A word about orga­niz­ing your pho­tos and Col­lec­tions in Light­room

I store all my pho­tos on a sep­a­rate exter­nal hard dri­ve ded­i­cat­ed only for pho­tos. I have one fold­er named “Pic­tures” on that dri­ve. With­in that fold­er are more fold­ers named with gen­er­al cat­e­gories — Art, Hol­i­days, Music, Peo­ple, Projects, Places, Plants, Sports and Vehi­cles.

Inside each of those fold­ers are sub fold­ers that fur­ther define the con­tents. For instance, in the Music fold­er, sub-fold­ers have names of spe­cif­ic musi­cians and bands. The Places fold­er has a Cities fold­er, a Parks fold­er and a few more. The Sports fold­er has Soc­cer, Surf­ing, and Hula Hoop sub-fold­ers. The Vehi­cles fold­er has sub-fold­ers for Cars, Planes, Trains and Boats. Those fold­ers are where I store all my pho­tos.

Even though I use Light­room to import and orga­nize these fold­ers, the pic­tures can only be in one place and in one fold­er on the one hard dri­ve. Those fold­ers are all dis­played in the actu­al hier­ar­chy in the Fold­er Pan­el of the Light­room Library. (I cre­ate dupli­cates as a back­up on anoth­er dri­ve and will write about that lat­er.)

What if a pho­to fits into more than one of my cat­e­gories? That is where Col­lec­tions come in.

The pow­er­ful advan­tage of Col­lec­tions is being able to cre­ate a Col­lec­tion of pho­tos that live in dif­fer­ent fold­ers and even on dif­fer­ent hard dri­ves. And any one pho­to can also reside in more than one Col­lec­tion.

Col­lec­tions are vir­tu­al. Pho­tos in Col­lec­tions nev­er move from their per­ma­nent home on your hard dri­ve. They stay in the fold­er where you first import­ed them. Light­room clev­er­ly remem­bers the Col­lec­tions you cre­ate, the pho­tos you place in them and any edit­ing you make to those pho­tos. Light­room nev­er makes changes to the orig­i­nals.

I uti­lize Col­lec­tions when work­ing on projects. After review­ing and rat­ing pic­tures from a pho­to shoot, I might cre­ate a Col­lec­tion of the best pho­tos that require fur­ther edit­ing. I might make a Col­lec­tion of pho­tos that have a sim­i­lar theme, which will prob­a­bly include pic­tures from many dif­fer­ent fold­ers on my hard dri­ve.

Orga­niz­ing is a joint effort of (1) know­ing how files are stored on your hard dri­ves and (2) using the tools in the Light­room Library, includ­ing Col­lec­tions, rat­ings and key­words. Mas­ter these con­cepts and you will eas­i­ly man­age the huge num­ber of pic­tures you are col­lect­ing in this dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy world.