Video Tip - Smart Collections
Happy video tip Friday! I came up with a really neat tip this week for using Smart Collections for finding my processed HDR images. I started writing it down but it just works so much better as a video. Plus, it gave me the chance to extend on it and explain some examples that, even if you're not into HDR, you can still make use of the tip. If you've got any personal ideas on how you use Smart Collections (or this video spurred some ideas) please make sure you share them with us in the comments. Take care and have a great weekend!
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December 19th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
very handy tip, thanks
December 19th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Great tip Matt. Thanks — I’ve really liked using PhotomatixPro. It’s added a great new dimension to some of my photographs.
Also, I wondered if you had a chance yet to share my idea with the magazine people about providing NAPP members with an online, searchable index of past issues of Photoshop User magazine?
Thanks again……
Marty
December 19th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
By adding or deleting the keyword ‘online’ to the (virtual) images, and using smart collections it makes it easy to manage and change the images that appear on my website (created with SlideshowPro, and PS).
December 19th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Thanks Matt. I make sure my final HDR files are named DSC1234_HDR, so you can quickly do a metadata text search for “HDR” in Lightroom to initially create that HDR collection.
Worked out well for my wife to pick our 2008 Favorites as well for Christmas Gifts. Just made an aptly-named Quick Collection and set it as the target collection so as she was going through all the photos she simply had to type “B” to add each one.
Chris
December 19th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Thanks - one more great tip - esp that recently modified! Wonderful! Happy Holidays Matt
December 19th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Thanks Matt, that’s a good tip. I don’t use smart collections as much as I should, so thanks for giving me a push in the right direction.
December 20th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Andrzej, excellent tip !
I have a smart collection for each lens and camera that i own. So I have an idea of how many clicks i have on each (since we import all the photos to LT).
I’d like to have an advanced option that I’d specify a parameter and LT would give me distinct values for each. For example, in a selection I’d like to know the different aperture/shutter/iso that i have. So as i have a “perfect” development of a photo, I could apply it to all photos taken with the same setting.
It would be easy to implement as LT uses SQL but i think it could complicate LT’s interface.
Maybe as an external plugin ?
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:19 am
Hi everyone,
I haven’t watched the video yet.
But here’s what I have done with smart collections.
I was importing a large set of photo’s of my family.
In Bridge I used to tag a picture of my son and me with the following keywords:
Chris, Marco, boys, man, men, fathers, sons, youth, people, adults, children, 0 years, babies, baby,….
In Lightroom I now first made a smart collection containing ALL pictures that did NOT have the keyword “Chris”.
I then went through all the pics and whenever I came across a picture Chris was in, I knew I had to tag that one as well.
Next: all pics without the keyword “Marco”, scanning the results for photos I am in.
Then in a normal selection: select all photos containing Chris and Marco and remove the asteriks from the keywords that should be in all photos (like fathers, sons, family, etc)
So basically I use it to see if a keyword is not missing from a set of pictures.
Happy holidays to all!
Greetins from the Netherlands
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Great Tip Matt, thank you!
I created a smart collection called “Unsubmitted Copyright” that searches for images “not containing the keyword copyright”
When I submit a batch, I add a keyword “copyright-MMDDYYYY” so I can easily find which batch I submitted later. I also have a category “copyright-ignore” for things I don’t want submitted to the copyright office.
Makes for quick and easy locating of what I still need to submit
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Thanks for a great blog Matt also found your Layers book excellent. A query though on the use of these smart collections. Having wached your video I thought of a something that would be of good use to me - to view files in a folder that I had not yet modified. Particularly useful when I have a lot of files that I am working on and have to break off and come back to later. I set this up for a specific folder using 2 criteria “folder” = name and “has adjustments” = false. It worked great but when I then selected a file and went to develop module as soon as I carried out an adjustment it removed the file fromk the collection and gave me the message “no file selected”. I can see why this happened but is there any workaround so that I can complete the edit before it does this?
December 23rd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
@Ken
You could try these settings;
‘Edit date’, ‘is in the last “x” hours’ - x is whatever is suitable for you, and I think you want hours instead of days, as you mention you want to return to editing the image after taking a break.
You could even add a keyword e.g. ‘In progress’, ‘editing’, etc. , and add the following rule;
‘keyword’ ‘contains’ ‘editing’
Remove the keyword ‘editing’ from the image when you have finished with it.
Hope this helps.
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Great tip. It looks like LR2 has a lot of terrific new features. I guess I need to upgrade. By the way, next time you do one of your “informational how does Matt do it” posts how about elaborating a little on how you create your tip videos You may have done this already and I missed it but I think they’re very well done and I’d like to learn how to do them.
Regards,
Dennis
December 27th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Excellent tip Matt. As a fellow proponent to all things HDR, I have recently been looking for workflow tips in Lightroom and this one is a good one! Thanks again for all of your hard work and posts. I also want to thank NAPP for recognizing my portfolio in the editors choice. That really made my week!!!
Sincerely,
Michael S.
January 5th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
This is a great tip as I, like Matt, leave the “tonemapped” extension from Photomatix untouched. The other thing I do to keep my HDR’s (and panos) sorted is the following:
1) After importing I identify shots that were taken as an HDR (or panorama) set.
2) I stack those sets together, usually putting a middle shot at the top of the stack so it’s easy to identify
3) I assigned my purple label as “HDR/Pano” and flag all the images in these sets
After doing the above I can easily filter my images to just HDR/Panos, and within all are stacked together. After I process an image it becomes part of the stack and is brought to the front. Matt’s tip will help isolate just the processed images rather than the component shots.
Thanks Mr. K.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Nice tips !!! thanks a lot, i never checked what was under collection, now i do! simple as that, thanks for your videos, very generous of you giving that for free! Very professionnal too.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Great tip, but I have one question… What exactly is the “edit date” ? I created a smart collection to draw from pictures i have recently edited in LR. Only problem is that it shows a bunch of pictures that I have not edited. I went to find the “edit date” in the Metadata, but can not find such a thing.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Thanks for the tip, I love smart collections! Recently I wanted to delete a picture from it but I wasn’t able to, is that possible at all? I just don’t want to go in the the main folder to delete it cause I have many pictures to go thru and decide whether I need to keep it or dump it in that same smart collection. Thanks in advance!
April 7th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Hi guys
I have also falling in love with this great feature: being able to catch all the photos ending on “tonemapped” into a smartcollection… BUT, please help me out!!! I have just upgraded my hardware and installed the fantastic Photomatix plugin. It seems the “tonemapped” extension is gone and now, after processing and tonemapping, the file is re-entered in LR as a 16 bit TIF without any chance of changing the naming… So now I cannot use the smartcollection…. Can any of you figure out a place I can set the namingstandard for re-entering files?