Organizing a smart collection

I have created a smart collection of my photos from various folders in preparation for sending to Blurb Booksmart for an annual retropective. All photos are virtual copies and have metadata and exif data. Is there a simple way to arrange the virtual photos in the smart collection for export strictly by date of capture - oldest to most recent - even though they physically live in different folders? What I would like is an "Arrange By Date" option but have not been able to find such.
Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Besides that, you'll probably need to rename on export to one of the formats that incorporates a sequence number. If they keep their old names, they'll probably get sorted in alphabetical order by whatever place you send them to, and your carefully produced order will be scrambled. Make sure the sequence number is formatted with enough leading zeros.
Hal

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Lightroom Adobe Revel Smart Collections

Hi There,
when i first tried the export function from LR to Revel i was totally thrilled because most of the time i work with smart collections. i just upoaded them to Revel from LR. From time to time some of the photos belong to more of one smart group. that wasn't any problem until the last 3 or 4 weeks. LR just showed an infobox saying that i will upload a newer version from a photo that is already in my Revel Album. But now LR does not export any photo if it is already in another album. this is a big problem for me, because changes on certain photos will not be updated any more. it is really frustrating that adobe changed this feature because Revel (what i already pay for) becomes almost useless for me. Organizing the photos into Albums in Revel is no option, because i have them already organized in LR.
Anybody with the same problem? Any workarounds? Any official comment from Adobe?
Thanks,
Arne

Pasted from thread http://forums.adobe.com/message/5325344:
"I cannot now get a single image to upload to multiple albums in the same library"
In fact, Add one image to multiple albums is supported by Revel plug-in in Lightroom. Click the “Replace” button will allow the photo to go to multiple albums.
Yes, the prompted dialog is confusing.

Smart Collection for images with changed metadata not written to disk?

The thumbnails in the grid view have a little icon in the upper right corner when the metadata for the file has been changed but not written to the XMP (or whatever) files.
Is it possible to create a LR2 Smart Collection, or maybe a filter, that will find all such images?

Dave, good to know that Ctrl-S on everything will write it all out.
John, I *hate* being blind about what is going on. So I can Ctrl-S on everything and get it all written out. But I can't tell how many images I have changed, or perhaps also sort them by type so I can see what kinds of files will have to be rewritten. I can't even tell if I've remembered to do a Ctrl-S and whether there are images with data only in the catalog and not in the XMP etc. files.
I'm one of those who are more comfortable if everything that can be recorded in XMP is recorded there. But I don't want to leave auto-write to XMP on while re-organizing everything.

Smart Collections: an ommission!?

Hi,
How do I create a smart collection that is based on another Collection, i.e. tests if an image exists or does not exist in a specified collection?
When designed my workflow for Lightroom I realised that the Workflow is simply a series of concecutive sets. (I use the term 'set' in the mathematical sense.) The various stages in the workflow directly corresponding to sets. Each stage has an associated set, that is a subset of the previous stage's set. Assuming the workflow stages are imported, selected, edited, approved and published. Then the selected collection is a subset of imported, and rejected is the imported set with selected removed. The edited set is the a subset of the selected set. And so on. Published provides a slight complication in that it is not one set, but multiple sets, split into a number of sets based on the published destination of the image.
When I came to try and set this up in Lightroom I found a difficulty, Lightroom does not appear to allow you to create a smart set condition that tests if an image is in or is not in another collection. I am slightly taken aback at this ommission. It seems to me that this is a fundamental tool for using smart collections.
OR have I missed something I have only been using Lightroom seriously for a couple of weeks.
Ciao RIc Evans

In my version of Lightroom 5, Smart Collections does indeed allow you to include photos in a specific Collection or Collections. I'm not sure why you state the opposite.
By the way, I now provide a completely unsolicited opinion: I think following Kelby's advice on organizing is a mistake for most people. I think his advice is poor, and that better advice on organizing can be found at The DAM Book | The DAM Book or Organizing Your Photos with Lightroom 5 | The DAM Book. In particular, if your organizing needs are exactly the same as Kelby, who does discrete professional photo shoots and which have little overlapping content and as a result he has little need to search across photo shoots by content, and you search only for "winner shots", then maybe his advice is good. For the rest of us, who organize by the content of the photo (keywords, other metadata and collections), I think Kelby is way off target.

