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Creating a Collection Set for Grouping

We have a whole bunch of collections, and we know that we can organize ourselves that way, but the problem that we have now is, if you were me, you could have a whole bunch of different types of collections, right? Sabine. Sabine, Christmas morning. Sabine, photographer. Sabine, Pumpkin. Sabine eating food. Sabine, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine. (exhales) That is a lot of Sabines. And, if you were doing wedding shoots, like Bob and Tom's wedding, or if you were doing a landscape shoot, Yosemite at night. You would have Yosemite at night, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine, Bob and Tom wedding, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine. Mary's wedding, Sabine, Sabine, Sabine, And, you'd have to scroll to find it, so collections are a great way for you to get organized, but taken to the nth degree, you just shifted your problem to somewhere else. Now you're scrolling through the collection. It's like those people who buy 5,000 actions, without learning the action. Like, you learn it, and all of a sudd...

en you spend 20 minutes looking through. You're like, I know the actions in here somewhere. Alright, what we wanna do now is, we don't wanna shift the problem over to the other side. What we wanna do now, is kinda get a little bit bit of order, right? So, all of the Sabines gets in the way, but it gets in the way of my photography. It gets in the way of all the other stuff I do. And, yeah, the newest version of Lightroom does have the option in here, where you can search, but even still, that'd kinda be a bit of a pain. That's not real organization. I want, like, Container Store level of organization. I mean, so, this is what we're gonna do. What if you had a way to be able to take a set of collections and organize them together? So that whenever you need to see anything that's related to that set of collections, you can just go there, right? That's a collection set. It's all it is. Take a look. If you come over here to the collection section, click on this, you have an option called Collection Set. Now, what do all the Sabine things have in common? They're Sabine. Sabine, right? So, what if I made collection set called Sabine Images? And, once I make that, you'll see that it's here at the very top. Now, I can single-click on one collection, shift-click on all the Sabine collections, and drag them inside of here. Now, anytime I wanna see anything that's Sabine-related, I can just go to the Sabine collection set, and see all of the Sabine stuff. Everybody cool with that? (audience murmurs in agreement) Let's take it further! (audience laughs) Because, here's Jenn. And, here's Jenn. And, here's Jenn. And, she's probably sitting in the chat going, Shut up with the Jenn! Right? There's Jenn. Now, I have all of these Jenn collections, right? Couldn't I technically do the same thing with Jenn, right? I could go over here. What does all of the Jenn collections have in common? [Audience Members] Jenn. Jenn. So, why don't we just make a collection set called Jenn. Click Create. And now, I'm gonna grab all of these Jenn collection sets, and I'm gonna drag them inside of the Jenn collection set folder. Anytime I wanna see Jenn, I go to the Jenn collection set, and those all of the different views that I have from there. Anytime I wanna see Sabine's stuff, I can go inside of there, and see all of those. That's not bad. We good so far? It gets better still! (audience and instructor laugh) Because, collections allow us to be able to grab all of our information, and move all of our information inside of a structure that makes sense. Playlists, if you will. Collection sets allow us to take those collections and put those collections into some sort of organized structure. But, collection sets also allow you to organize collection sets. (imitates explosion noise) (audience giggles) Right, you can't put a collection inside a collection, but you can put a collection set inside a collection. Set. (audience giggles) Which is kinda weird, right? Like, you start thinking about it. So, forget about that. Think of it this way: Imagine I have a collection set right here called Sabine Images. And, I have another collection set called Jenn Images. What do they have in common? (audience members murmur) So what if I could take a collection set and call it, Family. And now, I can take the Jenn collection set, and throw it inside of here. I can take the Sabine collection set, and throw it inside of here. Now, anytime that I wanna see anything that's family-related, I can go inside the Family collection set, and see all of that stuff. Anything that I wanna see that Jenn specific, I can go to Jenn. I can see Sabine-specific stuff there. If I wanted to do stuff that was both Jenn and Sabine, like Jenn and Sabine cool moments outside. I could put a collection inside of here, and let's just