7 Reasons Why You Should Use Collections in Lightroom Classic

In this live stream, Adobe Evangelist Terry White shows you 7 reasons why you should be using Collections instead of Folders in Lightroom Classic.
Also check out my gear guide and product recommendations here: www.amazon.com/shop/terrywhite

[@johnhubbard6262]

Mr. White, a common theme of your teaching is that you can impart wisdom and total understanding about any given subject, or part of that subject with nothing more than a simple comment. When so-called "Lightroom Experts" need a 30-minute video to dance around the technical details and leave you more confused than when you started. The clarity, simplicity, pure logic of your explanations is astounding. It is an absolute pleasure to follow your work.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Thank you for taking the time and the kind words. It helps!

[@doodasgaming4187]

You just saved me many hours of work, this was super helpful.

[@FlorentineFilmsRogerSherman]

EXCELLENT. Finally I understand. You're clear, concise, not going so fast we can't keep up. Many thanks!

[@Mitch.Wasserman]

I've been using Lightroom for years and yet always learn something new when watching your videos, Terry.

[@carolyn9996]

I cannot thank you enough, Mr. White. You just saved me an amazing amount of time and energy. Thank you, again!!

[@alanplatt888]

I struggle sometimes getting to grips with tutorial videos. This one was very clear for me to understand and very useful. Pushing up the value of Lightroom for me. Thank you.

[@brucecolman3402]

This was extremely helpful Terry, thanks for pulling it together.

[@avibongo]

Excellent tutorial, clearly communicated and at a nice conversational pace.

[@georgemurray752]

Really excellent tutorial! I haven't been making nearly enough use of this powerful feature. I will be revisiting this page frequently. Cheers!

[@lylecameron5578]

As usual, great; thanks. Have been using Collections for a long time but, as always, I still learned stuff.

[@tdalton854]

Hi Terry, This popped up for me yesterday and I didn't even know I wanted to learn more about collections. thought I had what I used / needed under control. Wrong. I learned a few things that will be very helpful. Thanks once again.

[@PIXAPRIME]

Thank you Terry. I didn't know until now that I could sync my photos with Lighroom Classic with my smartphone and co. I thought until now, this is only possible with Lighroom. That's awesome. Great video.

[@luciadiane6682]

I love your “plain speak” Terry. Gold nuggets!!

[@philfyphil]

Nice one Terry, after looking at several boring tutorials I found one that is nice and simple. :-)

[@sekander1253]

Really concise and clear. Such useful content, many thanks for sharing.

[@IndieKomiksPodcast]

Thank you Terry! I am just new to lightroom classic and I am learning a lot from your videos. Greetings from the Philippines.

[@bobcarter4343]

BRAVO. Well done Terry. learned a lot here.Thanks

[@roderickmclean9927]

Hey Terry, that was fantastic, really. Thank you very much. You learn something every day (now 75)

[@paulhayman179]

I stumbled on Terry's collections KZbin tutorial whilst in Covid-19 lockdown - Really useful and excellent presentation. Thank you so much Terry :-)

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Thanks!

[@nickditoro]

Terry, thanks so much for this excellent tutorial on Collections. I'm now a believer! After watching your video, I spent 5 hours or so making smart and "dumb" collections.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

that's awesome! Enjoy!

[@JamesLoudon]

Outstanding, so much I didnt know. Thanks so much Terry.

[@QuaverloveStudio]

Hey, Terry! Thanks for that. I too believe collections in Lightroom Classic are quite powerful. What I do absolutely love about them (which would make the 8th reason, but my #1) is that they are directly accessible from Photoshop CC... so you don't even need to have Lightroom Classic open. Boom!

[@thomasvasquez9758]

Just getting started with LR, this was very informative.

[@samuelbagasin]

I like your style Terry. Easy to understand

[@jorsetti]

Thank you for great explanation of collections! VERY helpful!

[@jamesss1953]

I did 'not' understand collections use = until now. Amazing and thank you very much

[@lillebrowning2231]

AWESOME information!!! Love all your videos. Very informative and a wealth of knowledge! You always explain things in a very clear manner which all seems to make sense to me. Wish you could fix all of my lightroom catalogs on my computer. There's too many catalogs, too many missing photos and it's all very confusing to me! Not sure I myself can ever fix this mess :(

[@lillebrowning2231]

Does this mean you can help me?! lol! We can screen share and fix this mess! :-)

[@sagebrother]

Very informative and thorough explanation. Thanks!!

