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Lesson Info

Organizing Images

now that we've imported some images, It's time to organize those and, and just like with your physical life tools in the right place, socks in the sock drawer, pants in the pants drawer, if you don't organize your digital space, you're gonna have a hard time finding the things that you need when you need them. And so in this case we have a set of images. They all came from one general location. So I went golfing. It was a really pretty place. And so I took pictures. I actually find myself taking more pictures of the places that I go golfing then going golfing. So that tells you where my heart is. But anyway, um, it's all in one general location. And so I kind of treat them all the same. You'll notice that I put them in a folder or in an album right off the bat. So on import I put them in this album called Travel in Northeast. The problem is, is that I I really didn't name it correctly and I didn't name it correctly so that we could rename it. But once I've got them in an album, then it...

's just a matter of going to the album itself and that album can be renamed. So if I right click that album, I can do a lot of things with the album. But the first thing that I want to do is rename that album. So, uh, the name of this golf course is called bali hack Golf clubs. So I just renamed it to that. So now that album is named appropriately. So I could find those images. Um, the other thing that I can do is I can actually click on all of the images. So remember all of these are located inside this album, but that's not really where they are. They're just referenced in that album. The actual location for these. If I right click any of these images and then I go down to the second option in the drop down menu, it says show photos from the same date. If I click on that, you're actually going to see where it is. It's on Sunday April 11 In the year of 2021. And so that's where they actually are and they are stored inside of a folder for that specific date. So, all images that are shot on a specific date go into that specific day folder, inside of a larger pot of photos. And this is the way that Lightroom organizes all images and you can't change that. The only thing you can change is where that master folder is located, which we put into our photos drive. So now that you know exactly where it's located by date. There are a lot of different ways that you can find these images. You can find them if there are people in them, which there are very few faces that we can see in there. So you're not gonna find them by people, You can find them by when they were added or you can actually go up to the top and start looking for items based on what's in the photographs right now, I'm searching by a date. But if I go back to the bali hack Golf club album and I want to search these images and I could search all of the images. I could search all photos if I want. Um I can come up to the search field up here and it's noticed that it's already pre qualified and said everything in the bali hat golf club album. And then I'm going to ask it to look for a barn. There's the barn now notice that I have not added that keyword. I didn't write in barn in the keyword area, which is down here um, in the info area. So right above the info is the key, the key word area. I click on that. You can see there are no keywords associated with this. And yet it sees these two places as Barnes. This actually isn't a barn, but it kind of looks like one and this isn't a barn either. It's the clubhouse, but it has the silos next to it. So it seems like a barn. So it visually searched all of the images and found Barnes. Now I could also get rid of that search and this time I could just say show me a tree, there's a tree. So it's showing me lots of trees and then a lone tree as well. So light room with the help of artificial intelligence in the cloud has actually gone through and and looked at all these images and catalog trees and barns and, and whatever else greengrass things like that. And so now I can find them based on what they look like, not just where they are, although we can find them by the bali hat Golf Club album. I can also find them by the date they were shot. I can also find them if there are people in it, by the people that are in there. But I can also find them based on certain search criteria for visual searches as though I was looking for them. Now, the artificial intelligence isn't foolproof. And so sometimes you're going to put in a search criteria and it's going to show things that are incorrect or it might show things that it might not find the things you're looking for. And if that if that's the case, it will tell you, I can't find anything by this. But it will generally get you in the area, it will generally find what you're looking for. And so organization inside of Lightroom is very, very simple. It's just a matter of when you import put them into an album as you import them. Don't just put them anywhere. Put them in a specific album with the right name. Once you've done that, then you can go in and you can search those images simply by looking for visual things and you have to give it a little while give it, you know, 30 minutes or an hour for it to go through a set of photos before you start searching because it actually has to get to the cloud and it has to actually start indexing those and it'll get better over time because it'll index for, it'll, it'll keep churning through those photos and keep indexing them. So just just give it a little bit of time and it will start to work. Um, I think if you search the minute you put them up, it probably won't have indexed anything. Um, so then the other thing that we need to talk about when it comes to organization is if you're truly going to be organized, you also will want to highlight all of these images. So I just hit command a to select all. And I'm going to go over here to the key wording area and I'm going to type in golf course and comma. That's the separator between a keyword or a key phrase. So golf course, travel photography and um Virginia because that's where it was. So those things will help me find and it's asking me do I really want to add this to all of these photos, Did they all have that same keyword? Yes they did. So I add that keyword. So now I've got those keywords in the photos themselves. But the other thing that I can do because I can go to the info area and notice that there's a city and a county. And so I can click on here and say, okay, what is the location? Well, the location was the bali hat golf course and watch what happens when I do this. Yes, I want to change the location on all of them. It's actually searching the internet and it's going to find this place. So I'm going to type in V A for Virginia. Yes, I want to add that to all of them. And boom, look at that. Now I have an actual location for all of these images based on a internet search straight from lightroom. So now that I have that I know exactly where that is. And google can pull up that and look, I've got the actual Gps for that and I can copy that as well. And I can just pace that Gps onto all of these photos now, it won't be perfectly accurate because it's just the general gps for the golf course. But that's okay because at least now I know where they were taken and from here on out anytime I want to find these photos, I can search for Virginia. I can search for bali hack, I can search the actual physical address or the GPS address and I will be able to find these images as well. So the more information I can give generally to these photographs, the easier it will be to find them that way later on when I'm looking for photos, I can actually look for photos based on visual information based on physical location based on people based on time that I shot it and what album