Smart Collections become difficult to maintain once they contain a larger number of rules

Currently, Lightroom automatically reorders rules after saving and reopening a Smart Collection. This destroys the visual structure created by the user and makes complex collections significantly harder to read and maintain.

For example, I often group rules like this:

Photographer A

• Camera Serial Number 1
• Camera Serial Number 2
• Camera Serial Number 3

Photographer B

• Camera Serial Number 1
• Camera Serial Number 2

Photographer C

• Camera Serial Number 1

After saving, Lightroom rearranges the rules by field type, making it impossible to see which camera serial numbers belong to which photographer.

Please preserve the user-defined rule order exactly as entered.

In addition, Smart Collections would greatly benefit from organizational tools such as:

• Rule groups or sections
• Collapsible categories
• Visual separators
• User notes/comments
• Labels for groups of rules

Complex Smart Collections are often used as production tools and can easily contain dozens of rules. Without organization features, they quickly become difficult to understand and maintain.

The current interface scales poorly once a collection grows beyond a small number of conditions.

Allow users to attach comments or descriptions to individual Smart Collection rules. Long-term maintenance becomes difficult when rules contain identifiers such as camera serial numbers, filenames or metadata values without any contextual information.