[@curtwells9628]

Terry, thanks for a great tutorial as usual. I especially appreciated how to use the Smart Collection. One feature you didn't mention was that you can designate a collection as a target collection and then no matter what folder or collection you are in you can click a button in the upper right hand corner of the image and it will be added to the target collection without having to drag and drop the image. I use that feature all of the time.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Curt Wells Thanks. yes I use Target Collections all the time. Faster to hit the letter B to add shots than clicking the circle.

[@curtwells9628]

@@TerryLeeWhite Good to know the additional shortcurt.

[@The888lkw]

another brilliant video, thank you very much

[@johngriffin7071]

Best explanation EVER!!! Thank you.

[@sergedaleiden5597]

Three years later! You just convinced me to use collections all the time, not just now and then. Question: is there a limit to how many collections/photos you can create and use? BTW, many thanks for the quality of contributions you consistently make.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Thanks. No limits that I’m aware of.

[@londonken]

Very good comparison to a playlist for music

[@johnbauer6933]

Thanks, Terry!!

[@priscillamessinger1625]

Very helpful.

[@georgedywili1972]

Thanks Terry!

[@johnkuyten572]

Thank you!

[@ladydayification]

Hi. Thanks!

[@richj6620]

This was a very information viewing. I use LR classic for my work. I would like to start submitting my work to stock agencies. Have you any suggestions doing this? I see myself submitting 10 images per day/week to an agency and get some rejections. Then start to submit the same collections to other agencies in the future. I thought of colors, keywords etc but collections seems to be a better solution and would like to hear your thoughts

[@kinesiology-moves9598]

Hi, great tutorial, thank you. Very clear. How do I move pictures around in the collection?

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Just drag the thumbnails in the order you want.

[@b991228]

Here what I find to be an advantage. As an example: If your sister Nancy asks you to send the rest the of printouts of dad you haven’t sent to her how do you decide which photos need to be sent? I can do that easily because I have been maintaining a collection named “Dads photos sent to Nancy.” Whatever photos with keyword “Dad” which is not in the collection I can decide to send it out. No need to spend hours doing research.

[@sh8736]

Hi Terry very helpful thank you. From the web based version can you please show where you accessed the proofing option for sharing images? I can’t find it maybe as you said it was beta version?

[@TerryLeeWhite]

S H once you’re on Lr Web click the Lr icon in the upper left corner then choose Technology Previews from the menu and enable Collaborative Proofing from there.

[@anthonypaladino1006]

Terry question, when I set-up my collections as shown, I can't drag & drop. When I drag the image to the folder I get a circle with a slash through it. Now, I can change the collection to a target and click in image upper right, but I can only do 1 at a time-much rather drag & drop.

[@anthonyjagodnik1241]

Excellent video! Can you include movie clips in collections? Can you export collections to Flickr, preserving the order and captions?

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Yes and yes

[@teresababer5310]

Very helpful tutorial - I’ve been working in LrC forever - only using collections sporadically. Now I want to get more organized and only use collections for the reasons you’ve listed here. This might be a dumb question but what exactly are the folders even for??? Do you have any training on how to get your LrC more organized? Thanks so much.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

The folders are very important as they reference the actual photos on your hard drive.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

kzbin.info4cprDUx1QwY?si=3P6JEOcIkpgp2yzG

[@thomasvasquezjr4011]

Hi Terry, I’ve been a subscriber for a while now. I need some advise. My LR desktop is a total mess, I’ve been unable to fix all the problems. In the beginning I opened up several catalogs, misplaced files etc, etc. Is there someplace I can go to repair it? It’s beyond my technical ability. Thank you in advance.

