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!!
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