Last month I shared How I Organize My Photo Files on My Computer with you. Today, I’m sharing another part of my photo file organizational system – how I organize my photographs using Lightroom Collections.
I use a program called Lightroom from Adobe to organize and edit my photos. One section of the program – the Library Module – is designed to help photographers organize their files so we can find them quickly.
The best way I’ve found to describe the Library Module is to think of it as a giant card catalog – where the photos are the individual books in the library that you can find using the card catalog. And since I’m old enough to have used card catalogs at libraries all the way through getting my first master’s degree – the system makes perfect sense to me. Just like you can find a specific book in a card catalog by title, author and mutiple subjects – I can find photos in my Lightroom library by date and multiple subjects.
As an example – here’s a photo I took of a Jason Hibiscus at Longwood Gardens on December 15, 2008.
The first place I can look for the photo is in the Folders section of the Lightroom Develop Module. This is simply an alphabetical list of the folders with files that I have imported into Lightroom. So as I explained in my previous article – this photo taken on December 2008 at Longwood Gardens can be found in the folder plh_121508_longwood_flowers in the 12 subfolder of the 2008 folder. And you can see it here in the Folders section in Lightroom
To be able to find the file easily this way – I’d need to remember the exact date I took the photo on. And in most cases I have no clue what the date I took a photo on several years ago. Fortunately, Lightroom’s Library Module also has collections that function as the subject categories in a card catalog. And you can file a photo under as many subjects (or in as many collections) as you want.
My collection sets (groups of collections) are based on broad categories of things I photograph. So I have collections sets for flowers, state and national parks, places, models photographed in the studio, flowers photographed in a studio, etc. Here’s what my top level Collection Sets list looks like.
In my Collection Sets I have two obvious places to look for the file for the Jason Hibiscus. The first is in the Flowers Category Set – and the second is in the Places Category Set.
Within the Flowers Collection Set, I have collections for each type of flowers – lilies, roses, orchids, etc – that I’ve photographed. The Flowers Collection Set shows all the photos I’ve put in any of the flower specific collections.
Within the Flowers Collection Set is a Collection called Hibiscus – which is where I can find all of my hibiscus photos, including the Jason Hibiscus I photographed in December 2008. You can see the original uncropped, unedited version of the photo highlighted as the first photo in the set.
Of if for some reason I can’t remember what type of flower the photo I’m looking for is – I can always look for it by location. In the places Collection Set – there are Collection Sets for all the states I’ve photographed in. And within each of the state folders, are folders for specific locations. Since I knew the photo was taken at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania – I can look in the Places Collection Set in the Pennsylvania Collection Set to find all the places I’ve photographed in Pennsylvania.
I could find the Jason Hibiscus photo by scrolling through all my photos taken in Pennsylvania to find the right one – or I can look in the Longwood Gardens Collection to just see all the photos I’ve taken at Longwood Gardens.
What I love about the Collections in Lightroom’s Library module is that I can create an organizational structure that works for me and the types of things I tend to photograph. And the structure i create only needs to make sense to me. Which means you too can create a organizational system in Lightroom’s Library Module that works for your needs and what you photograph. You don’t have to adapt someone else’s organizational system to fit your needs!
I hope this explanation helps you understand how I organize my photos using Lightroom’s Library module. In my next article in this series (probably early next month), I’ll explain how I use keywords and file names to help me quickly find any edited photo file or the original unedited file for that photo in just a few seconds.
If you have any questions about how I use Lightroom’s Library Module to organize my photos, please drop me a note and I’ll try to answer any questions in a future blog post.