JD750 Loc: SoCal

I am hoping CHG_CANON will weigh in on this.

It occurs to me there are two structures in Lightroom the folder structure and the collections. I find it a bit confusing. I have a hierarchy of folders that i maintain. Because I don’t trust software. Sometimes it goes away. I want to have a basic structure that allows me to find my images if that happens again.

Using LR to maintain the folder hierarchy is easy to do. However it seems to the that LR is really designed to put the images in a folder then to use collections to organize them. There is more flexibility that way because the collections contain links. For example I can have the same image in two collections. But I cannot have the same image in two folders unless I duplicate it.

So my question is what other advantages are there to using collections? Does the LR cloud version use collections in the same manner? Does using collections make it easier to sync LR classic to LR cloud?

jamesl Loc: Pennsylvania

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Folders are physical and collections can contain thumbnail references to photos in different folders as well as different drives. I believe the same folders can appear in different catalogues though I believe normally you are anly using one catelogue at a time and close one before opening another. The folders referenced in Lightroom are pointers to your actual folders on your computer while collections are virtual groupings, not physical ones. I don't use the cloud version of lightroom but I imagine it would work pretty much the same if your photos are stored in the cloud rather than on a hard drive.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

I’m sorry I used the word catalog when I meant to say collection. I have edited the original post to correct that mistake.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

--First, let's get the terminology correct. You seem to have used catalog interchangably with collection in your message.

• A Catalog is the data base that is inherent in the application called Lightroom.
• A Folder structure is shown in the left hand panel of LR, this structure simply mirrors the structure on your hard drive. Folders contain actual original images.
• A Collection allows you to group images, without duplicating the image, in any way you want to so that you can use them in multiple ways. A Collection can be permanent or temporary.

You can organize images without using collections by simply using keywords and/or metadata and the filter bar in the application.

Yes, you can link any image to multiple Catalogs but you can only use one Catalog at a time. This is because the application simply links images using the file name to the application and thus can be in many Catalogs but I cannot think why anyone would want to do this.

And, yes, you can only have one original image in a folder but you can have multiple images in a Collection as a collection only shows a preview of each image, it does not contain the original image.

A Collection is a lot like using keywords. How you use the application depends on how your brain likes to operate. You can set up a Collection to gather multiple images (these are all previews) to create a book or slideshow or because you want to keep similar images all together. You can also find similar images using keywords if you keyword all images. You can also set up Smart Collections that use keywords.

The application is designed so that its functions can be used in multiple ways to fit the needs of different users. I do use a Collection Set and a Collection named by year for images I put into photography shows. Other than that, I don't generally use a Collection as a permanent grouping. I have don't use Collections to group images in a permanent way by subject, but many people may do that. I use a Collection to group images to create a book or a slideshow or to peruse through looking for a photo to print for a contest or send in for an online contest. I delete my temporary collections after use.

I use keywords and can find just about any image in seconds with a keyword.

I have no clue about the Cloud service as I don't use the Cloud version of LR.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Putting "Lightroom" in the subject and I'm bound to find it.

I understand the importance of a well though-out hierarchy of descriptive folder names. However, in a Lightroom environment, one is unnecessarily duplicating their work-effort by maintaining a folder hierarchy rather than a Collection hierarchy entirely within LR.

The LR collections are virtual and flexible. You can store one image in multiple collections, something you cannot do in OS-level folders without creating duplicate physical files. You can drag collections around and / or rename (or remove) collections with no impact on the enclosed images.

Personally, I don't even display the Folder structure on my LR desktop. In the Library Mode, I display only the Catalog and Collections. Every once in a while, I need to deal with a Folder issue or question, where I ask LR to show me the folder location in the Library rather than the file via Explore. When this investigation is done, I just remove the folder list again from my display. I use the Previous Import collection in the Catalog to identify images, not their source folder. I also use the shooting date and / or other EXIF data to identify / filter WIP images rather than their source folder.

Your questions injected 'catalogs'. Hopefully, this was a typo and you meant 'collections' in all the questions. I use simply folders based on dates, organized by years and then simply folder names like "YYYYMMDD <Description>" within all these higher-level annual folder, such as 2020 > 2020_RAW > 20200409 Buttermilk Biscuits. For the three keeper images from yesterday's baking, the images can be stored in two completely unrelated collections: Chicago and Food Porn. The images have 10 keywords each based on ways I'd like to search for them in the future, keywords related to location, camera, and recipe. It's much quicker to use the virtual organization inside LR than to attempt to encode all this same data into a folder structure. The search tools / filters are much more powerful inside LR as compared to any form of OS-based search tools on the folders and files.

