your images organised. This becomes a progressively greater challenge as your image library grows in size, and the number of different ways you want to use your pictures increases, too.

It uses industry-standard ‘metadata’ embedded in your images to help, consisting of keywords, captions, copyright information 
and more (click here to find out more about What is metadata?).

But it also offers quick-access Flags, Ratings and Labels and an interactive Filter Bar to help you quickly find and isolate the pictures you’re looking for.

Adobe Lightroom Library Module: Folders and Collections

Click on the infographic below to view the larger version of this file. Alternatively, drag and drop it to your desktop.

01 Folders

This is where Lightroom displays the real location of your photos on your computer or your external drive. If you move photos and folders here, you move them on your computer.

It’s important to realise, though, that if you move them on your computer instead, Lightroom won’t be able to find them any more and you’ll have to manually relocate them within Lightroom and re-establish the connection.

You can use Folders as your main organisational tool, though many photographers prefer to use Collections and Collection Sets instead.

02 Smart Collections

Smart Collections can be created and stored alongside regular Collections, but they’re a very different thing. You should think of them as ‘saved searches’ instead.

Imagine you want to find all pictures taken on a Nikon D700 containing the keyword ‘snow’ and taken in the Alps in 2011.

This is quite a long-winded set of search criteria you wouldn’t want to have to type in twice, but if you use a Smart Collection instead, your search is saved permanently among your other Collections.

The key thing to know about Smart Collections is that you can’t add or remove pictures manually – they’re chosen according to their properties, so the only way to control what appears is to change the properties (keywords, for example) of the picture.

03 Collections & Collection Sets

These are like ‘virtual’ folders. They’re completely independent of the folders on your computer. You can create Collections for images you want to use as a portfolio, photos to show a client or as a way of bringing together pictures that share a common theme.

Deleting a photo from a Collection doesn’t delete the photo, only that particular reference to it, and you can add the same photo to many different collections – but it’s still the same photo, not a copy.

So if you apply any adjustments or effects to a photo, these will show up in all the Collections where the photo appears. Collection Sets are simply folders to help you organise your Collections.

You can nest them one within another, just like nesting folders on your computer.

PAGE 1: Adobe Lightroom Library Module – Folders and Collections

PAGE 2: Adobe Lightroom Library Module – Filter Bar

PAGE 3: Adobe Lightroom Library Module – Flags, Ratings and Labels

READ MORE

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