PixelatedImage Blog

A good Monday morning to ya. I got some great feedback on my Global Workflow article. Articles like this always bring up a bunch of “yeah, but how do you…?” questions. A couple of them were about organizing and file naming in Lightroom, so I’ll walk you through some ideas I had about this.

First, you need to understand that Adobe Lightroom is more than a put files here and fix images there, kind of program. One of the genius things about Lightroom is that it operates on a database. So frankly, if you wanted to put 10,000 images all into one bigg-ass folder called My Photographs, Lightroom would handle it just fine. So this isn’t about how you structure your folder or buckets or drives. It’s about the tools within Lightroom to keep you organized. Second, you need to understand that I’m naturally pretty organized, my brain just knows where things are – most of the time. This arrogance will no doubt come back to bite me as I age, but for now it means I don’t have a huge organization system I can teach you, just a bunch of tools I can show you. So in the spirit of The Big Q:

The Big Q: How do you keep organized in Lightroom?

1. File Structures. Ok, I said this wasn’t about this. But it’s just way easier for me to navigate to my folder: Round The World > Havana than it is to search in other ways. It’s how I work. So I keep my stuff in folders that are usually a simple description of a place or project and that one is inside a folder delineated by year. So the structure would be 2009 > Round The World > Havana.

2. File Naming. When I import images I generally convert the RAW files to DNG and re-name the file. Did you know you can change the file-naming templates in LR? I have mine set to YYYYMMDD_Text_Seq but you can set to whatever you like. In the import dialogue in the File Naming section click the Template field and go to Edit. Now just add the fields you want in there. I like custom text because if my file name is 20090108_Havana_0001 I can always just use the search function in LR and find all images with Havana in the name. Easy. Also makes it easier to find if I’m searching for images in Bridge, which I do occassionally.

3. Keywording. I’m getting better at this as my forays into the world of stock begin to make more sense to me. But generally I’m lousy at it and only paint with the broadest of strokes. So I use Keywords like Travel, Cuba, Havana – mostly so I can keyword an entire folder of images at once. Still, the more disciplined at this you are, the easier it’ll be to find the right images using LR’s search functions.

4. Color Labels. I use colour labels on my files to indicate use. Some are personal (yellow), some are for clients (red), some are for stock (purple) and some are use-pending (blue). So if I know it’s a shot of Havana that’s in my stock library I use the filters, search for Havana with keywords (Havana) and ask LR to filter out only the red labels.

5. Ratings. I rate my best work with 5 stars. Makes it easy to toggle the filters on and off – want to see my 5 star images from Havana, no problem. Navigate to the Havana folder and toggle the filters to show only the 5 stars. Or search for images keyworded Havana and rated with 5 stars. Or….

6. Use Collections and Smart Collections. Collections are easy. Create a new one called Havana 5 Stars, then drag in all the Havana 5 Star images. Done. Now it’s there anytime you want to see those. But Smart Collections go one better because, well, they’re smart. You can create a collection that is dynamic. Let’s say I do a trip to Havana every couple months for a long-term project. I create a Smart Collection called Havana Best, and when I do so it allows me to specify the filters. So I create one that automatically puts ALL images with keyword Havana, rating 5 star, and colour-label Red into the Smart Collection. Each time I come back from Havana and import, keyword, and rate/label my images it automaticall updates the collection. Brilliant.

This isn’t a full-on tutorial, I realize. Might even leave you with more questions. Some of you are already clicking the comments button, “yeah, but how do I…?” Tell you what, FIRST open LR and play with it for 10 minutes, see if you can figure it out. I’m betting you can, and you’ll retain it better. LR is incredibly intuitive when it comes to this stuff. But if questions remain or just dying to tell me I spelled something wrong, let me know

Got a tip I completely overlooked? Comments, as always, are open. On a completely unrelated issue – my book, Within The Frame, comes out 5 weeks from today.