called it Jenn and Sabine Outside. I hope I spelled that right. (gasps) That was good! So you see, inside of here, I can have inside of a collection set, I can have collections, and other collection sets, which then let me parse through all of this stuff, and organize myself further. That's the power of collection and collection sets, and has to, how you organize that stuff. The only thing that it requires is that when you start, you get very anal about it. But you have to have a structure for how to be able to work. How does this sit, so far? How are you guys doing with this? This can change how you interact with your library inside of Lightroom, and unfortunately it's one of those things that just isn't talked about all that often when you're working with it. So, thought it's important to highlight. Yes? [Audience Member 1] Is there limit to the number of collections that you can have? I haven't seen one yet. So, I'm sure there's a technical thing. I've seen people run 700,000 images, 800,000 images in a catalog, without it choking. I haven't seen a collection limit, yet. I'm sure there's a technical one for it, not yet. Can you talk again about, the value of just using keywords versus creating these collections. Is that, sort of just, the more manual searching? Um, (coughs) no... Carla, was it? Carla, yes. Sp, Carla, keywords are a great thing for you to be able to have, but understand that in keywords you could have keywords that go across multiple images that span multiple collections. So, like, things that have an apple. Like, you wouldn't make a collections, you could have 100,000 pictures, and you wouldn't make a collections called Apple, because then you would have to go through 100,000 of them to be able to do that. But, if you needed to search throughout an entire catalog for something that had an apple, it'd probably be a better idea for you to just put the keyword into that. It's a good finding way, but it's not a good organizing way, in my opinion. Thank you. Could I ask you how the collections relate to the folders, and also the process, like I assume if you're taking pictures of your families, like, you know, 20 pictures, or 100 pictures, it isn't like, a shoot by itself. It's something that, that you're doing over and over, over a long period of time, and then putting it into a collection. So I guess my question is, is it important to organize your importing and folders, or do you just put them in by date, or do you put them... Do you organize at the folder level, as well? Do I organize at the folder level? Right, so the overall arching question would be, is organization happening at the folder level, or am I de-classifying and moving stuff around on the folder level? I'm usually not; I'm usually not. I usually set up a folder for a year, and then I dump stuff inside of it, to do that. And then, any other organizational, they're just buckets, and then any organizational stuff, I'm kinda filtering and parsing all of that stuff I do inside of the collection itself, through collection and collection sets. Now, how does this apply to photographers, right? It's great if you don't have a Jenn or you don't have a Sabine, how does it apply to photographers? Imagine if I shot, if I made pictures of my friend Lili, right? So, my friend Lili is this model that I have in Tampa that's really cool, and I wanted to be able to make pictures of her. Well, I could, technically, make a collection inside of here and call it Lili pictures. Alright. And, I would click on Create. So, I shoot, we organize everything, I drag it into the Lili Pictures folder; into the Lili Pictures collection. But then, Lili comes over and she wants to see all of her pictures, and I don't wanna necessarily deal with the flagging, and showing, and filtering, so I would probably make a folder called Lili Pictures-Keepers, Lili Pictures-Rejected, so I could have three Lili Pictures already for one shoot that I did. Alright, but what happens when Lili comes back? Then all of a sudden, technically I could have a Lili Pictures 2, and then Lili Pictures 2-Picked, then Lili Pictures 2-Rejected, then Lili Pictures, you see how it can get into a bit of a mess as you're working with stuff. So usually, what I'll do is, I'll create something and, let's say I call it Lili Rey, right? Oh, and I wouldn't put it inside the Family; she's not family. Jenn would be pissed! (laughs) But inside of here, I would make a collection set called Lili Rey. And then, inside of here I could make a collection set called Shoot 1. And then, inside of the Shoot 1 collection set, I could put All Images. Make another collection set called Rejected Images. I can make another one called To Edit. I can make another one called To Print. Not bad. Now, when Lili shows up again, right click, create a collection set, Shoot 2. And now, inside of there, I would basically take all of these, and make them over again. Can we get a close-up somewhere? Do we have a