Working with Albums and Collections in Lightroom, Part 2

Applications that organize your photo library are great for providing a giant virtual box to store them all, but it’s easy to get lost among tens of thousands of images. That’s where albums (or collections, as they’re called in Lightroom Classic) can be helpful. In part 1 of this article series, I explained how to create and work with albums or collections in the cloud-focused Lightroom application and Lightroom Classic.

One limitation about those albums and collections is that they’re just containers: you must manually add or remove photos to them. That’s fine if you want a set number of photos that span an event or topic, but we don’t always locate images that way.

Sometimes we want to view our shots based on specific metadata (see “The Right Way to Assign Metadata to Photos in Lightroom”). For example, after I’ve imported a batch of photos into Lightroom, I quickly go through them to find promising ones that I’ll want to edit later. I could drag those into an album, but that’s too time consuming. Instead, it’s far easier to assign star ratings (or flags) to mark them.

But then what? Using filters, it’s easy to reveal only those keepers and hide the rest. And with smart collections in Lightroom Classic, those filters can be saved and re-used, even as more photos are added to your library. Smart collections can also be a lot more flexible than simple filters.

Filters in Lightroom

Both versions of Lightroom include filters, but only Lightroom Classic supports smart collections. I’m optimistic that the feature will come to Lightroom in the future as Adobe continues to build up the application, but for now filters are the only way to narrow the scope of what’s visible in the library.

In Lightroom, click the Filter button to the right of the Search field to reveal the filter criteria. To reveal those images I marked as worthy of followup, I’d click two stars (the rating I use when reviewing images).

You can refine the results by adding additional criteria such as the image type, camera, and by typing terms such as keywords into the field. To specify a particular date or existing album, select it in the My Photos panel.

The search benefit in Lightroom is that Adobe’s Sensei technology, which runs in the cloud, enables the application to identify scenes and objects automatically. That’s no help if you don’t have an Internet connection, however.

Create Smart Collections

Filters get the job done, but they’re limited. That’s why I prefer smart collections.

With a smart collection in Lightroom Classic, you can specify more complex searches. The best part is that the criteria is saved, so as you add new photos to your library, they get picked up by the collection automatically.

Here’s an example, carrying on from the filters above. This smart collection locates the photos marked with two stars, but also specifies a relative date range of the last month.

  1. In Lightroom Classic, choose Library > New Smart Collection.
  2. In the Create Smart Collection dialog that appears, leave the Match pop-up menu set to All.
  3. The first default criterion is for Rating, so set it to “is greater than or equal to” and click the second dot to the right to specify two stars.
  4. Click the (+) button to the right of the Rating criterion to add a new rule.
  5. From the pop-up menu, choose Date > Capture Date.
  6. In the second pop-up menu, choose “is in the last,” and set the field that appears to “30” days.
  7. Give the collection a title in the Name field and click Create.

The new smart collection is selected and views only two-star photos captured within the last 30 days.

Because I specified a relative date range, I can re-use this smart collection the next time I import new photos and mark the shots that are worth a second look. You could also set a date that covers the calendar year to quickly find your best shots to put into a printed photo book for the holidays.

Another fun date-based option is to look back at the previous year. The smart collection finds 3-star photos captured a year ago; the two dates provide a two-week period of images:


As you can guess, most metadata can be fed into a smart collection. Want to know if you’ve used an expensive lens as much as you thought you would? Create a smart collection that searches for that lens model in the past year and see the results.

And all smart collections are editable: right-click one in the Collections panel and choose Edit Smart Collection to adjust its parameters.

One last benefit I want to mention about smart collections is that you can specify negative values. For instance, it’s one thing to locate all images ranked 3 stars or higher within the past six months, but you can also instruct the smart collection to not include photos captured by your smartphone.

You can even get hyper-specific, such as photos ranked 3+ stars, captured in the past six months, that are not iPhone images, have an ISO of 800 or higher, and have been edited in Lightroom.

No Smart Sync

You can easily go crazy with this variables, but one limitation is that they live only in your Lightroom Classic catalog. Although normal collections can be set to sync with Creative Cloud (and by extension Lightroom on mobile devices or other computers), the same feature doesn’t apply to smart collections. (Perhaps this is why the newer Lightroom hasn’t implemented a smart album feature.)

Still, as you can see, a smart collection is a powerful feature for locating images and working with your library. You’re not locked into the simple filter logic, and it automatically takes new images into account as soon as you click it in the Collections panel. Working smarter really is better than working harder.

Author and photographer Jeff Carlson (@jeffcarlson, jeffcarlson.com) writes for publications such as DPReview, CreativePro, and Macworld, and is a contributing editor at TidBITS (tidbits.com). He is the author of numerous books, including Adobe Lightroom, a Complete Course and Compendium of Features, Take Control of Your Digital Photos, Take Control of Your Digital Storage, and Take Control of Apple Watch, among many other titles. He also co-hosts the podcasts PhotoActive and Photocombobulate, and leads photography workshops in the Pacific Northwest. He believes there's never enough coffee, and does his best to test that theory.
>