LrC Collections—yup, there’s a shortcut for that

When I was a kid, my mom bought me a study kit that came in a small cardboard file with folders. I loved it! 😍

It made me feel organized and smart—two things that were really satisfying as a student.

These days, I still love getting organized, and one way I do that in Lightroom is by using Collections. And guess what? I’ve got a shortcut for it! 😀

First things first, Collections are a way to group photos in Lightroom without duplicating them on your hard drive. It’s super helpful if you want to rearrange your images too. 🤓

One thing to keep in mind about Collections:

When you edit a photo inside a Collection, that edit is applied everywhere in Lightroom. So, if you go back to “All Photographs,” you’ll see the photo edited there as well. And if the photo is in multiple Collections, the edit will apply to all of them.

You can find Collections in the left panel of both the Library Grid and the Develop module.

While you could hit the plus sign in the Collections header to create another collection, the keyboard shortcut is much faster (naturally!).

Step 1:

From the Library Grid, tap COMMAND + N on your keyboard.

Step 2:

Give your collection a title and choose any options you need. Then tap CREATE. Voila!

Step 3:

Tap on the collection you just created, which will be listed under “Collections” in your left panel. Your Library Grid will show just the photos in that collection. To return to your main Library, hit “All Photographs.”

👉🏻 Pro Tip:

Select the photos you want in your collection before tapping COMMAND + N, and make sure the “Include selected photos” box is checked. This will automatically add those images to the collection.

If you forget, no worries! You can always drag and drop photos into the collection later.

There are several ways to use Collections to organize your photos. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Collections for Parts of the Wedding Day

Many private photo editors and wedding photographers use Collections to organize the different parts of a wedding day. Think of it like creating chapters. This method can help you quickly locate specific photos and ensure consistency when editing each section.

However, while creating the Collections didn’t take long, I found that sorting an entire wedding into the right Collections took way too much time for my role in the editing process.

Next is what I do instead.

Collections to Break Up Large Sections

I edit by camera and then by lens. In many of my clients’ catalogs, there’s a primary camera/lens that accounts for a large portion of the photos.

What I noticed was that in those larger sections, I had trouble finding natural stopping points. I’d end up sitting for hours without taking a break.

My solution? I take around 100 images at a time and put them into a Collection. So, for a lens with 600 images, I create 6 Collections with 100 images each. It’s quick and easy to set up, and it gives me a good break after each Collection.

Plus, you get that dopamine hit from finishing a Collection! #motivation

Collections to Custom Arrange Your Photos

If you’re viewing “All Photographs” in your Lightroom catalog, you might have noticed that you can’t drag and drop your photos into a custom order. That’s because Lightroom only allows custom arrangement inside a Collection.

As a photo editor, I use this feature to rearrange a Collection so that all photos related to each anchor image (reference image) are grouped together, rather than being scattered. This helps me edit faster, as I don’t have to waste time scrolling to find anchor images further down in the Collection.

Happy editing,

Erika