Collections in Lightroom 5.4

Revet

Senior Member
I take a lot of family pictures and I have quite a large family (10 siblings and countless nephews and nieces,etc). I have always done a great job of key wording and I recently started using collections. I have a nice family tree set up in collections with everyone where they are supposed to be. My question is as I take new group photographs of many family members, is there a fast way to get each person into the correct collection?? I hope I don't have to pick each person individually, set it as a Target collection, find the photos of the shoot with that person in it, add it to the target, and then go on to the next person and so on, and so on!!
 

FastGlass

Senior Member
You can always divide certain people up using the star rating. Of course you only can do five at a time. When done with those five just choose the color the person is in and drag them over to the collection and drop. I do the other approach. I drag and drop each image. Of course I import images from the camera every time I use it so I don't have a huge amount of images to deal with.
 

Revet

Senior Member
Of course, drag and drop. I think that would be the easiest way to do it as I download a shoot (I normally don't have a lot at one time either). The one I am fretting about is the shot with 80 family members in it (which isn't that often). I think the think to do is put it in the "all photos" collection that I have for each family and be done with it.
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
Smart Collections are your friend. If you have keywords, create them based on keywords (see below). For instance, I have a Collection Set titled "Europe". Within that Collection Set, I have a Smart Collection for countries.

Screen Shot 2014-06-13 at 1.27.06 PM.jpg
 

Revet

Senior Member
I did see that I could create my own Smart Collection but now that I look at your comment, I see that this is probably the way to go if the answer to my following question is yes.

If I create Smart Collections for family members, will Lightroom automatically add them to the Smart Collection if it sees the keyword in the future when I add more photos???

Actually, you don't have to answer that because I just did a test and it does do that!!!! Nice, Thank you!!! Now that I have created Collections for my 80 or so family members and the pictures are all ready in each respective collection. Is there an easy way I can convert them to Smart collections or do I have to start from scratch (keeping the existing Collection Sets)??

I could use some help with searching rules for Keywords though. Lets say I have the following family members in a photo; John Reveley, John Uzzi, Randy Reveley. It seems like "contains words" is the best rule for finding all photos for John Reveley without getting all the John's (we have 7!!) or all the Reveley's. Is that correct??

ps. Suffering Cubs Fan??????? Try being a Browns or Indians Fan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
I think I would make sure you are doing a "match all" rules and then "contains all" match of keyword with both names. I believe it will do what you want. Pretty slick feature, isn't it?

Be prepared to be blown away. Wait for it. Wait for it. To convert the Collection Sets to a Smart Collection just drag them up a level. Consider it like a file directory. Easy peasy.

Cubs, Browns, Indians. . . that is why God gave us beer. :cool:
 

Revet

Senior Member
Be prepared to be blown away. Wait for it. Wait for it. To convert the Collection Sets to a Smart Collection just drag them up a level. Consider it like a file directory. Easy peasy.

Cubs, Browns, Indians. . . that is why God gave us beer. :cool:


Yes, this is what I was looking for!!!! Thanks!!!! I still don't quite get what you mean about converting an existing collection to a smart collection. I guess what I can do is just create that Smart Collection from start and erase the old collection. But if there is an easier way, I am all ears. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by dragging it up a level. Wouldn't that just move it???

I agree, God gave us beer for horrible sports teams. Unfortunately I had to give it up about 5 years ago. Now I use photography and piano to calm me down when my teams disappoint me!!! I am going to an Indians game next week, I guess I will just have to consume a lot of hot dogs and peanuts!!
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
Yes, this is what I was looking for!!!! Thanks!!!! I still don't quite get what you mean about converting an existing collection to a smart collection. I guess what I can do is just create that Smart Collection from start and erase the old collection. But if there is an easier way, I am all ears. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by dragging it up a level. Wouldn't that just move it???

I think I misunderstood. I thought you were re-arranging a Smart Collection. I don't know of a way to convert them as Smart Collections are dynamic while images remain in regular Collections until you remove them.
 

Revet

Senior Member
I think I misunderstood. I thought you were re-arranging a Smart Collection. I don't know of a way to convert them as Smart Collections are dynamic while images remain in regular Collections until you remove them.

Not a problem, it won't take me that much time to create the Smart Collections. After I do that, any future keyworded photos will just move right into the Smart collection.
 

Revet

Senior Member
I think I would make sure you are doing a "match all" rules and then "contains all" match of keyword with both names. I believe it will do what you want. Pretty slick feature, isn't it?

Be prepared to be blown away. Wait for it. Wait for it. To convert the Collection Sets to a Smart Collection just drag them up a level. Consider it like a file directory. Easy peasy.

Cubs, Browns, Indians. . . that is why God gave us beer. :cool:

OK, lets say I want to include all birthday photos of myself (John Reveley) in a Smart Collection. I have all birthdays keyworded with the term, "birthday"; I also have all photos of myself keyworded with "John Reveley". If I use the system you described, won't I also be adding pictures of lets say my daughters birthday that I am also in (since birthday and John Reveley are both keywords in the photo of my daughters birthday?? If this is the guess, can I set up a third rule for just pictures in my birthday month (ie. September) which I believe is in meta-data but not keyworded??
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
I'm assuming it works like a SQL command and BOTH conditions have to be met when you use the "match all" rules and then "contains all" keyword match. If that is true, you should only see your birthday photos. I have not tried complex matches so please let me know if it works like I think.
 

Revet

Senior Member
I'm assuming it works like a SQL command and BOTH conditions have to be met when you use the "match all" rules and then "contains all" keyword match. If that is true, you should only see your birthday photos. I have not tried complex matches so please let me know if it works like I think.

I played around with the search function of a Collection Set. There are Many Many Many ways to search for photos so you can just about do anything you want. Here is what worked for this particular situation (Again I wanted all birthday pictures of myself). It took three rules, one to search for the Keyword John Reveley, another for the keyword Birthday. This was not enough because it would pick up photos I am in for other peoples birthday. What finally worked is a third rule looking for -09- in folders (since I use dates for folders and September is my birthday month). Note that I had to use -09- and not 09 or -09. This allowed picking up the month only and not the 9th day of any month.

Once I get all of the Collections set up, no work involved after that, just keyword them. Love it, thanks for your help!! It really helps that I use my second copy of Lightroom for playing around. I know its not a destructive program and you can change anything you did, but sometimes I can't find what I did!!!!!! I can click anything I like in my practice Lightroom and not have to worry.
 
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Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
That is awesome!! So glad it worked out!

BTW I purchased tickets to go see an Indians game with the family in August. My stepsons are huge baseball fans and we take them to at least one new stadium a year. My wife has a family reunion towards Pittsburgh so we're going to squeeze in a game there on Sunday and one in Cleveland on Tuesday. Monday will be for the NFL hall of fame. Should be a great "guy" trip. :)
 

Revet

Senior Member
It seems that Adobe really missed something on Smart Collections. You can not search for an exact match on keywords. What a pain. Does anyone know a work around for this. For example, if I want all pictures of myself (ie. John Reveley), if I search for "contains all" or "contains words", I get all photos that have John and Reveley in the keywords. Since there are many John's in my Family (with different last names), and many other Reveley's, Lightroom is selecting many photos without me in the picture.
 
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