Organizing your photos can be a daunting task. In this video tutorial, we’ll provide an overview on the three pillars of image organization using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic. This video offers a quick overview on the unique roles that File Folders, Metadata, and Collections should play within your image management system.
Folders: Your Photos Home
Folders are the basic building blocks of image organization with Lightroom Classic. Folders allow you to store your photos in a hierarchical structure with one folder for each day that you photograph. Using chronologic folders makes it easy to find photos from a particular day, month, or year.
Metadata: Searchable Details About Each Image
Metadata holds the key to the context that surrounds each of your photographs. Your image’s metadata can include things like the camera settings that you used when you snapped this image and the location where this particular photograph was taken.
Metadata can also include keywords, star ratings, and other descriptive terms that you can add to your photographs at any time. Because metadata is image specific, you can use Classic’s powerful search tools to find photos that match your search criteria even if those images do not all live within the same folder or even on the same hard drive.
Searching with metadata is the most efficient way to find any image, or a bunch of images, within your Lightroom Catalog.
Collections: Curated Groups Of Images
Collections are a way to group images together for a specific purpose. You could create a collection of your favorite photos, for example, and then use these images in one of Classic’s other Modules to create a printed book or a slideshow.
Collections are not file storage locations. This is a critical distinction and one that many Classic users do not understand. Because Collections only exist within your Lightroom Catalog, you can use this feature to group photos together without moving any of your files from one place to another on your hard drive.
Conclusion
By using Folders, Metadata, and Collections properly, you can create a comprehensive efficient system for photo organization using Adobe Lightroom Classic!
If the role that each of these tools plays in a well organized image library makes sense for you now then I encourage you to learn more about how each of these pillars work within this complex program.