Organization/Smart Collection Advice

Hello
I have a couple of hundred product videos that were shot over the years that I need to organize. Currently they are organized very loosely in multiple events and are not titled (except for from the camera). The events are basically divided into accessories, products in action, and customers. The problem I am having is some videos have multiple products and one product might be in multiple events making them difficult to find.
Is there a simple way to see all videos marked with a keyword in multiple events? I have tried smart collection but every time I do that I get an error "Operation could not be completed. No other information is available about the problem."
Any suggestions of how to make this easier would be great. I don't mind re-organizing the events, but with so many videos and adding them often it seems like there needs to be some sort of event structure, but so far the only option I can see is putting them all in one big event and using keywords. It seems a little excessive.
Thanks for the help.

Hi Matt.
First tell FCP X that you want to search on keywords. Like the next screen shot.
Then specify what you want displayed.
This searched across two events in one library.
Russ

Adobe Bridge CC Smart Collections are not displaying all images in the folder

I'm having an issue with Bridge CC were I setup a smart collection to monitor my new photos. The folder contains over 300 photos, but is only displaying 160. The only condition I set is to have a minium file size of 10kb, so it should bring in all files since most are over 4mb. At first I thought it was a problem with the files themselves (permissions or something) but if I open the folder in bridge it easily displays all of the images easily. Any ideas?

I'm having an issue with Bridge CC were I setup a smart collection to monitor my new photos.
You might want to describe this workflow a bit more. Do you create this from an existing folder or are you adding new photo's?
A Smart Collection does not refreshes it self automatically. You either have to use the edit icon top right of the content panel to save again or deselect and select the collection itself to let it refresh the content.

I would like to see a "user order" sort option for Smart Collections

I use LR to set up Collections to use for web output and typically use key wording to organize which photos will be included in any web gallery. Right now I have to make that into a regular collection so I can rearrange the collection to appear the way I want to present things. I would prefer to be able to utilize Smart Collections so any photos I want to add will be included automatically when I set up the proper keywords. New additions should be at the end of the current order and the user should be able to move that around in the presentation order as desired.

I absolutely agree. I used a similar function in Aperature all the time. It was the main reason I originally chose Aperature over LightRoom till Lightroom came out with the latest edition that included Smart Collections, and was I disappointed to find that it wasn't as powerful as Aperature's Smart Folders options.
Both programs have their strengths and their weaknesses... and this time around I think Lightroom has the advantage, but Aperature still wins on Smart Collections customization ability and power.

Sudden ultra-slow importing issue in LR5.2 - possibly smart collection related?

I've been using LR for almost two years now, and have never seen this before:
This evening I wanted to import a series of images from my card reader using LR (just updated to 5.2 from the 5.2RC); I have ~240 images to import. I always have LR set to convert to DNG on import, and also to save a backup of the original raw file (NEF) onto a separate HDD at the same time. LR has always been pretty fast to carry out this process: normally just a few minutes are required for that amount of images (not including rendering previews once the DNGs are imported). However, today it's suddenly become painfully slow - as I type this, it's so far managed to import a mere 58 images, having so far taken about an hour and twenty minutes! Each image is being added one at a time, with a long pause before the next one clocks up in the 'current import' folder. I've never seen such slow performance with LR before.
I wonder if this is a bug connected to the final release of 5.2? I doubt it, as I would have expected to have heard about this by now, but you never know...
I have recently - in the past few days - set up a number (at least 80) of new smart collections that pick up raw images taken at specific focal lengths, as well as another set picking up specific apertures used for each raw shot in the catalogue (unlike the majority of my pre-existing smart collections, these new collections are purely there for interest really - nice to see which focal lengths are the most used for example - but don't serve as an aid to any specific workflow). In short, I've greatly increased the number of smart collections running in my catalogue. Would having a significant number of smart collections slow down the image ingestion process? For example, is LR updating individual smart collections on the fly as images are imported, and thus having to pick through each collection in order to complete the import (I'd always assumed that this would all be added to a central index in the catalogue that the smart collections feed from, but perhaps there are multiple indexes, one for each smart collection)?
I guess the other possible cause could be a corrupt catalogue, although both the catalogue integrity check and optimisation complete without a hitch and everything else seems to be fine.
I'm on Win7 x64, running the LR catalogue and previews from an SSD (with images stored on a separate HDD), with an i7 3770K CPU, 16GB RAM, and an AMD 5850 Radeon graphics card.
I'd be most grateful to hear the opinions of other LR users.
M

This just started happening to me as well. EVerything was fine and import was what I consider normal until 2 days ago. Had trouble with one camera which kept losing connection. I import from the camera directly...copy as DNG to an internal hard drive. Now all my cameras are importing at a ridiculously slow rate of speed. As far as I know I changed nothing to make this happen. Very odd and cannot find anything about it except for your post. Anyone else out there experiencing this?