personal, personal, personal camera time? Right here? Lightroom team, please help. (audience giggles) I need this. You see how I have Shoot 1 here, right? I would like to be able to right-click on this, and select Duplicate Collection Set. When you do that, I would like to have all of the stuff that's inside of here moved to that duplicate collection set. Please do this for me. Thank you. (audience laughs) So, it kinda sucks, right? It's one of those things like, why would you make a duplicate collection set, and not contain all of the stuff that's inside of here? But, technically, what I could do, and what I do do, is I make what I do perform, is I make one called Dummy. And I leave that, and then this becomes Shoot 1. And then, that becomes Shoot 2. So then now, when Lili comes in, I can single-click on this one, shift-click on this one, hold down the option key, and Alt-drag it into here. And now I have the template. She comes back in again, single-click, shift-click, Alt-drag; now I have the template. Now if you wanna see what the, what it actually looks like in real life. Alright, so it's not just a, I'm telling you how to do this, kids. Like, this is something that I tried to do as much as I can. These are my collection sets. Sometimes they get a little dumb, like D850-Bar. I have no idea what that means. (giggles) Alright, but look, Model Shoots. These are all the different models that I work with. There's Lili. Shoot 1- Tampa Theater. Oh, I need to be able to see all of that Lili stuff? Go over to the Lili stuff. Oh, I want to be able to see Shoot in the studio, those are it. Oh, I want a Shoot number three. Imagenes Buenas, Imangenes Que le Gusta. We do it in Spanish, too. (audience giggles) Shoot 4, Photoshop World. So that, all of that, and then if I wanted to see the best of the best, I could always just twirl these up, and make one inside of here to be able to show the best of all of those kinds of things. So, it does require a certain amount of organization for all of that. I have a question. When I organize my photos, I organize them both in folders and collections. When I develop the photos, I can only see the collections, I can not see the folders. Is there a way to have the folders be visible in the develop module? Is there folders available? Can, like, if you- So when I go to develop, I can't see the... No. You'd have to back into the library module. Is there a reason why the folders don't show up, because I keep all my pictures in the folders, and then I sub-divide them if they're in multiple. 'Cause you need to start doing it in collections. (audience laughs) And that's the problem. The problem is, and I'm not trying to be dumb about it, but what I'm saying is, what happens is the reason that they keep it in the library module is because they figure that by the time you get to the develop module, your organization is technically done. So, you're not, kinda, culling, and moving, and organizing all of that stuff. They figure if you're culling, and moving, and organizing, you probably need to be over in the library module. So, if there's a way to do it, I haven't seen it. Would you mind asking Adobe again? (audience laughs) Close-up cam! No, no, no, totally kidding. So, side conversation, this was a guy that I shot a couple of years ago, which I thought was kinda weird, right? He was really, really nice. And, we had this conversation, and I was like, Oh, dude, I wanna be able to make a picture of you. And, I was shooting with Joe McNally, and Joe's first response was, Take your shirt off! And the guy was just like, I do not know you. (audience giggles) And, I thought it was kinda weird, this philosophical conversation, right? He turned around, and we had to really work him through, getting him comfortable enough to be able to take his shirt off. And, we did the picture, and then I was like, Oh, this is really cool. And, he turned out to be a friend, and all that stuff, but his name, I had to go look him up. And his name was Lukas Zpira. Z-P-I-R-A. He's like the foremost author, or the foremost expert in carving out tattoos on people. Like, literally, carving them. Not inking them, carving them. And, has hooks on his back to take people for rides. And I was like, Oh, who'd you do a picture of? Satan! (giggles) It was this guy that was, like, super intense, and I always bring this up, anytime I see this picture, I always tell this story. I jump out of photography, and jump out of all that stuff to be able to say, this is a guy that carves tattoos and takes people on rides on hooks on his back, and yet the process of asking him to take his shirt off to make a portrait, put him on edge. That's your responsibility as a photographer. That's how powerful a camera is when you hold it in front of somebody. You know, you're job as a photographer, the bedside manner of the photographer, is the most important part of anything that you do. So, understand that, that is that important then you'll do a good job.