Collections

[Colin Grant]

Lightroom Version Number

9.2

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

Many suggest that the best way to manage images in Lr is via Collections. I can certainly see how that could be the case so decided to give it a try. Seems to me that the approach is ok until such the as one edits via a plugin. The tiff (as an example) that is round tripped is shown in the catalogue ok but it is not shown in the collection, unless the collection is a smart collection with suitable search criteria. Am I missing something? If not is seems smart collections are the way to go unless one is 100% certain outside editors will not be brought into play.

 

[johnbeardy]

If you send it to the external editor from the dumb collection, it'll be added to it, and both types of collection have their roles. Smart because they gather photos automatically, dumb because we can collect pictures however we choose.

Maybe try thinking in these terms - folders are for physical storage, keywords and other metadata for describing and categorising photos, and collections are for gathering and grouping them for things you need to do.

 

[Califdan]

Lots of overlap in use of collections vs keywords for organization. for example you could have a dumb collection for Cars. Or you could have a keyword for Cars, or you could have a keyword for cars and a smart collection for cars that looks for that keyword. All three methods are heavily used by lots of power users. However, each has it's pluses and minuses. Keywords, for example, can be easily referenced in a text filter where collection names are harder to deal with in the filter bar. Collections can be easily multi selected (select more than one collection at a time) where multi selecting keywords using the keyword List panel can't be done - but by using "contains" in a text filter can be done but you have to type them out and if your KW has a space in it, it doesn't always produce the results you want.

Anyway, You just have to determine which method works best for you. None is inherently better or worse - just different.

 

[Colin Grant]

I am sure I edited an image in a dumb collection via an external editor and the resulting tiff only came back to the catalogue folder and not the collection. Shall try again just in case I have a skewed memory - quite possible.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Just make sure that the collection is the selected source, not the folder that the image is in.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

To complet Califdan's comment : when exporting your image, the keyords can be added in the file, whereas collections cannot. This means that when you send the file to someone else, he will also get all the keywords (as well as all the others metadata like title, description, location, etc.). Whatever photo management application he uses (including Windows Explorer) it will be able to see these informations.
John did a perfect description of what all these can be used for.

 

[Colin Grant]

Thanks all. That has cleared that up.

 

[clee01l]

I am sure I edited an image in a dumb collection via an external editor and the resulting tiff only came back to the catalogue folder and not the collection. Shall try again just in case I have a skewed memory - quite possible.

When you edit using an external editor, make sure you are using the "Edit-in" function in Lightroom. Exporting and using the "Add this to Catalog" option does not add the derivative image file to any collections only to the catalog.