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Lightroom workflow & smart filters

  • Thread starter Deleted member 39308
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Deleted member 39308

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Hi

I am migrating from Adobe Bridge to Lightroom, so I am OK with the develop side of things in Lightroom but I am struggling with creating a workflow structure in Lightroom. I was hoping to use collections and smart collections to organise my photos, but I cannot get it to work.

I was thinking of Collection set for each photo shoot. Then within the collection set create a collection called All for everything in the photo shoot. I add all photos to this OK.

I then would like say two smart collections that are subsets of the All collection one for called picks which is a one star rating which is my first pass at picking photos and then a second smart collection called selects which will be two stars which are selected in a second pass looking though the first set of picks.

I first tried creating a smart collection in the Collection set for one star but this shows all one star photos in the catalogue, not just limited to the Collection set.

I then tried adding a second rule to the smart collection Source > Collection > Contains > collection set name, but this retrieves zero photos.

I then tried changing second rule to Source > Collection > Contains All which works for the first Collection set. But then I cannot create the next photo shoot set as it reports All is already in use.

Hope this description makes sense, maybe this tree diagram will help explain:

Photo shoot 1
All
Picks
Select
Photo shoot 2
All
Picks
Select
I am looking for a way for Picks and Select to work automatically with ratings and/or labels. I could use collections and manually add photos but I tend to change the ratings as I work often demoting or promoting photos between All, Picks and Selects so really would like a way to do this using Smart Collections.
 
Can you post a screenshot of the smart collection you are trying to setup? This should certainly be possible and isn't that difficult either.

Lightroom.jpg
 
Johan,

Is that Antelope Canyon? If yes, I was there a couple of years ago and really liked it.
 
Hi Thanks for the replies.

Attached below is a screenshot. Apologies for the naff photos (not to quality of Johan's test example), just using them for a test catalogue.

I have three folders of physical photos .. test1 .. test2 and .. test3

For testing I colour coded them with labels test 1 red, test 2 yellow, test 3 green

I then have two collections (I skipped one until I can get things working)

Test 1 is all photos in folder ..test1 (should be all red labels)

Test 3 is all photos in folder ..test3 (should be all green labels)

So in Collection set Test 1 and collection All works as expected. I added all the photos from folder ..test1 to Collection All.

But the Smart collections picks and selects fail. They find all photos in the all the sub collections called All. You can see this by the different colour labels and the count being higher than the All collection.

I tried changing collection contains to Test 1 but this returns zero photos.


P.s. I tried John's workflow collections (you can see them in the screen shot). I was looking for a way I did not need to add files to a temp collection. I haven't worked out what the No Title pseudo and No Country pseudo collections do yet ;)
 

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Why not rename the 'All' collections to something unique like 'All Photos from Test 1', and then update the smart collections accordingly?
 
P.s. I tried John's workflow collections (you can see them in the screen shot). I was looking for a way I did not need to add files to a temp collection. I haven't worked out what the No Title pseudo and No Country pseudo collections do yet ;)

For some reason known only to Adobe, you can't create a smart collection to find images with no title, or no country. So you have to be ingenious - those smart collections look for images without the letters a e i o u.
 
Why not rename the 'All' collections to something unique like 'All Photos from Test 1', and then update the smart collections accordingly?

That's the beauty of my workflow smart collections. They all look for a collection called "Current work". So to get them to look to a different collection, you just rename "Current work" to something else, and rename the other collection as "Current work".
 
Hi Thanks for the replies.

Attached below is a screenshot. Apologies for the naff photos (not to quality of Johan's test example), just using them for a test catalogue.

I have three folders of physical photos .. test1 .. test2 and .. test3

For testing I colour coded them with labels test 1 red, test 2 yellow, test 3 green

I then have two collections (I skipped one until I can get things working)

Test 1 is all photos in folder ..test1 (should be all red labels)

Test 3 is all photos in folder ..test3 (should be all green labels)

So in Collection set Test 1 and collection All works as expected. I added all the photos from folder ..test1 to Collection All.

