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umlautnord
Inspiring
February 19, 2024
Question

Smart Collection Sets

  • February 19, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 965 views

Hi -

 

I'm wondering if anyone knows a way of creating smart collection sets. Is this possible, or an approximation thereof? In other words, creating a collection set in the hierarchy that will show any collections/other collection sets matching X criteria (name begins with, etc) inside it. 

 

I'm not looking to define images to go somewhere—just to organize other Collection entities within the tree automatically. I already use numbering taxonomies and alphanumeric sorting to my advantage, but at some point the collection sets + nesting become quite helpful. Since I'm often changing/creating names of collections in LrM, it requires remembering to find the collection and re-organize it within a manually created/maintained collection set tree once back in LrC.

 

A simple example: A "smart collection set" for all collections or collection sets starting with "6000," and one for all starting with "5000." If I had a manually created collection labeled "5000 - Arboretum Jan 2024," it would automatically sort into the latter in the tree. If I renamed the collection "6000 - Arboretum Snow Jan 2024," it would automatically sort into the "6000" smart collection. I would still see the arboretum collection as a separate entity—it would just sort into in a different place.

 

Image-level collections seem to be the only smart sorting that's easily identifiable, though. Doesn't seem like it's probably doable in LrC natively, but maybe folks have found another good way of handling this (workflow, plugin, scripting, etc). Just doing this manually isn't the end of the world, but it'd be great to do if anyone knows any tricks! ​

​

Thanks.

 

--

 

Lightroom Classic v13.1 on MacOS Sonoma 14.3.1, M1 MBP 2020 13"

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    1 reply

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    February 19, 2024

    Maybe I'm not understanding what you want, but if you want all collection starting with "6000" together in one smart collection, this will do it

     

    U
    umlautnordAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 19, 2024

    Ah, no - that gives me one collection with all photos. Sorry, I'm not doing a great job of explaining this.

     

    What I'm looking to do is to be able to generate an organizational structure in the Collections interface like the below, more automatically—sorting collections into the collection sets based on their name (or even other criteria—how many photos, etc). And, having Lightroom adjust sorting as the collection name/attributes change. It's almost more of an auto-sort/auto-segment into "smart collection sets."

     

    In the example below, "5200. Working Edits" would automatically have anything starting with 5200 sorted into it. "5220. HDR" would automatically have anything starting with 5220 sorted into it.

     

    I realize there are some potential issues with collections matching more than one rule, etc. So it's maybe not fully doable right now—or maybe it is! If it's not, though, I'm also wondering if anyone has run across anything (e.g. plugin or other strategy) that sort of approximates this.

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    February 19, 2024

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