stars and color coding for folders and collections

[someothername]

I just finished practicing my next attempt at a workflow process and realized that I had no way to mark the folder as "done". There's plenty of space to have a color box there, and maybe the stars display. Or is it possible there is a way to label a folder, or a collection, or a smart collection?

 

[RipIt]

Not exactly sure of your workflow but it seems that the Smart Collections would be the way to go. Only you can determine what is "Done". Using that criteria, be it a crop, a color label or star etc. you could create Smart collections that match your folder names. Then when the number in each match you'll know that the Folder of images is "done".

If you were able to mark the folder in some way then there could come a time that an image or multiple images are added to that folder but wouldnt actually be "done".

 

[Victoria Bampton]

That's a feature I'd quite like to see too. Currently I add a keyword for each stage, with a smart collection filtering them. It's not a bad workaround.

 

[someothername]

That's a feature I'd quite like to see too. Currently I add a keyword for each stage, with a smart collection filtering them. It's not a bad workaround.

I'm trying the keyword part out already, though I'm not sure just what to call the various stages other than the last one, "Done". I'd be curious to know what you call your stages.

I can see how I could use the smart collections, but then I'd have a monster list of smart collections, and a bunch of scrolling.

How does this sound for an "official" feature request?

Folder and Collection Status markers
Request that a pair of markers be added to the front of each line in the Folders and Collections part of the left pane in the library module. The first marker can be basically the same as the current colored rectangles applied to photos with a default setting of red="Not looked at", yellow="Initial work started", green="Initial work completed", blue="Not quite done" and purple="done with workflow". This marker would be set by the user and would apply only to the folder as a whole. There would be no connection between it and any status markers on photos in the folder or collection.

The second marker would be a quality marker. Maybe a single star partly grey with partial whiteness indicating the percentage of five stars in that folder. When I hover over it, it will tell me how many photos in the that folder have how many stars. Completely grey would indicate all have no star, completely white would mean all have five stars. This marker would be system generated, but based on some kind of setup the user can control. The user should be able to indicate one of several methods for computing the percentage of the star to whiten.

This will greatly improve the ability of a user to keep track of the status large numbers of folders, particularly when importing a body of work into Lightroom for the first time.