"Smart Collection" criteria shortfalls

Hello,
While Bridge CC is almost a benefit to our studio, we're finding the "smart collection" criteria entirely crippling.   It's frustrating as there really are just a couple of tiny additions that would make Bridge a life saver to us.
What we're finding severely lacking in the criteria options:
"Path name"    - would be ideal for excluding any files with a specified folder name in the path.
"Newer than"    - x amount of days
"Media type"    - dropdown list of "Video" "Image" "Audio" etc.
"Extensions"     - space delimited list, rather than single file type (".PSD .PNG .JPG") etc
With just one or two of these options the smart collections could actually be useful.
Perhaps I'm just too new to Bridge, and there are workarounds, but certainly nothing obvious. (Filters keep getting reset, labels are binary etc)

What we're finding severely lacking in the criteria options:
"Path name"    - would be ideal for excluding any files with a specified folder name in the path.
"Newer than"    - x amount of days
"Media type"    - dropdown list of "Video" "Image" "Audio" etc.
"Extensions"     - space delimited list, rather than single file type (".PSD .PNG .JPG") etc
With just one or two of these options the smart collections could actually be useful.
This is a user to user to Forum and while these are very good suggestions you might also want to try and post it on the Photoshop family forum which is recommended for feature Requests:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/
But be warned, don't hold your breath waiting for it to get realized. There have been tons of ideas for improvement and with Bridge already at version 6 the most changed result for the past 3 versions is that they removed functionality (AOM, Export panel and Sync windows) instead of adding improvement…

When developing an image from a smart collection "has no adjustments" it gets immediately deselected

I am wondering if this could really be the intended LR behaviour?
I start from a smart collection, one of the criteria is "has no adjustments".
Ok, as soon as I move the first slider in develop module, it no longer matches that criterion.
But that should be no reason for LR to force me to immediately stop the develop edits on the selected image.
It immediately unselects, and I stay in Develop module with a grey window and the message "no image selected". (It does not move on to the next image, which still matches the criterion.)
I would expect that when I return to Library module, it would return to the same smart collection where I started, but I would not find my last developed images there, as they no longer match the criterion.
But that LR grabs it immediately out of my develop selection?
Strange enough it stays the same, when I first explicitely selected all images while in Library/smart collection.
My expectation would be that I have this selection fixed to work on in Develop module. Similar to when I select any images from survey view and go to Develop module.
But no, the only workaround I found is:
Start from the smart collection, ctrl a to select all, then arbitrarily click on another collection withput this criterion - selection stays fixed - then move over to Develop module.
This is LR4.1 on Win7.
Definitely my functional specification would be: never take off an image from Develop unless the user moves on to another image.
So ignore from where an image was picked.
Would you consider this a bug? Or a "feature"?
Do you see the same in LR4.2 or 4.3RC? Behaviour on a Mac?
Cornelia

There is a feature request that has been around for a long time to be able to "lock" the contents of a smart collection so you can work on the photos in it, before "releasing" it for recomputed contents.
My workaround is to copy from smart collection to dumb (I encountered this so often that I created a 1-keystroke plugin mini-feature to help). Before that I actually used a private keyword whose presence was enough to hold a photo in a smart collection (set the keyword to work on photos, clear the keyword to release them). Then as long as you add that keyword as criteria to every smart collection you may edit in, and add the keyword to every photo in the collection that you may work on... - yuck.

When editing an image in ps from a lr 4.2 smart collections image not shown back in smart collection

Hi all,
I have noticed at LR 4.2, that if you edit an image of a smart collection using PS (edit in PS function threw LR) and then save, the image is not appearing in the specific smart collection. Instead image appears in the parent folder from where the smart collections retrieves images.
Has anyone notice that as well??
Forgot to mention that my parent folder with files is a collection created with virtual copies of seleveted files. If i edit in Photoshop directly threw this virtual copies collection then the files appears in smart collections as well. but if i edit in PS directly from smart collections then files dont appear into smart collections neither at the virtual copies collection!!

