Sorting Images

[Rchjr]

I am new to lightroom - I have several collections with many images in each. I am going thru each collection pulling the best images from each collection. My question is how do I get an image (s ) out of a collection into another folder? I then want to use only those images for a project.

Hope I explained this well enough.

Thanks,

Rchjr

[dj_paige]

I think your strategy needs a little adjustment.

You don't want to remove the photo from a collection ... you want to mark it as a "best" image somehow ... and the use of assigning stars to the photo works great. Let's assume your best photos get 5 stars. Now, you want to see the best photos in a collection ... you select the collection and then use the Filter Bar to show you only the 5 star photos in that collection. Now you can use those images for your project. When you want to see ALL the photos in the collection, you turn off the filter (click on None, or Ctrl-L)

Advice: get the idea out of your mind of using folders for this purpose, that's an idea that has a lot of drawbacks. Use Lightroom tools such as keywords, collections, stars, pick flags and so forth. Also, get the idea out of your mind of moving photos from one folder to another, that's an idea that has a lot of drawbacks.

[Laura Shoe]

Either that or create a new collection for the best, that you want to use in your new project.  After you create the Best collection, click on your first collection, then drag images from the grid into the new collection. (Drag from the image thumbnails, not the gray border around them.)  (Note that dragging them from one collection to another won't remove them from the first one - to remove, select and hit Delete.) Using a new collection has one advantage over using stars as @dj_paige suggests: you can manually reorder the images in the new collection, independent of the order in the old one. This might be important if you're doing a slideshow, for example.

Collections are virtual grouping of images, rather than locations on your hard drive, as folders are. I'm very much in favor of not moving files around between folders for projects, as @dj_paige is.

[dj_paige]

An advantage of using 5 stars is that this has universal meaning, you can apply the 5 star rating to all of your best shots across your entire portfolio of photos, regardless of what collection they are in, and then find all five star photos with one search.

[Laura Shoe]

Here's the best of both worlds: assign stars to the original collection. Filter on 5 stars, select all photos, then create the collection and in the Create Collection dialog choose "Include Selected Photos".  That way you can use the collection for your project (and then delete it if no longer needed), and you have stars assigned to your photos as well.

[Rchjr]

Thank you all for the suggestions, that tells me what I need to know.

Thanks,

Rchjr