Inspiring

Question

New to LR trying to understand the basics

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 12, 2018
3 replies
1793 views

I'm brand new to LightRoom and I'm trying to understand its organizational model. There's a zillion tutorials out there but they each seem to address only parts of it and I'm trying to get the big picture. I can also see on the web that many other people are confused, too.

Catalogs. Libraries. Folders. Collections.

They all seem like words for containers. If we were talking about books, you could have a collection of books, a catalog of books, a library of books or folder of books (say if you were a publisher and the folder had manuscripts or print-ready files). But being in one wouldn't necessarily imply a hierarchy, although it could. I.e., a library might have a collection of books, and those books might be in a catalog so there's a hierarchy: Library hasa Collection, but also Library hasa Catalog. But a collection doesn't necessarily contain a catalog, or vise versa, although it could. Conversely it could be disjoint - books could be in one without being in any of these others. I could have a library in my house which holds my books but they may not be catalogued, etc.

So what exactly is the definition of each of these and what exactly is their relationship to each other in LightRoom?

Is there a hierarchy - is one at the top and does it contain a bunch of the others and do each of those others contain a third kind, etc?

Or are they all totally disjoint; an image can be in one but the other?

Can individual folders, collections, catalogs and libraries be named? For a given image in LightRoom how do I see which one (or two or three) of these things it's in? And how do I put an image in one of these? If I do an "import" what am I importing it into - a catalog, a folder, a library or a collection, or more than one of the above? Can an image be in one without being in the others?

I'm very confused about this but on the web I see I'm not the only one.

Thanks in advance!!

This topic has been closed for replies.

kentdesign

Community Expert

I partially agree with WobertC,

Victoria Bampton's "Lightroom Classic CC Quick Start eBook" is great.

So are Victoria's paid books.

Another educational option is Laura Shoe's digital training:

https://laurashoe.com/

I suggest you check both out online because people learn in different ways and although both these Lightroom Gurus are great teachers you may learn better from one than the other.

As far as analogies go, I have always taught people to think of Lightroom with a physical book library in mind.

The book library has a physical location where it keeps the books on shelves, and also a catalog of all the books, where they are located in the building, the author, the publishing info, and a quick summary of what is in the book.

Photoshop Lightroom works in a similar way.

You should make one catalog (for now at least, although many photographers only have one catalog even after they completely understand and use Lightroom)

The catalog is like the book library's catalog. It has the data about the photo, what camera, what lens, what settings for each image.

Each module - library, develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web, are basically different work spaces to accomplish different tasks.

Library is where you get an overview of your images (like a light table with full view capabilities.

Develop is your darkroom, etc.

Folders are where the images are located, like shelves in a book library - and although they are shown in your Lightroom Catalog, the image files themselves, like the books in a book library, can be on different drives, like the books could be on shelves in a different building.

Collections are a way to group some images for various purposes

In lightroom, you do not open, edit and save images, you import, edit, and export.

Yes it is a database, however, more importantly Lightroom is a different and versatile way to work with images.

Hope that helps - please do check out the two educator authors mentioned above. They are worth your time and you will save a lot of time and get into using Lightroom more efficiently and effectively !

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

You really need to read Victoria Bampton's (free) "Lightroom Classic CC Quick Start eBook"

Available from- https://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/

If you understand how 'Database' programs work then you should see a similarity with Lightroom-

For my simple understanding- an example comparing LR to a "People" Address database-

Lightroom Program = Microsoft Excel Program (the installed App or Executable)

Catalog = Excel Spreadsheet (a file you can copy, rename, re-locate)

Library of Photos = Data about people displayed in a spreadsheet (Information about your data -Photos or People)

Folders = Folders. The folder structure on your hard-drives. (In Lightroom you only see Folders containing 'imported' photos!)