"obviously you use virtual copies when creating those collections" - why? It seems to me that this just increases the number of images in your Library for no benefit, unless you want to independently edit the two image versions, one inside the Event collection and one outside the collection. If you ever wanted to see an unedited version of a particular image, LR retains the history (and before/after view) needed to show that, within the single thumbnail.
It is not necessary to make a Smart Collection in order to show only picked images from a particular event. You can use a Filter to show just the picked images and hide the rest. That means you can work inside the collection, and that means that when you edit an image to PS, the new LR version WILL inherit the collection membership as well as the Pick status, and therefore will immediately show next to the image it is based on.
I think this is going to be simpler and easier - BTW you don't have to go back to Library Grid view in order to apply filters, only in order to configure them in the first place. By saving Filter presets with a name, you can then select between these directly [from the menu at the right end of the Filmstrip] while you work, even in Develop- for example, "no filter", "picked", "unpicked", "rated two or more", whatever you want. Also you can switch between the recently-viewed collections and folders [from a menu when you click on the image details text toward the left end of the Filmstrip], to change the underlying content of the Filmstrip, to which you are applying these filters.
By "using selection criteria other than membership in a manual collection", I just meant: a special keyword, or a particular folder, or some combination of such things. But if you prefer to put images into a Collection, you can just use that directly and IMO you don't need the SC.
I personally like to have some kind of sufficiently identifying keywords on the image anyway, so that Exported copies will also show this information automatically... since an exported image will not reveal what collection its master image belonged to, that classification alone is not enough IMO.

Learning Filtering: Smart Collections doesn't show all filtered images

I'm studying using Classroom In A Book so this test is small and only using the few images provided on the CIAB CD.
It says in the book that a Smart Collection is a selection filtered according to whatever rules you specify.
This is fine, but when I click the down arrow to the left side of the screen to see the listings under Smart Collections only some of the filtered images are shown. Images that I marked with red are shown as a Smart Collection. Images that I marked with Green (only one) does not show. A single image that I marked with five stars shows up as a Smart Collection, so it can't be that you need more than one item marked before it shows up as a Smart Collection. I made sure that I have highlighted the folder that contains the images (made it local) and that they are displayed in Library Mode and in Grid View.
What might cause some of the images I have applied filter attributes to not to show up in Smart Collections?
TIA,
Ken

dorin_nicolaescu wrote:
Images that I marked with red are shown as a Smart Collection. Images that I marked with Green (only one) does not show. A single image that I marked with five stars shows up as a Smart Collection
What does the book say? It says "a Smart Collection is a selection filtered according to whatever rules you specify." It means the rules you specify for you r smart collection. These are default "canned" lightroom collections. The first happens to have the rule "show labelled with red", the second — "show 5-star images". Images tha match the rules defined in a SC - are displayed in that SC.
Double-click any smart collection to see its rules.
To create a new smart collection with your own rules, click Library>New Smart Collection.
The Smart Collections I have were created without me double-clicking on anything. The book just told me to try out some of the ways to mark images and to try out each way. All of a sudden, Smart Collections appeared with some of the marked images. I was just wondering why it stopped at some but did not do them all? Also, what if I don't want Smart Collections at this point? How do I turn it off from making arbitrary Smart Collections without my prompting?
Don't get me wrong dorin_nicolaescu, I am a beginner and know nothing. You sound like you have a good grip on what Smart Collections are and how they work. What you have writtenis helpful, especially the part about "To create a new smart collection with your own rules, click Library>New Smart Collection."
I am still in a Fog about why Smart Collections starts collections on its own.