But the Smart collections picks and selects fail. They find all photos in the all the sub collections called All. You can see this by the different colour labels and the count being higher than the All collection.

I tried changing collection contains to Test 1 but this returns zero photos.


P.s. I tried John's workflow collections (you can see them in the screen shot). I was looking for a way I did not need to add files to a temp collection. I haven't worked out what the No Title pseudo and No Country pseudo collections do yet ;)

If you have multiple collections called 'All', then obviously your smart collection cannot distinguish between them...
 
I would assume that in the database each All collection has a unique ID else I could not create multiple sub-collections with the same name. Looks like Lightroom is ignoring the nesting of collections when selecting photos? Any idea why using the collection set name does not work? That will be a unique text label.
 
I would assume that in the database each All collection has a unique ID else I could not create multiple sub-collections with the same name. Looks like Lightroom is ignoring the nesting of collections when selecting photos? Any idea why using the collection set name does not work? That will be a unique text label.

Your smart collection looks for images inside a collection that matches the name 'All', so that is exactly what is happening. Whether or not Lightroom uses unique ID numbers internally is irrelevant, because you cannot search on ID numbers, only on names. So give these collections unique names if you don't want to get images from every collection called 'All'. BTW, there are no 'sub collections', only collections and collection sets.
 
I heartily endorse John's Workflow Smart Collections. (WFSC) It does not segregate images by shoot, but you can quickly find Every image that is missing some cortical part of your workflow. I have extended John's concept into the Publish Services.
At import, I assign every image in the initial static working target collection. I then move images through WFSC until every image has been edited, Keywords assigned and supplied with a Title and a Caption. One or more of he keywords will determine which Publish Service(s) the image will be assigned and then when all is done, I press the publish button.
 
I have been experimenting with John's Workflow Smart Collections and it does help a great deal. Having suffered "why is the folder view missing photos because of some remembered applied filter syndrome" I think collections is the way to go. However, I am struggling with this approach in two ways:

  1. I use Photoshop most of the time to do additional editing
  2. I use Lightroom HDR and Pano merging quite a lot
Both of these generate new files, either PSDs or DNGs. Alas these new files do not get added into the collection called “0.00 Current work”. I understand why but the result is I lose track of the workflow.

A typical scenario for me would be go out for several days on a vacation or trip. I then store the photos on disk in a unique per day folder structure yyyymmdd style. I then create a Collection in Lightroom for all the folders relevant to that trip e.g. Spain 2016.

I tried making the 0.00 Current work collection the target collection and then go back and forth to the actual folders and try and find the PSD and DNG files. Frustratingly just selecting all PSDs and pressing B key does not as expected as this toggles existing files out as well as adding new files in. Trying to work out which files are not in the collection is something I haven't worked out a good way to do.

Does anybody have a good method for working with these extra files created by Photoshop or Lightroom?
 
Maybe add a smart collection with criteria such as PSD or DNG and not in Current Work? You'd probably need a Capture Date criterion too, or Edit Date might work better. Then you just occasionally review the smart collection to see if it's caught anything.
 
Maybe add a smart collection with criteria such as PSD or DNG and not in Current Work? You'd probably need a Capture Date criterion too, or Edit Date might work better. Then you just occasionally review the smart collection to see if it's caught anything.

Many thanks John, I like the idea. Alas I could not get it to work 100%.

There is no OR or AND logic in the smart filters that I can find so I had to create two capture filters: one for PSD and one for DNG.

E.g. Smart Filter added criteria for
  • Filetype is PSD
  • Collection doesn't contain current work
  • Edit Date is in the last 1 days
This does not work as expected for PSDs, Lightroom doesn't seem to know about the edit date for PSD files. This retrieves zero files (I was expecting 2 in my simple test catalogue). Remove the Edit Date and it retrieves every PSD file in the Catalogue. Capture Date for PSDs seems to be that of the original photo so I could not use that.