it happens to be in. Now. What I'm going to do by the way when I'm looking at a grid of images like this and I've selected all by hitting command a if I want to deselect them, I'm going to hit command D to deselect them and that way I can just select one image. Now I did a set of images here at the very first or maybe it was the last of just blurry images and I was just in the car driving and I was bored so I started pointing it out the the window and taking pictures and like slowing down the shutter and I started getting some interesting effects and so I was moving the camera and I was just messing around but I got some really cool, interesting kind of color field uh effects going on. And so I want to actually keep these because they could be interesting for backgrounds or textures or even just as like art pieces on their own. So what I'm going to do to organize these is I'm going to highlight all the images that I want to keep in a different album. And I'm going to go to the actual folder here that I want them to be in. And if I right click that folder. So this is a folder that has the name and then that little downward chevron and then all of these are albums. Within that folder, I'm going to right click the folder and I'm going to create an album and it's going to create an album inside that folder. So I'm creating an album and I'm just going to call this color field blur photos And I'm just going to include the selected 10 photos and make sure that it's inside that folder and hit create there. So now I have a folder just of that type of photographs. So anytime you have photos that you've done this, if this starts to be a trend and something that you're doing a lot, you can always just put more images in here. By the way, let's just say we had another folder called let's let's call this album art ideas and I'm not gonna put any photos and I'm just creating an album. I'm putting it inside of this folder. So now I have an empty folder called art ideas and I can right click that folder and I can set this as the target album. A target album means that everything that you uh look at no matter where you are, you can instantly throw it into that target album. So it's a really cool way to organize. So I'm just going to click on that target album. So this is the target album. Now the art ideas folder so I can look at this image and say that's a really cool piece of art. So I'm going to right click it and I'm going to add that photo to the target album or just hit the T. Key. So I can be going through and I just like this image and I hit T. And now look, that is in the art ideas. And then if I go to these color field painting ideas and I really like this one, I think this one is quite cool. So this one's awesome. I'm gonna hit the T. Key and that adds that to the art ideas. So now when I go back to our ideas and hit the geeky for grid, I see both of these as art objects. So now I can scroll through these images that I just got into the system. And as I scroll through, I'm going to look for photos. That could be good art because I know that there's one shot that I really liked. Um that could be a really artsy photo. This this is it. This tree right here was really interesting. I was loving the way this tree was against the back drop drop. And so I'm just going to find the best version of that tree, which I think is probably that one. And so I'm gonna hit T and that added it to the art. So as I scroll through my photos, no matter where I happen to be. As I as I look through photos, I'm gonna be like, okay, I like that image, I'm gonna put it in the art collection. And then there's another one that I like from the same set of images that I'm going to add to the art collection. And I think it's this guy fishing way over in the distance, through the fog. So I think it's this last one here. So let's just look at it. He's oops, I scrolled forward. There we go. Okay, so I like this shot. I'm going to add that to the art collection as well. So albums are a great place not only to collect photo shoots or trips that you took, but you can also make uh albums that our ideas are ideas or book ideas or project ideas. And you can start throwing images into those simply by making that particular album into the target album. And then just start tossing images into it. It's kind of like having a shoe box that you just throw photos into. Except that these are virtual shoeboxes. And so you can have as many as you want and you can throw the same image into 15 different ones. Now. Keep in mind that you not only can hit the T. Key to get them in here, but you can also go in uh and grab. So I this is a really great shot here and I can take this image and I can drag it in there as well. So you can also do that. It's very easy to just drag images into there. And I'm gonna do this one as well. So those images could be drug in there or they can be added via right click or they can be added via the T key. So either way, but the ideas collect your images into albums because albums are idea centers, that's where you're collecting images for a general purpose. You can also find images by making sure that when you shoot the images that you've added some keywords to them, that will help you to find them. It also helps to add locations to them. And remember you can do all of this right after you import them, just highlight the whole set and then say these were all shot in Hawaii. These were all shot on this particular island. Here's the general Gps for the photo shoot and here are some key words that helped to describe what I shot that day. And then with all of that. Plus adobe senses, ability to search the images visually, you have an amazing capability to find whatever image you happen to be looking for. Now when you are in your mobile device and you're looking at Lightroom Mobile, you have to be aware that there are slight differences in the way that you get images from place to place. And so if I want to add images from this color field, blur photos to the art ideas, I actually have to go into the grid here and I'm going to need to, well if I'm looking at an image on its own. So let me let me just look at one image. So if I'm looking at this image, which also is pretty cool, um I can share it to that album by simply clicking on the triple dot button and clicking the organized tool and then say add to or move so I want to add. So I'm gonna add it to our ideas ad and now it's in the art ideas album as well. Or if I happen to be in the grid, I can go to that same triple dot button and I can say select and now I can go through and either select the entire folder or I can go through and just select one image this one and then and maybe this one as well and then I can add those two our ideas and add now if I'm in art ideas and I realized I added too many. I don't want this one in there. If I if I don't want this one in there, all I need to do is click on that, select, I'm gonna select that one and then I'm gonna remove it. Now when I remove it, I'm just removing it from the album. If I hit delete, I'm going to delete it from the whole system and it will go into that folder called deleted images. So I don't want to do that. I'm just going to remove it from the album. Hit removed and it's still in all of the other albums, but it's not deleted from the system. If I had chosen to delete it, then it would be up here in these deleted photos right here. So that's how you organize images inside of your mobile device. It's a little bit different but it follows the same concept. But the key is to get organized if you are going to bring your images in the best time to get organized is right when you bring them in. So bring them into the system, highlight them all and put in some key words, put in some information so that you are super organized with your photos because that's how you're going to find them in the future.