You mention being unsure of LR managing your folders. I'm not so hesitant, but still, I do 99% of my folder maintenance external to LR. That is, I copy images into my harddrive external to LR placing the images into their permanent location, then just Adding via the Import from that permanent location. Using the simple date-based organization, I am rarely presented with a need to rename or move any of these permanent folder locations. So, I'm not presented with a risk or need for LR to move or otherwise manage my physical folders.

Regarding collections and the cloud, this is a transfer mechanism where you update the 'sync' attribute of the Collection in LR classic and LR will keep the images in this Collection synced with files in the cloud. Although you can purchase a large storage space in the cloud, the basic size is really only large enough to sync specific WIP images from your mobile device with your primary desktop where LR Classic resides. So 'yes', using collections makes syncing effective and efficient with the Cloud and your mobile device, but you need to consider which and why images / collections are being synced with the cloud and a mobile device. Are you sending images from the field back to Classic? Are you syncing a specific group of images to your mobile device for remote work or sharing? The Cloud, in Adobe's pricing, is not very cost-effective for long-term mass storage.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Via-the-Lens makes a great point: the Lightroom software allows multiple methods for organization, based on your own personal preferences, without forcing (limiting) you to use any one method. As mentioned in my lengthy response, above, I use a simple folder hierarchy based on the YYYYMMDD shooting date. For me inside LR, the organization is mostly descriptive-based organizations, typically based on US state locations. We see people regularly say they'd never find an image based on trying to remember shooting date. I agree, but my date-based folders doesn't limit my ability to find images, because I really don't look at the folders. Rather, I have keywords and collections inside Lightroom, along with all the metadata attributes of the image files.

Yesterday, through maybe last month, I can still remember the dates with some distinction. The 'what' and the 'where' of the image is easier to remember. As long as I spend the effort to keyword my images as part of my import, culling and / or editing, most everything I need to know about the images is applied immediately to the files, typically before any editing.

The suggestion is to skip the effort / time spent organizing your folders and instead spend that same time / effort keywording your images and assigning them to some logical collection that fits your needs. Use collection sets to further organize your images. My Collection Sets are more based on Locations, such as US states, with images related to Cities and Parks and Events as Collections inside the Collection Sets. Groupings like 'Food Porn' or 'Butterflies' are not location based where I can use collections for these content groupings that span multiple shooting locations. Images are then 'filed' into 1 or as many relevant Collections as needed to organize the images for logical groupings and quickly finding when needed again. I can add old images into new Collections created in the future with a few keystrokes as well as delete entire collections with no impact on the image files.

Even with all the benefits of Collections, I probably use keywords searches much more than navigating the display list of collections. If I need the Collection grouping, I might just 'goto' the collection from a right-click of an image and listing the collections where the image is assigned.

sunnyfilm

I was wondering how LR would detect duplicate photos. If I had two of the same photos with two different names, would it recognize that?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

My experience is LR detects 'duplicates' really only for files with the same name and type in the same folder. IMG001 in Folder-A is not detected as a duplicate of IMG001 in Folder-B. You can use sorting to manually detect / identify duplicates as well as there are 'plug-ins' that do this sorting and comparison in a more automated manual.

sunnyfilm

Thank you.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

It should recognize both as long as each one was imported separately. The one with the name change, however, will show up as a new file and none of the edits done to the original would apply to the copy. Duplicating images, however, is not a good practice in general. One reason being is that you use disk space when you don't really need to. You can simply create a virtual copy, which is just another preview and does not use disk space. You can create as many virtual copies as you want, which do turn into actual original images if you export them, at which time you could return that image to the existing catalog by marking that box in the export panel.

nervous2 Loc: Provo, Utah

Unless you're a hell of a fast typist, it takes a real commitment to provide the depth of information that you typically provide in your responses. You should know how appreciated those responses are. I learn a ton of stuff by reading your posts. On this topic, I copied your posts (hope that's ok) and put them in a permanent Word document so I can refer to them later. Again, thank you very much.

sunnyfilm

Thank you very much for your insights. I am trying to learn all I can.

mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois

Ditto

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I follow the John Shaw methodology of cataloging. Serves me well.

DSmith

Scott Kelby has some good classes/videos on LR organization at KelbyOne. Matt Kloskowski has a couple of courses on LR also. I just bought the one on catalogs and learned quiet a bit. They are on mattk.com