Brad Snyder
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2007
- Messages
- 6,293
- Location
- Port Deposit, Maryland USA
- Lightroom Experience
- Intermediate
Contributed by forum member dj_paige. (I couldn't figure out how to post it directly under his username as author)
As Victoria said, there are lots of ways to do this. Here's what I do.
There are two concepts you need to understand ... one is your storage needs, and one is your organizational/search needs.
Storage includes where you keep your photos, and what names do you assign to the photos and folders. Organizational/search needs are a system that enables you to find photos quickly.
Before you had Lightroom, you used the same tools for both storage and organizing/search. Those tools were folders and file names.
Now that you have Lightroom, the tools for storage and separate are independent of your organizational/search tools. You still use folders and file names to meet your storage needs (as Victoria said, you might want to move all your photos to a single parent folder for ease of backup). You might also want to move photos from one hard disk to another to meet your storage needs.
The tools for organizing/search are inside Lightroom; specifically keywords, metadata and collections. In my opinion, these Lightroom tools are much more powerful than anything you could do if you used folder names and file names to help you search. Why? A photo can be in only one folder, but a photo can have as many keywords as you want. This enables you to provide many relevant descriptors of a photo, and if at some point in the future, you want to search for photos that have keywords "Winery","Finger Lakes","Fall Foliage", this is an easy search in Lightroom. The same search is nearly impossible using folder and file names.
So, I recommend minimal (or even no) renaming or moving of photos and folders. If you need to move photos to another hard disk, move them. If you want all your photos under a single parent folder, for ease of backup, move them. And other than that, don't worry about folder location, as Lightroom doesn't care, and it doesn't interfere with your ability to Organize/search. Other than that, don't move your photos, don't rename your photos or folders. Let Lightroom tools be your organizing/search system.
Here's my workflow. I admit it is very simple, and possibly not appropriate for professional photographers (I don't really know, as I am not a professional photographer).
Capture photos
Move photos off camera card into folders named by capture date (Lightroom makes this easy in the Import Dialog box)
Apply keywords and metadata religiously; make collections and smart collections as needed
Develop
Export photos only when needed for some non-Lightroom purpose (e-mail, web, Photoshop, etc.)
Search for photos and browse your collection in Lightroom, not in Windows (or Mac) folders.
And that's it! Simple as can be. Gives you more time to enjoy your photos, and less (zero) time moving of photos, or renaming of photos or folders. You have much more powerful search tools this way, and browsing in Lightroom also allows you to view your Lightroom edits (browsing in Windows or Mac folders does not allow you to view your Lightroom edits).
=====And from the same author =========
It is my very strong feeling that keywords are your primary organizing tool. Captions and other metadata are also important. Every photo should have good keywords, and almost every photo should have good captions and other metadata.
Collections to me are something you create after you do keywords. Why? Several reasons ... collections exist only in the Lightroom catalog, but keywords can be written to the xmp and shared with other applications (collections can not). Thus, if you want to share your keywords with anyone else, or any other application, keywords are the choice. Also, you can search for keywords in the Filter bar, but you cannot search for collection membership in the filter bar.
Collections to me are optional, and are collections of things. They are collections that don't fit in the keyword hierarchy. For example, I go on a trip almost every year with my friend Jessica, and I create a collection (and subcollections) for those trips. But the visit to Altoona (yes, we actually went to Altoona) gets the Altoona keyword, and when I want to find the photos, I search for Altoona. I don't go into my collections and find Trips with Jessica and then Altoona. It's only when I want to see all of these vacations do I go to the collection, because ALL of them would not be easily found by keyword.
The other thing I use collections for is "portfolio" shots. Thus, I have a collection for my best railroad shots (regardless of keyword); I have a collection of my best shots from around Western NY (regardless of keyword).
Smart collections are also useful, you can have a smart collection of all railroad photos with 4 or 5 stars (and because this is a smart collection, it will update automatically every time you assign a 4 or 5 star rating to a photo with railroad keyword).
Your case, classifying flowers, mammals, invertebrates, herbs, etc. seems to be a classic example of using keywords. You can create hierarchies of keywords similar to the taxonomy of your fauna and flora. I see no reason to use collections here.
