• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Quick ways to manually sort new photos into a collection

Status
Not open for further replies.

Rob M.

Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2018
Messages
31
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version: 8.0
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra
When I import new photos or graphics and add them to a collection, Lr adds them at the end of the collection. Then I drag/drop them into position, which can itself be a drag in a large collection, especially if the new photo should be at the beginning of the collection. While dragging, if I hold the photo near the top of the grid view, the grid may scroll, but usually slowly, if at all. Is there a trick to making it scroll quickly?

Ideally, I'd like to drag/drop the photo from elsewhere, say, my Desktop, to the correct place in a collection and have Lr open an import dialog for it. Lr doesn't seem to support that.

Alternatively, if there were a dialog where you could specify, Move the selected photos before/after photo number 123 in a collection, that'd solve the problem. Lr doesn't seem to support that either.

Any recommendations for a way to move photos long distances within collections? Or to get Lr to import them in/near the desired location to start with?

Thx,

Rob
 
While dragging, if I hold the photo near the top of the grid view, the grid may scroll, but usually slowly, if at all. Is there a trick to making it scroll quickly?
Mine scrolls slowly when the image is near the top but as soon as I reach the top/overlap the filter bar it speeds up dramatically.

Ideally, I'd like to drag/drop the photo from elsewhere, say, my Desktop, to the correct place in a collection and have Lr open an import dialog for it. Lr doesn't seem to support that.

Alternatively, if there were a dialog where you could specify, Move the selected photos before/after photo number 123 in a collection, that'd solve the problem. Lr doesn't seem to support that either.
LR doesn't do what you want and I doubt it ever will because your requirements are so unique and specific.

Having said that LR does launch an Import dialogue when you drag a file onto it and that dialogue includes a tick box/functionality to add the image to a collection automatically during import. However you can't import just to a collection because they are virtual - there is no folder on your HD that the collection images files sit in. The files all sit in their actual folder and LR just stores a virtual pointer to say that those files are in that collection.

As for sorting, there are a number of different options that a collection view can by sorted by (selected from the toolbar) including a custom option. Unfortunately there is no way to specify the exact location of a specific image within a custom sort view other than by dragging it.

You could do a work around such as choosing sort by file name and then renaming files to alphanumeric files names that result in them appearing in the right order but it would require you to know where you wanted a file to appear and what file name you needed to use to get it to appear in the right position prior to importing.
 
Hi, Dan --

Re scrolling, thanks! If I'm very careful about where I drag, I can scroll quickly enough, say, 10-15s to scroll up through 500 photos with medium-sized thumbnails, faster with minimal-sized ones. That's livable.

Re drag/drop, Lr already does most everything. When you drag an image over the grid view of a collection, it brings up the import dialog so that you can pick a destination on disk for it. The thing it apparently can't do is to take the hint that you'd like to add the image to the active collection and let you to pick the position (the way you normally would if when using drag/drop to sort photos within a collection). Even lowly iPhoto supports drag/drop into a chosen location in an album (its version of a collection), but admittedly it doesn't let you control where the master is stored.

BTW, my use case is that I'm making maps or other graphic images as title slides in a slideshow. That's why I miss being able to drag/drop them at selected spots in a collection.

Thanks for your help,

Rob
 
Hi Rob. This seems to be one of those cases where — since Lightroom does not provide the functionality you want from it — it would benefit you to specify you exact use case so that others might offer solutions that provide the _results_ of the functionality you seek via an alternate workflow. By what criteria are you manually sorting the Photos? How are you using them such that having so many, sorted this way, in a single container, is beneficial?

Adding simple things to Dad's fine answer: you can modify the UI to better suit your task: minimize thumbnail size, hide all the panels so the Grid View is all you see, run Lightroom full-screen, and use a larger monitor.
 
Hi, Kirby --

Re the use case, yes, I should have included it in my original post. I just included it in my reply to Dan's post, but your and my posts crossed in the ether, so you didn't see it.

Re your additional suggestions, minimizing thumbnails is quick and easy. I'll do that, as long as they aren't so small I can't navigate to the correct spot.

Thanks,

Rob
 
my use case is that I'm making maps or other graphic images as title slides in a slideshow. That's why I miss being able to drag/drop them at selected spots in a collection.
Interesting quandary. Here's one way that works. I don't know whether it is worth it to you. Make nested Collections such as:
- Slideshow Name {this is a Collection Set}
- - Section One Cover Slide
- - Section One Slides
- - Section Two Cover Slide
- - Section Two Slides
{etc.}

That would give a target for dropping the cover slide Photos — and potentially add some useful functionality to your grouping, as you could easily review and select Photos by section, and even query whether you have dupes — or use dupes, which might not be possible the way you are working

Lightroom, unfortunately, does not provide a "sort by Library" option. John R. Ellis' quite useful "Any Filter" plug-in, does, and deftly. Once sorted this way, you'll have a _new_ Collection, with all your "Slideshow Name" Photos, in the sort you want. That sort is set as the "Custom Sort" for the Collection, so you can re-sort using any of the built-in sorting options, and return to the custom sort by selecting it in the sort drop-down. You can duplicate this Catalog, rename it, and move it into the "Slideshow Name" Collection Set.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Hi, Kirby --

I already have two-level nested collections, and I don't think deeper nesting is worth it. Sometimes I need to move material between the sections. Also, I use stacks, and stacks become unstacked if you move them to a new collection.

Thanks for taking the time to ponder my problem and offer some ideas. I'll continue using separate import and drag/drop steps, but I'll drag/drop more efficiently now.

Thx,

Rob
 
The thing it apparently can't do is to take the hint that you'd like to add the image to the active collection and let you to pick the position
As I said above you CAN add it to the collection. You just can't specify the exact location.
Even lowly iPhoto supports drag/drop into a chosen location in an album (its version of a collection), but admittedly it doesn't let you control where the master is stored.
Whereas LR lets you control where the master is stored (and add to a collection during import) but not specify exactly where in the collection.

As I said above you have unique and specific requirements. The likelihood that all of them will be met by a generic user interface is slim to none.
 
My use case doesn't seem that unique and specific. But it doesn't matter. As I replied to Kirby, fast drag/drop gives a good enough solution.

R
 
Sorry, can't help with your question, but for interest, what do you do with your sorted collections that make the image position important?
Dave
 
Sorry, and thanks - I though I'd read them all.
It doesn't help Rob, but there are certainly much better slideshow products out there, albeit with the additional step of an Export.

Dave
 
Any recommendations for a way to move photos long distances within collections?

Maybe use stacking in the collection? This is mostly-separate from whatever stacking may be in the folders which contain the images, though if you drag a stack from a folder into a collection, the stacking is copied into the collection.

When preparing a book, for example, the stacks correspond to sections of the book. It's then easy to drag a photo from the open stack and drop it in another. Other sections would be closed.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top