Photo Files = People & Address. (Photos and People are NOT "in" the Catalog database. Photos are in a Folder, People live somewhere in the world)

Collections = Spreadsheet Report (A "List" of selected items you want to easily view together)

And do some learning research-

Lightroom Tutorials by Julieanne Kost

https://laurashoe.com/2016/10/27/new-to-lightroom-an-introduction-to-lightroom/

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - YouTube

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .

dj_paige

Legend

I have to say I always find analogies comparing Lightroom to other systems of things unconvincing and off the mark. People see what they want to see in these analogies. It is common for people to have many Excel spreadsheets, and naturally there's nothing wrong with that, but using the analogy to allow many Lightroom catalogs is not the best approach for Lightroom, and in my opinion, a serious failure of the analogy.

dj_paige

Legend

Catalogs — first, for beginners, do not use catalogs (plural), use one catalog (singular). And you have to use a catalog with Lightroom. The catalog is a database, it is not a container of your photos (although it contains your work). Import all of your photos into a single catalog, the photos are not actually in the catalog file, they remain on your hard disk, and then of course you do all of your work inside the catalog. Think of the catalog as your workspace, it's where you go to do everything in Lightroom and find all of your photos, and if you have only ONE catalog then it's like you don't even have to think about it.

Folders — this is just a partial view of the folders on your disk, they are not separate folders within Lightroom that are different than the folders on your disk. Your photos should go in folders (maybe I should say HAVE TO go in folders), because your operating system requires it. The simplest thing is to use folders by capture date, this is a Lightroom default, it takes zero effort on your part. Other than capture date, do not use folders for organizing purposes. (Note: perhaps in the past you had used folders as organizing tools, and you have folders named "Trip to Boston" and "Birthday Party for Aunt Marge", fine, keep those as they are if you want, but new photos should go into folders by capture date — or alternatively when you import the existing photos into Lightroom you can ask Lightroom to put these photos in to folders by capture date and move them out of "Trip to Boston").

Libraries — not a Lightroom word.

Collections — An assembly of photos for some purpose, like to make a photobook, or to make a collage, or to make a slideshow. Photos can be members of as many collections as you want. The photos aren't actually in Lightroom, they're not in the collections, but the catalog (database) knows which photos have been assigned to Collection XYZ.

AND YOU MISSED THE MOST IMPORTANT ORGANIZING TOOLS!!!!

Keywords and other metadata — your photos should be assigned keywords and optionally other metadata like captions and titles and GPS locations and any other information that is useful to you. You need to assign keywords religiously to your photos. In the future, once this assignment of keywords and other metadata is assigned, you will do ALL (yes, ALL, as in 100%) of your searching for photos via these keywords and other metadata. You will not be looking in folders for your photos. You find them via keywords and other metadata.

So, you import the photos into LR, this will either place them in certain folders or leave them in their existing folders depending on your choice by setting the proper options, you assign keywords and other metadata to your photos, you can optionally create collections for specific purposes, you edit the photos, and as needed you can print/export/upload the edited photos. When you search for specific photos, you search using keywords and other metadata and not in folders; and you also don't move photos from folder to folder for organizing purposes.

P

peternelsonAuthor

Inspiring

Libraries — not a Lightroom word.

Then why does it say "Library Filter" across the top of my view?

So there's no such thing as a LR folder? Just views of Windows file system folders? If LR folders and Windows folders are 1:1 then I'm confused about why LR has them.

I'm doing a slide show now of a recent trip to Greenland - on my NAS the folders are organized by camera - Leica in this folder, Nikon in that folder, Samsung S9 in that folder, etc, but in LR I want them all to be in one "thing" for my slideshow. So what thing would that be - a collection?

(I assume LR uses copies and doesn't move or alter the original files?).

I'll only be using LR for special projects, not as my main tool, so I don't need to organize all my photos, just the ones in that project. e.g., a slide show or book.

Thanks for any clarifications.

JP Hess

Inspiring

I would strongly urge you to download and read that link that was provided previously in this thread. You obviously have no understanding about what Lightroom is all about, and without that understanding Lightroom isn't going to be of any value to you at all. Until you realize what Lightroom is and how it works, and how you can integrate it into your workflow, I think you are just wasting time. It's more than we can tackle trying to answer questions in the forum. You need to do some studying of excellent resources that have already been provided.

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