Lightroom: Smart Collections: Part 1

A large part of my Lightroom workflow is implemented via the magic of Lightroom’s Smart Collections. Smart Collections are dynamic filters, where you assign a few rules, and Lightroom will update the filter according to your selection criteria. So it will match the photos as they are changed or as they are updated.

Collections are static listing of photos. You will need to add the photo manually by dragging and dropping the photo in the “regular/plain” collection.

I rely very heavily on the smart collections.

My rule is: Don’t do manual work that Lightroom can do for you. Lightroom will do it better, faster and more accurately than you can do it manually. Many photographers use keywords to keep track of their workflow. Can they guarantee that are 100% accurate? If not the workflow will not work.

Some photographers use the keyword “not copyrighted” to indicate that they haven’t finished processing these photos. Here are the problems with this approach:

1. The copyright information should be set at the import, so you don’t have to do it.
2. This is extra work.
3. What if you forget to remove the keyword “not copyrighted”? Then you work is not to be trusted, and need to be verified.