Question regarding stacks, searches and smart collections

Apologies if this is considered a 'basic' question - but I hope that someone can help me.
I'm currently in the process of upgrading/migrating a reasonably large Photoshop Elements 6 catalog where I've made extensive use of hierarchical folder structures, keywords and star ratings to quickly locate photos using a range a different techniques.I've successfully upgrade/migrated the Photoshope Elements catalog into Lightroom 3 and as part of the verification that everything has come across OK - I've done some comparisons of catalog searches in Elements and Lightroom and seem to be getting some strange results which I'm not sure if this is simply how things work or if I'm doing something wrong. I think part of the issue is caused by the fact that Elements always does destructive edits - so I never edited original photos in Elements so made extensive use of copied photos and stacks - but this didn't seem to cause any issues as Elements seem to keep things straight.
In Elements, the result of a query or Smart Collection might return 18 stacks of photos (with most of the stacks containing multiple photos) - but for most purposes Elements simply treated this as 18 seperate photos and simply ignored all of the photos under the top of the stacks.
Now in Lightroom I get different results depending on how the photos are identified. If I use either a keyword or rating search using the 'Right Hand' panel - I get a photo count returned which is always much higher than 18 but Lightroom seems to retain the stacks so only displays 18 different stacks, However, if I put the same search criteria into a Lightroom Smart Collection - it retrives and displays ALL of the photos in the 18 stacks (so it displays 2-3 times more photos) and I can't seem to find a way to get the Smart Collection to honour these stacks. I know that I could probably alter each of my photo stacks and change the rating or keyword of all of the photos under the top of the stack - but trust me this is a huge amount of work!!
Is this simply the way Lightroom works? I can partially understand and accept the way direct keyword or rating searches work using the 'Right Hand' panel - although the photo counts are different from what I've got used to in Elements the way the photos are actually displayed is not that different. However, what really confuses me is the completely different way Smart Collections work when compared to the 'equivalent' direct query. Have I missed something? Or is this some form of technical issue/bug/future enhancement request?
Also, on a slightly related issue - I've noticed that keywords with spaces (or other special characters) seem to cause issues for Lightroom - while Elements seems to cope with these OK. From the reading I've done it looks like one of the most common suggestions is to simply remove the spaces (..etc.) in the keywords - is that what most people would recommend??
Any help, advice or other suggestions would be appreciated.
Kind Regards .... Jerry

I'm currently in the process of upgrading/migrating a reasonably large Photoshop Elements 6 catalog where I've made extensive use of hierarchical folder structures, keywords and star ratings to quickly locate photos using a range a different techniques
Please tell us EXACTLY the steps you are using to move your PSE catalog to Lightroom.
However, if I put the same search criteria into a Lightroom Smart Collection - it retrives and displays ALL of the photos in the 18 stacks (so it displays 2-3 times more photos) and I can't seem to find a way to get the Smart Collection to honour these stacks. I know that I could probably alter each of my photo stacks and change the rating or keyword of all of the photos under the top of the stack - but trust me this is a huge amount of work!!
I believe this is how Lightroom was designed to work. Smart collections don't recognize that some photos are at the bottom of the stack.
Also, on a slightly related issue - I've noticed that keywords with spaces (or other special characters) seem to cause issues for Lightroom - while Elements seems to cope with these OK. From the reading I've done it looks like one of the most common suggestions is to simply remove the spaces (..etc.) in the keywords - is that what most people would recommend??
I have no trouble whatsoever using keywords that have spaces in them. I have keywords that are "New York", "New Jersey", "Union Pacific Railroad", etc. Special characters, such as a comma, will probably cause trouble. Exactly what are you doing where spaces in keywords are not working properly?

How to move your b-rolls into (sub-event folder) separate folders or smart collection inside the same event?

When ever you create an event how can you create folders inside the event for different folders of b-roll? The reason why I ask is becuase when you create events, there becomes way too many events making a clutter. I have tried to cut, copy, import, and other ways after creating a smart collection or folder inside an event to create, I guess to say a sub-event inside and event. But it will only copy the b-roll into the main event only, not the folders or smart collections. An example would be in class you will have several events for projects, but I want to have one event that is broken up into several folders or smart collections for each project. Instead of having all 10 of your events open and displayed. This way you can create an Event Folder named Class Projects, then open up the Class Projects event folder and inside you can have several folders for each of the separate b-rolls for each certain project. I am wanting to do this instead of having 10 different kinds of b-roll footage all in one event, which is difficult to search through.

Actually you CAN create folders INSIDE an Event to place keyword/smart/anaysis colletions in.
Remember, you can apply Favorite/Rejected tags to whole clips, as well as ranges inside of clips. The same is true of keywords.
Related user manual pages here:
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver68416335
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver30ccd91f
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#ver7a77eb6c

How do I add or delete photos from a SMART collection?

In LR3 I recently created a Smart Collection from color flagged photos. Now I want to add a few, and delete a few. How?? The obvious method are not allowed with SMART Collections..... Thanks for any input -

Hi,
If you select ALL images that are in your Smart Selection that you wish to keep in a collection, then create a new 'Non-Smart' Collection, all the selected photographs are automatically added to your new Collection (well, they are in LR 3.3RC on Windows 7). You can then delete the 'Smart' collection, and add / delete photos to your new collection as you wish.

Organizing a smart collection

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