Edit Date does work with DNGs. I do not convert Raw to DNG so any new DNGs are going to come from Lightroom HDR / Pano merges.

Do you think there is a way to create a smart filter that would work with PSDs?
 
Did you know that when you're creating a SC you can hold down the Alt key (Mac : Option) and then add nested crtieria such as your OR requirement? Sadly, Adobe still don't make this obvious! It should allow you to move forward.
 
I have been experimenting with John's Workflow Smart Collections and it does help a great deal. Having suffered "why is the folder view missing photos because of some remembered applied filter syndrome" I think collections is the way to go. However, I am struggling with this approach in two ways:

  1. I use Photoshop most of the time to do additional editing
  2. I use Lightroom HDR and Pano merging quite a lot
Both of these generate new files, either PSDs or DNGs. Alas these new files do not get added into the collection called “0.00 Current work”. I understand why but the result is I lose track of the workflow.

A typical scenario for me would be go out for several days on a vacation or trip. I then store the photos on disk in a unique per day folder structure yyyymmdd style. I then create a Collection in Lightroom for all the folders relevant to that trip e.g. Spain 2016.

I tried making the 0.00 Current work collection the target collection and then go back and forth to the actual folders and try and find the PSD and DNG files. Frustratingly just selecting all PSDs and pressing B key does not as expected as this toggles existing files out as well as adding new files in. Trying to work out which files are not in the collection is something I haven't worked out a good way to do.

Does anybody have a good method for working with these extra files created by Photoshop or Lightroom?

Take a look at my thread on the Smart Workflow Questions. That flow will address you questions, but it has downsides also.
Smart Workflow Questions
My solution, although not perfect and has its own issues, may work. Or maybe John, Jim and you will convince me I am overthinking things....
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks John, that must be the Lightroom tip of the year!

I tried this method and I can now combine PSD and DNG into one Smart Collection. I am still having problems with the edit date for PSD files, Lightroom just seems to ignore it or maybe Photoshop doesn't update some field in the PSD file's metadata. Either way my smart collection as attached does not work for PSD files. I have tried various combinations, the attached looks right to me but it fails to find any newly created PSD files.
 

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Tried to keep it simple to test the theory of Lightroom and PSD files. Made a simple smart filter to select all PSD files created in the catalogue today. Then edit a RAW file in Photoshop and save as PSD. The following smart collection retrieves zero files.

I am a bit puzzled.

LR_PSD.JPG
 
That would only show PSD files edited today. Maybe make it wider than today, maybe in the last x days or whatever seems relevant. How Lr defines "edited" is a bit opaque, by the way, so capture time can work better - it's all about individual preferences.
 
That would only show PSD files edited today. Maybe make it wider than today, maybe in the last x days or whatever seems relevant. How Lr defines "edited" is a bit opaque, by the way, so capture time can work better - it's all about individual preferences.

Hi John,

I have tried changing edit date to within the last 2 days: still fails to select the new PSD file created today.

I also tried changing to capture date, but looking at the metadata this remains the capture date of the original photo and it also fails in a Smart Filter to select PSD files edited or created today.

Seems Lightroom does not play well with PSD files. TIFF files have the same problem.
 
Are you sure you don't have another filter active? My guess would be the Library Filter, and maybe its lock is enabled.
 
Are you sure you don't have another filter active? My guess would be the Library Filter, and maybe its lock is enabled.

Hi John, I have checked my filter settings. To be sure I turned filters off under Library > Enable filters. My simple new PSD smart filter still does not find new PSD files I created today.

I was not aware of filter locking so did some reading around this. Locking is off, but it is something I will use in future as the filter changing with each different folder was driving me a little crazy so I have learned another new thing today.

My library filter settings are as attached. Unfortunately this did not resolve my problem with the simple new PSD smart filter. I would dearly luv to get this working so I appreciate your help.
 

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