[@HR-wd6cw]

For the first point, I don't think this really actually matters whether you select photos from the Folders panel or the Collections panel and then go into the Develop module, as LR Classic is non-destructive by design (I just tried both methods and you get the same results; the original RAW file is not modified regardless of which way you access/select the file). Perhaps what is meant is that there are some actions you can do in the Folders pane that WILL affect your RAW Files (like deleting, renaming and moving files around). For example, when you delete a file from a folder using the Folders panel, this actaully removes the files from the drive itself and LR. whereas if you delete from a collection, the RAW file is still in LR and on the drive (unless you tell LR to remove the file from LR and the disk), it's just not in the collection. Many people recommend collections because it offers this method of "protection" against accidental deletion or moving of files. But for the sake of editing files, I don't see that it matters where you select the file from. But as Terry also pointed out, if you go to PS and come back into LR, the edited file (as PS creates either a PSD or TIFF file and sends it back to LR to be re-imported into the Catalog) may not appear next to the original RAW file you were working with so you may have to search the folder to find it (which can be a pain if you have hundreds of files in a folder). Perosnally, I do a hybrid approach to the collections. Some people create collections for each folder on their drive that they have imported into LR Classic, which is fine, but to me, it seems bit redundant and a bit of a waste of time (and it fills up the Collections panel with basically the same stuff you have in the Folder panels -- a corresponding collection for each folder you've imported.... So I create collections and collection sets only for the sake of grouping files that are located physically in different folder locations on the drive (so I can see the grouped files in one spot versus having to jump back and forth between physical folders). Of course creating a collection for each folder doesn't add that much time to the workflow, but I just found it a little unnecessary for me (plus if Iimported more photos from the same folder later, I'd have to go back and include those new files into the appropriate collection). Of course you can tell LR upon import to include the photos into an existing collection I guess...

[@peterjohnson1739]

A question: Adobe’s Lightroom Classic sync FAQ state: “Lightroom Classic to Cloud: If you sync collections from Lightroom Classic, only smart previews are synced. Smart previews do not consume space on the cloud.” How can this be? I understand that compared to RAWs, or even JPEGs, that Smart previews consume only a tiny amount of space each. However, they can’t take zero space. Does Adobe mean they don’t count to your plan limit? FYI. I have the Photography Plan with 20GB of cloud storage. That’s too small to use the Adobe Cloud as a meaningful backup. Is there a limit to how many collections (and/or photographs) can be synced from LrC to the cloud?

[@TerryLeeWhite]

It’s not that they take zero physical space. It’s that they don’t count towards your Lr cloud space allotment. LrC users can sync an unlimited number of smart previews.

[@Isograff]

Hello Terry, was excited by ability to share a collection for client to view after synch with LR online. Unfortunately it comes to a halt because recipient has to have an adobe account to view images. They do not want a trial account, just to view the images. Tried without luck discussing via adobe chat support. They did not understand the goal. Is there something I'm missing or is it only possibvle for the shared album to be viewed by someone with an adobe account?

[@TerryLeeWhite]

isograff it’s just an Adobe ID. You could even create one for them to use.

[@Isograff]

@@TerryLeeWhite thank you for swift reply. They said " I don't want to sign up for anymore accounts" so that was the roadblock. Exploring other aspects of Lightroom online that make a more instantaneous link so there is no off putting sign in. Stoked to get a reply, always enjoy your tutorials. Stay healthy

[@bumphoto]

Do you have an update to this video? If you change something in a collection and that image is in another collection / folder are they changed also. Anyway to not have it change if you want a variety collection

[@TerryLeeWhite]

The photo is the photo. If you edit it it’s edited everywhere. If you want different versions then create Virtual Copies.

[@peterjohnson1739]

When I create a new Collection in LrC (V13.0.2) I'm not given an option to "Sync with Lightroom" I only have the first three options (at 16:30). That's a shame because the idea of making a collection on my iMac available to Lightroom on my iPad is very appealing. Can you help?

[@TerryLeeWhite]

Do you have sync enabled for the catalog?

[@peterjohnson1739]

@@TerryLeeWhite Thanks for such a prompt reply. No .. I hadn't turned sync on; I didn't realise that it was not on by default. Changing the setting and restarting LrC fixed the issue.

[@notdisclosed9745]

A reason not to use collections is that you cannot delete from them. All you can do is flag images as rejected, then go back to the real folders or all photos, filter by flag, then delete - a really long winded workflow.

[@TerryLeeWhite]

that's not really a reason not to use collections That's perhaps a reason to do your flagging and deleting BEFORE creating the colleciton, but to each his/her own.

[@boulx]

@@TerryLeeWhite thats also why i wasnt using collections...

[@straightlife]

Why is this better than keywords? Plus search? Just asking.

[@b991228]

Voilà! So that is why I can not get collections to sync. It’s time to make some of my collections dumb.

[@patsygleeson5842]

Hi

[@neonobse]

only 19 5stars out of 3.600 shots. boi ;)