While sometimes keywords and collections overlap in their capabilities, keywords clearly provide you with more capability than collections, and they are where I start. Collections are valuable, but they are not my primary organizing tool.
As Victoria said, there are lots of ways to do this. Here's what I do.
There are two concepts you need to understand ... one is your storage needs, and one is your organizational/search needs.
Storage includes where you keep your photos, and what names do you assign to the photos and folders. Organizational/search needs are a system that enables you to find photos quickly.
Before you had Lightroom, you used the same tools for both storage and organizing/search. Those tools were folders and file names.
Now that you have Lightroom, the tools for storage and separate are independent of your organizational/search tools. You still use folders and file names to meet your storage needs (as Victoria said, you might want to move all your photos to a single parent folder for ease of backup). You might also want to move photos from one hard disk to another to meet your storage needs.
The tools for organizing/search are inside Lightroom; specifically keywords, metadata and collections. In my opinion, these Lightroom tools are much more powerful than anything you could do if you used folder names and file names to help you search. Why? A photo can be in only one folder, but a photo can have as many keywords as you want. This enables you to provide many relevant descriptors of a photo, and if at some point in the future, you want to search for photos that have keywords "Winery","Finger Lakes","Fall Foliage", this is an easy search in Lightroom. The same search is nearly impossible using folder and file names.
So, I recommend minimal (or even no) renaming or moving of photos and folders. If you need to move photos to another hard disk, move them. If you want all your photos under a single parent folder, for ease of backup, move them. And other than that, don't worry about folder location, as Lightroom doesn't care, and it doesn't interfere with your ability to Organize/search. Other than that, don't move your photos, don't rename your photos or folders. Let Lightroom tools be your organizing/search system.
Here's my workflow. I admit it is very simple, and possibly not appropriate for professional photographers (I don't really know, as I am not a professional photographer).
Capture photos
Move photos off camera card into folders named by capture date (Lightroom makes this easy in the Import Dialog box)
Apply keywords and metadata religiously; make collections and smart collections as needed
Develop
Export photos only when needed for some non-Lightroom purpose (e-mail, web, Photoshop, etc.)
Search for photos and browse your collection in Lightroom, not in Windows (or Mac) folders.
And that's it! Simple as can be. Gives you more time to enjoy your photos, and less (zero) time moving of photos, or renaming of photos or folders. You have much more powerful search tools this way, and browsing in Lightroom also allows you to view your Lightroom edits (browsing in Windows or Mac folders does not allow you to view your Lightroom edits).
=====And from the same author =========
It is my very strong feeling that keywords are your primary organizing tool. Captions and other metadata are also important. Every photo should have good keywords, and almost every photo should have good captions and other metadata.
Collections to me are something you create after you do keywords. Why? Several reasons ... collections exist only in the Lightroom catalog, but keywords can be written to the xmp and shared with other applications (collections can not). Thus, if you want to share your keywords with anyone else, or any other application, keywords are the choice. Also, you can search for keywords in the Filter bar, but you cannot search for collection membership in the filter bar.
Collections to me are optional, and are collections of things. They are collections that don't fit in the keyword hierarchy. For example, I go on a trip almost every year with my friend Jessica, and I create a collection (and subcollections) for those trips. But the visit to Altoona (yes, we actually went to Altoona) gets the Altoona keyword, and when I want to find the photos, I search for Altoona. I don't go into my collections and find Trips with Jessica and then Altoona. It's only when I want to see all of these vacations do I go to the collection, because ALL of them would not be easily found by keyword.
The other thing I use collections for is "portfolio" shots. Thus, I have a collection for my best railroad shots (regardless of keyword); I have a collection of my best shots from around Western NY (regardless of keyword).
Smart collections are also useful, you can have a smart collection of all railroad photos with 4 or 5 stars (and because this is a smart collection, it will update automatically every time you assign a 4 or 5 star rating to a photo with railroad keyword).
Your case, classifying flowers, mammals, invertebrates, herbs, etc. seems to be a classic example of using keywords. You can create hierarchies of keywords similar to the taxonomy of your fauna and flora. I see no reason to use collections here.
While sometimes keywords and collections overlap in their capabilities, keywords clearly provide you with more capability than collections, and they are where I start. Collections are valuable, but they are not my primary organizing tool.
Last edited by a moderator:
