Table of Contents for

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC Book, Second Edition

3 The Library module

Introducing Lightroom catalogs and the Library module features

Photograph: The British Museum, London, © 2014 Martin Evening

Sony DSC RX100 | 10.4mm | 200 ISO | f/5.6 @ 1/250th

In this chapter, we are going to take a first look at how the Lightroom catalog works and how to use the Library module controls to navigate and manage your photos.

The Lightroom catalog is a key component of the program. Lightroom’s underlying architecture and central database are designed to provide speed and flexibility when managing and viewing your photos. This can be seen by the way Lightroom allows you to view and update your files more quickly, provides a well-thought-out interface for managing your images, and ties in smoothly with the Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web modules.

To begin with, we will look at what is inside the Lightroom catalog folder and how to keep your catalog data backed up and protected.

Lightroom actively encourages you to manage your photos better. As an image collection grows in size, you have to be especially careful as to how you organize everything so you know where all your files are when you want them. Suppose you were to fall ill and a co-worker needed to locate a specific image? How easy would it be for her to find it on your computer? In situations like this, what you require is a cataloging system that can manage your images and keep track of where everything is stored. The Lightroom catalog is written using the SQLite3 database format, which stores all the catalog data in a single file along with previews and Smart Previews data files that are easily transferable for cross-platform use. As you import your photos into Lightroom, the catalog keeps track of where the files are kept, as well as all the information associated with those files, such as the metadata and Develop settings. There is no known limit as to how many photos the catalog file can reference.

When you first installed Lightroom, a new Lightroom catalog folder was created in the username/Pictures folder (Mac) or the My Documents/My Pictures folder (PC). This folder contains a catalogname.lrcat catalog file (the master catalog file that contains all the catalog database metadata) and a catalogname Previews.lrdata file that contains the previews data (Figure 3.1). These two files store all the critical data that relates to the current Lightroom catalog. You may also see a catalogname Smart Previews.lrdata file. This will be dependent on whether you chose to build Smart Previews for any of your library images (see page 151). The catalogname.helper.lrdata database file is linked to the new folder search feature (see page 86). This file remains after the application is closed. It contains folder search data and is sort of a persistent cache for folder search optimization. The file isn’t very big in size and doesn’t require a backup. Each time you launch Lightroom, it checks to see if there is a helper.lrdata file and, if missing, creates a new one.

While Lightroom is running, a catalogname.lrcat-wal file will be present. This contains temporary internal work files that have not been written to the catalog database file yet. If Lightroom should suffer a crash, it may temporarily remain in the folder until Lightroom has been relaunched and had a chance to recover all the data. Whatever happens, do not delete this file because it may contain important data that can help Lightroom recover recently modified data information. The other temporary file is a catalogname.lock file, which is there to prevent other Lightroom users from accessing the same catalog file over a computer network. Should you suffer a computer crash while working in Lightroom and experience problems when relaunching the program, it could be because a .lock file is still present in the Lightroom catalog folder. If this is the case, try manually deleting the .lock file via the system Finder/Explorer. Lightroom should then relaunch as normal.

You may also see a Lightroom Settings folder. This shows up only if the “Store presets with catalog” option is checked in the Lightroom Presets preferences (see page 13). When checked, a Lightroom Settings folder is added inside the Lightroom catalog folder. This lets you store newly created Lightroom settings (all except profiles and Develop presets) locally within the Lightroom catalog. It may be useful if you want to keep certain catalog settings restricted to specific catalogs (such as FTP settings you might wish to keep private). The downside is if you later decide to uncheck this option, Lightroom will revert to referencing the main user Lightroom folder. As a consequence of this, some settings presets may appear to be missing because the catalog-stored Lightroom Settings folder will not be synchronized with the one stored in the user Lightroom folder.

If you go to the Lightroom menu (Mac) or Edit menu (PC) and choose Catalog Settings, this opens the Catalog Settings dialog shown in Figure 3.2. Here you can click the Show button (circled) to reveal the current location of the catalog in the Finder/Explorer. The Lightroom catalog folder does not have to be in the Pictures/My Pictures folder. You can move it to any drive location you like. Having said that, you cannot store the catalog on a network attached server (NAS) drive, on optical media, or within a locked (read-only) folder.

When you click the “Back up” button in the Back Up Catalog dialog, Lightroom creates a duplicate backup version of the main catalog file and saves it to the designated Backups folder, such as the one shown in Figure 3.1. Each time you back up the Lightroom catalog, Lightroom creates a new backup copy of the .lrcat catalog file and stores it in a new, dated folder within the Backups folder. If the catalog is bigger than 4 GB, you’ll see the dialog shown in Figure 3.4, which points out the backup catalog will be saved as a compressed ZIP file. If at any stage you notice there is a problem with the catalog not opening, you’ll have an opportunity to replace the current (corrupt) database with a previously backed-up copy of the catalog, placing the decompressed backup catalog in the root-level Lightroom folder. When you relaunch Lightroom, it will launch using this last backed-up version of the catalog. Over time, you may accumulate a lot of backup catalogs in the Backups folder, and it makes sense to cull the older ones as they become too out-of-date to be of any practical use.

The Back Up Catalog dialog contains an identical pop-up menu to the one in the Catalog Settings dialog that allows you to set the backup frequency. Click the Choose button to select the location where the backup catalog file should be stored. By default, the Backups folder is stored with the main Lightroom catalog folder, but you can store this folder anywhere you like on your system. After all, you might prefer the security of having the backup catalog stored on a separate drive to the master catalog. Next is an option to test the integrity of the catalog before backing up. Depending on the size of your catalog, an integrity check (Figure 3.5) should take only a few minutes to complete and can offer you peace of mind that your catalog file is in good shape.

All metadata edits, such as image adjustments and keywords, are written to the catalog file. This happens on a continuous basis and can, over time, lead to data fragmentation. So, if you find Lightroom is running more slowly than expected, you may want to optimize the catalog. You can do this by selecting the “Optimize catalog after backing up” option in the Back Up Catalog dialog. You can also optimize the catalog at any time choosing File Optimize Catalog. This displays the dialog shown in Figure 3.6, where you should click the Optimize button. It may take a few minutes to complete, but you should afterwards see an improvement in Lightroom’s performance. This process also highlights any potential problems within the catalog file and initiates a repair if necessary.

Here’s what to do to avoid the worst consequences. First, remember to make regular backups of the Lightroom catalog and to be on the safe side, choose a different drive to save the backup catalog to. The latest solid-state drives offer faster read/write speeds, but when they fail, they fail completely. So you need to anticipate what you would do if you were to lose all the data on the disk. This need not be a problem if you are in the habit of making scheduled backups of all your data to separate disks, where ideally, you keep one set of disks stored off-site (as well as backing up the catalog).

If the catalog does become corrupted, as you launch Lightroom you will see the dialog shown in Figure 3.7. It will always be worth trying to repair the affected catalog first. But if you choose to do this, it is best to quit Lightroom and make a backup copy of the catalog before repairing, just in case your attempts at a repair end up causing further damage to an already sick catalog file. If the catalog is too damaged to repair, you will be asked to choose a different catalog to launch with.

The main lesson here is to maintain backups of the catalog file, both locally as well as on separate backup hard drives. If you haven’t yet backed up your catalog, I suggest you do so now, just as I would also advise you to make scheduled backups of all your computer data.

Now let’s look at the options in this dialog. If you check “Always load this catalog on startup,” you can choose to make the selected catalog the default catalog that will open from now on each time you launch Lightroom. The “Test integrity of this catalog” option does the same thing as the option in the Back Up Catalog dialog—it lets you check to see if the catalog is in good shape before you launch it. Although it is a good thing to validate the catalog every now and then, I suspect most people would rather just get on with things and open the catalog straight away. If you don’t see the Lightroom catalog you are looking for listed, you can always click the Choose a Different Catalog button and navigate to locate the correct Lightroom catalogname.lrcat file. Or, you can click the Create a New Catalog button to create a brand-new Lightroom catalog in a new folder location. This, of course, is the same as choosing File New Catalog.

Using the Publish Services panel, you can publish collections of photos to sites such as Flickr. You can then use Lightroom to manage photos that have been published online and view any feedback comments via the Comments panel.

The Filter bar, located at the top of the Content area, provides a one-stop location for making refined photo selections based on text searches, ratings, and/or metadata. For example, you can filter the catalog based on a keyword search combined with a ratings filter, followed by a metadata filter based on which camera the photograph was taken with. The Quick Develop panel lets you make basic Develop adjustments without having to switch over to the Develop module. The Keywording panel is where you go to enter or edit new keyword metadata; plus, you can select keyword sets, including a Suggested Keywords set, which offers adaptable keyword suggestions based on your current photo selection. Keywords can be applied to images by dragging keywords onto selections in the content area, by dragging photos onto keywords, or by making a selection and adding keywords via the Keywording panel on the right. Other metadata information, such as the camera’s EXIF data, can be viewed via the Metadata panel, which offers several view mode options. You can also use this panel to add custom IPTC metadata, such as the title, caption, and copyright information.

If you click the Folders panel menu button (circled in Figure 3.14), this reveals the pop-up menu options shown in Figure 3.19. Here, you will see further options for how the root folders are displayed. You can keep to the default option, Folder Name Only, or you can select the Path From Volume option to identify the folders or the Folder And Path option (both are shown in Figure 3.20). These particular folder views can be used for instances where you wish to hide the parent folders but still need to see a full folder path or partial folder path view within the folder header.

Incidentally, when Show Photos in Subfolders is selected, you won’t be able to apply a custom sort order or stack photos across multiple folders. You can apply a custom sort order only when viewing a folder that contains no subfolders.

As you will have gathered by now, Lightroom gives you a lot of options, and this is a good example of where, if your workflow requires special attention to the identification of folders, Lightroom lets you do so. I think most people will be happy to stick with the default setup, although understanding how to manage the Show Parent Folder/Promote Subfolders commands is certainly important and useful to know.

1. Here is a view of the Folders panel in Lightroom and the associated system folder. To reveal the system folder from within Lightroom, I selected a photo that resided in the Moab-Arches folder, right-clicked to reveal the context menu, and chose Show in Finder (Show in Explorer on a PC).

2. In Lightroom, I created a new folder called Utah, as a child of the USA/SouthWest trip folder. I then moved the Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Moab-Arches, Monument Valley, and Zion Park folders inside the new Utah folder. As you can see, this placed the five folders inside the new Utah subfolder. This folder move step was also mirrored at the system level.

If the folder link is okay and it is only the files within that folder that have broken links, Lightroom displays an exclamation point icon in the grid cell (Figure 3.23). To restore a broken file link, click the exclamation point icon to open the missing link dialog shown in Figure 3.24. You can then click the Locate button to relocate the original source photo on the computer. Once this has been done for one photo, all the other missing files in that folder should automatically update as well.

This also raises an important point about the risks of working with both Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile. Adobe doesn’t officially support or recommend using both side by side, and there are good reasons for this. They want photographers to either adopt a desktop-centric workflow (Lightroom Classic CC), or a server-based workflow (Lightroom CC). If you sync from Lightroom Classic CC to Lightroom CC, there is always the risk of things going wrong if the master files that are primarily stored on the desktop are synced from Classic to Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile. It is possible to move files around in Lightroom Classic CC, rename them, or rename folders and they’ll keep in sync. But if the master files get deleted, they won’t be backed up in the cloud, which could cause all kinds of tech support problems for Adobe.

As long as you are aware of this and can take personal responsibility for making sure proper backup procedures are in place, I don’t see why this should prevent you adopting a workflow in which Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile work together. I personally find it immensely useful that when I take photos using my smartphone, these are added to Lightroom CC for iOS, automatically backed up to the cloud and appear downloaded to the computer running Lightroom Classic CC. Furthermore, I can sync collections to Lightroom CC/Lightroom mobile as synced albums that can also be made publicly accessible for easy web sharing with friends or clients. Because of this feature, it has been well over a year since I last used the Web module in Lightroom Classic CC.

If you go to the Folders panel filter (Figure 3.29), you can select Favorite Folders to filter the folders you have marked as favorites, which are marked with a star in the bottom right corner.

To apply a color label to a folder, right-click on a folder name in the Folders panel. Navigate to Add Color Label in the context menu and select a color from the submenu (Figure 3.30). To remove a color label, select None. To filter by colored folders, click on the magnifying glass in the Folders panel Filter bar and select Labeled Folders (Figure 3.31).

Therefore, if you need to reconcile changes that have been made to the folder contents at the system level, you can go to the Library module Library menu and choose “Synchronize folder.” When you do this, the Synchronize Folder dialog appears (Figure 3.32) and starts scanning the system folder to see if the folder contents match those shown in the corresponding Lightroom catalog folder. This provides some initial information about the differences between the two, such as whether there are any new photos to import, whether any photos in the Lightroom catalog are missing their master images, and whether any metadata changes have been made externally for which the Lightroom catalog will need to be updated.

If you check the “Import new photos” option, you can choose to import any new files that have been found and add them to the catalog. By default, the Synchronize Folder dialog automatically imports files to the same folder in which they currently reside. It does this without showing the Import dialog and without modifying the filename, Develop settings, metadata, or keywords. However, you can choose “Show Import dialog before importing,” which will open the Import Photos dialog shown in Figure 3.33 and default to selecting the New Photos segmenting option. The main reason for choosing to show the Import Photos dialog when synchronizing a folder is so you can adjust any of the settings as you carry out the import and update the Lightroom catalog. If you happen to have removed any photos from the folder at the system level, you can check the “Remove missing photos from the catalog” option to also remove the files from the catalog. Basically, these options allow you to keep the Lightroom catalog updated with new additions, as well as remove photos that are no longer located in the original system folder.

The “Scan for metadata updates” option works exactly the same as the “Read metadata from files” option in the Library module Metadata menu (see page 628). For example, if you have edited the metadata in any of the catalog images using an external program, such as Bridge, which saves the metadata edits you make back to the file’s XMP header space (or to an XMP sidecar file), you can use the Synchronize Folder dialog to synchronize such metadata changes with the Lightroom catalog.

1. Here, I opened a collection of architectural photos in which the photos originated from different folders. I selected an image and clicked the Folder Action button in the Metadata panel (circled), which then took me to a Folder view for that particular photo (the folder is highlighted here in blue).

2. If I wanted to see where the photo actually resided at the system level, I could choose Photo Show in Finder (Mac) or Show in Explorer (PC), or I could use (Mac) or (PC) to reveal the image in a new Finder/Explorer window. I chose a third method: I simply dragged a photo from the content area to a Bridge alias/shortcut.

3. Dragging the file to the Bridge shortcut displayed the photo’s folder in a new Bridge window with the photo selected.

Since the early days of personal computing, most of us have grown accustomed to relying on folder hierarchies to organize our computer documents. In fact, for a lot of people, the folder name may be the only meaningful method of identification they have for the files stored on their computers. Still, today, it seems a logical way to sort one’s files. On my computer, I have an Office documents folder inside a general Documents folder and within that a series of subfolders for things like letters, accounts files, and job quotes. But when it comes to organizing images, folder management has some distinct limitations. When you import a new set of images, how should you categorize them? Should you put them into folders arranged by date, by subject, or by job reference? When it comes to organizing photographs, it isn’t always so straightforward.

Even so, while Lightroom and other cataloging programs are not folder dependent in the way browser programs like Bridge are, the Folders panel in Lightroom remains an important navigational tool for most Lightroom users. Therefore, when working with a large catalog of images, it is important to consider early on how you are best going to organize your image files. When I first started shooting digitally, Lightroom didn’t exist and I thought I would sort all my work into A–Z folders. Now, because of the space limitations on hard drives back then, this meant I ended up spanning a lot of hard drives (Figure 3.34). Needless to say, it was not an ideal solution, and the biggest problem was that of scalability. I had to hope there would be enough room on each drive to accommodate a growing image library. Things got really difficult one year when the A–C drive started to run out of space (because I shot a lot for my A–C clients). With the arrival of Lightroom, I soon realized that the folder location where the files were kept no longer mattered so much. From there on, as I added new images, I found that the file organization did not need to be rigidly determined by which drives the files and folders were stored on. Basically, when you make use of metadata information to manage your files, the folder storage method you use is less relevant.

So, how should you organize your files and folders for Lightroom? I have seen a number of strategies suggested. The main thing you need to consider, as I said, is the scalability of the system you are going to use. As your collection of photographs grows, how well will your folder organization keep pace with this? I find it helps to split my catalog photos into different categories. For example, I have one drive for raw files shot on assignment, another to store the derivative versions that have been edited in Photoshop, and another to store all my personal work. This leaves me with quite a bit of breathing space on each drive; each is currently running at around 60% to 80% capacity. Not too long from now I will probably migrate all my files to even bigger drives. This is a process I see being repeated every few years or so.

Attempting to organize folders by name can prove tricky because you have to decide whether to primarily sort by location or job reference or some other criteria. But despite such drawbacks, it is a system that many people feel comfortable with. From my own point of view, I also find myself dependent on having a folder structure that integrates well when browsing in Bridge (because I need to demo Bridge workflows in my other books). I therefore find it necessary still to use a job-name or location-name hierarchy when cataloging my photos. This is what works for me because of my particular requirements. If you are mostly going to rely on Lightroom to catalog your photos, you could use a date-import folder structure. Importing everything into dated folders keeps things simple: The folder structure you use is agnostic as to the types of images you are importing (i.e., whether the photos are work or personal). It also allows you to be consistent and makes it easier to manage the catalog as more drives are required.

Lastly, you can use folders as a tool for segregating images in an image-processing workflow. In Chapter 2, I suggested importing your photos to a standard import folder. Here, you can think of using folders as part of a workflow pipeline in which the first thing you do is simply get the photos from the camera card onto the computer without having to immediately think about where the imported photos will eventually end up. In Figure 3.35, I have adapted a folder workflow first suggested by Peter Krogh, in which all photos are imported to an Import folder. From there, the next stage would be to move them to a Photos to keyword folder. This would be another holding folder, which would be like a reminder that the photos in there needed to be keyworded before they are promoted into one of the main catalog folders. At this point, you could then choose to categorize these main folders using descriptions, dates, or whatever works best for your setup. This kind of workflow offers simplicity and enforces good working practice where files are added to the main catalog only after they have been properly keyworded and you are ready to decide where they should go. If you use keywords to tag your images, it should not matter how the folders are structured. In fact, when you think about it, the way a computer actually segregates files into folders is done by applying a folder metadata tag to the files—the folder designation is simply another type of metadata. It takes just as much time to select all the photos from an imported shoot and assign a keyword tag as it does to name a folder. Hence, a workflow folder pipeline approach forces you to first think about assigning keywords to your images before you eventually place them into their final folders. I do not think it is necessary to be too prescriptive here as to how you should go about this.

The main thing to think about is how well will your method of archiving cope as your image library collection expands? One option is the bucket system, which Peter Krogh advocates in The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers, 3rd Edition. In this system, the catalog files are divided into a dated hierarchy of folders of equal size and the folder capacity matches that of DVD or Blu-ray recordable media. The idea here is that you have a DVD or Blu-ray disc that matches each folder in the catalog. In the event of file corruption or data loss (in chich the error may have been copied across to a backup drive), you will always have an optical, read-once media disc available to restore the files from (think 3-2-1; see the Tip). A system like this can provide the ultimate security for your data. In practice, I think most people will be fine as long as they carry out regular, scheduled backups to one or more backup drives.

To open the Library View Options, choose View View Options (or press [Mac] or [PC]) and click the Grid View button (Figure 3.37). There are essentially two modes for the Library Grid View: Compact Cells (Figure 3.38), which primarily shows the thumbnail with less data information, and Expanded Cells (Figure 3.39), which displays additional options in each cell. The “Show clickable items on mouse over only” option refers to the Quick Collection markers and rotation buttons. When you select this option, such clickable items are revealed only as you hover over a cell. When the “Tint grid cells with label colors” option is selected, this shades the entire cell border when you apply a color label to a photo and you can adjust the intensity of the tint color. “Show image info tooltips” enables you see additional info messages when rolling over the cell badge icons.

If you want the image’s flag status to appear in the cell border, check the Flags option in the Cell Icons section. The Flag icons indicate if an image has been identified as a pick () or as a reject () (see page 126 for more about working with flags). The Thumbnail Badges are the small icons you see in the bottom-right corner. Five types of badges can be displayed here, depending on what attributes have been applied to each image. If you double-click the Keywords badge (), this automatically takes you to the Keywording panel in the Library module, where you can start adding or editing keywords linked to this particular image. Double-clicking the Crop badge () takes you to the Develop module and activates the Crop overlay. If you double-click the Develop settings badge (), you also go directly to the Develop module, and if you click the Collections badge (), a pop-up menu appears allowing you to select from one or more collections the photo belongs to. Lastly, there is a Map badge to indicate if a photo has GPS data (). Clicking this takes you to the photo’s map location in the Map module, while -clicking takes you directly to a Google Maps view in your web browser. Check the Unsaved Metadata option if you wish to see an alert in the top-right corner if a photo’s metadata is out of sync with the main catalog (this is discussed later in Chapter 10). If a photo has been added to a Quick Collection, it will be identified in the Grid view with a filled circle Quick Selection Marker in the top-right corner. You can also click this circle to toggle adding or removing an image from a Quick Collection.

Figure 3.38 shows an example of a Compact Cell view (which is the default view when you first launch Lightroom). This particular cell view has the grid cell Index Number (the large dimmed number in the cell background) displayed in the Top Label section, along with the Copy Name or File Base Name (selected from the Figure 3.40 list). The Bottom Label section has room for the Rotation buttons, plus one other custom item from the Figure 3.40 list. When Rating is selected, the image rating is displayed, with five stars as the highest rated and no stars as the lowest. Although it is possible to assign star ratings by clicking the dots in the grid cell area, an easier way to assign ratings is to enter numbers (1–5) or use the square bracket keys (, ) on the keyboard.

Figure 3.39 shows an example of an Expanded Cells view. You can use the Show Header with Labels check box in the Expanded Cell Extras section to turn the header display options on or off. With the Expanded Cells view, there is room for two rows of information in the header, and you can use the pull-down menu list shown in Figure 3.40 to customize the information displayed here. You can also check the Show Rating Footer option to enable adding the Include Color Label and Include Rotation Buttons options. That concludes all the customizable options for the Grid cells, but note you can use the keyboard shortcut to cycle through the three Grid cell views: “Compact view with no badges,” “Compact view with badges showing,” and “Expanded view with badges showing.”

The selected thumbnails are shown in both the Grid and Filmstrip with a light-gray surround. Within a photo selection of two or more photos, there will always be a primary or “most selected” image (which will also be the one displayed in the Navigator). You can tell which this is because in the Grid or Filmstrip, the primary selected image is the one shaded a slightly lighter gray than all the other selected thumbnail cells. When a selection of photos is active, you can click to make another image in the photo selection the most active. Or, you can use the key (Mac) or key (PC) combined with the left/right arrows to select another photo as the “most selected” image within the current photo selection. Some macOS users may experience problems navigating using the keyboard arrows. If you do, go to the System Preferences and select Keyboard Keyboard Shortcuts. At the very bottom, you will see “Full Keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between.” Make sure the “Text boxes and Lists only” option is selected here.

You can reorder the way the photos appear by dragging the thumbnails within the Grid or Filmstrip. As you move a photo from one location to another, you will see a thick black line appear between the cells. Release to drop the photo (or photos) in this new location. But it is important to stress here that you can do this only when working with a single folder or single collection view. Otherwise, you will find custom ordering is disabled. For example, if you have multiple folders selected or you have selected a folder that contains one or more subfolders, you will not be able to drag images to reorder them. Similarly, if you create a collection set that contains other collections or if you are viewing a temporary collection in the Catalog panel, custom ordering will be disabled.

When the “Show message when loading or rendering photos” option is selected, you will see status messages appear in the content area, such as when an image is loading an updated preview or you have just assigned a new flag or star rating to a photo. The other two options relate to displaying video files. You can choose to display the frame number when displaying the video time. This shows finer time increments in the video timeline display. Enabling the “Play HD video at draft quality” option can improve playback performance in the Library module Loupe view, but at the expense of lower video image quality.

2. If you use Quick Develop to make Develop adjustments, these are applied to all photos in the grid and Filmstrip selection (the Quick Develop panel is ideal for such adjustments). Here, I decreased the Exposure for all the selected images.

3. If you go to the Loupe view mode and apply a Quick Develop adjustment (such as convert to Black & White), however, the adjustment is applied only to the current photo, even though the photo selection remains active in the Filmstrip.

4. Back in the Grid view, you can deselect a photo selection by clicking anywhere in the cell border area to deselect all but the selected photo.

You can scroll by click-dragging the photo. Alternatively, you can drag the white rectangle in the Navigator panel (Figure 3.46) to quickly scroll the image with a minimum amount of movement. In the full-screen Loupe view shown in Figure 3.45, the rectangle in the Navigator represented the area that was currently visible in the content area (relative to the whole image). Lastly, you have the Zoom view slider in the Toolbar. This lets you magnify the image from a Fit view, right up to an 11:1 magnification.

Enabling Guides overlays the image with movable crosshair guides (Figure 3.49). By default, these appear centered on the image view. If you hold down the key (Mac) or key (PC), you can click where the guides intersect and drag to reposition them and double-click the crosshair intersection to reset to the center again. This feature might be useful for still-life photographers, as you can check if something is correctly positioned or aligned in an image. It might also be useful when preparing images to go in a slideshow presentation. For example, if you were preparing a slideshow of landscape images, you could use the guides to ensure that the horizon level was aligned identically in a photo sequence. Or, you could use it to help align image elements so they appeared to fade smoothly from one image to another.

This feature is useful if you wish to overlay images with a layout so you can see which images work well within a particular layout design and is particularly useful when shooting tethered in the studio. It can also be helpful if you need to use an art director’s layout as a guide to how things should be arranged in a shot. And finally, it might be a good way to compare and align a reference photograph with what you are about to shoot. For example, if shooting tethered, you could use an existing photo as a reference and use a Layout Image Loupe Overlay view to help align what you are shooting to get it to match the overlay photo. It is all too easy to delete an overlay layout image by accident, or lose track of a previously used overlay layout image when you switch to use a different image. With this in mind, I suggest you create a dedicated subfolder within the Lightroom presets folder in which to store overlay layout images.

The main thing to note here is that the overlay image must be saved as a PNG file. The PNG file format supports transparency. So, if you were editing a scanned layout in Photoshop, you would want to create a semitransparent layer and then save it as a PNG, ready to load as a layout overlay in Lightroom.

If you hold down the key (Mac) or key (PC), this reveals the Opacity and Matte opacity options at the bottom of the content area view. You can then click and hold on either the Opacity or Matte values to reveal a scrubby slider and drag right or left to increase or decrease the values. With the key (Mac)/ key (PC) still held down, you can adjust the size of the overlay image relative to the image view and double-click inside the overlay to reset the bounds of the image. You can see an example of the layout overlay being resized in Figure 3.50.

If Embedded & Sidecar is selected, Lightroom uses whatever larger previews are available as it imports the images, utilizing either the embedded JPEG previews or sidecar file previews to quickly build the thumbnails. Depending on the camera default settings you are using, these will most likely look different once Lightroom has had a chance to build proper previews from the image data. As explained in the previous chapter, this now only happens after photos are selected (or you can configure the preferences to build previews when idle). In Figure 3.52, you can see a typical example of the change in appearance from a low-res, camera-embedded JPEG thumbnail to a Lightroom-generated preview using the Adobe Standard profile (see: “Camera-embedded previews vs. Lightroom previews” on page 112). If you are importing photographs that have already been edited in Lightroom (or some other program), this option makes full use of the larger previews that are already present. This is a particularly useful choice when importing DNG files, as there is a good chance that the previews will already be based on previously applied Camera Raw/Lightroom Develop settings. In such circumstances, the previews will most likely not appear to change after being imported. Also, when the Embedded & Sidecar option is selected, Lightroom will make use of the best preview available. Therefore, if you shoot using the raw + JPEG mode and the JPEGs are full size, Lightroom will take advantage of these to use as an embedded preview.

When Standard is selected, Lightroom avoids using the embedded previews altogether and renders the standard previews directly. It reads the full image data and builds the thumbnails and initial previews to a standard size only, based on the default Lightroom Develop settings. The standard-sized previews will let you see a greater level of detail when displaying large grid cell thumbnails in the content area or when viewing at a standard-sized Loupe view.

If the 1:1 option is selected, Lightroom reads the full image data, builds thumbnails, and creates standard and full-sized 1:1 previews. The advantage of the Standard or 1:1 option is that you won’t always get confused by seeing low-resolution previews that show one color interpretation (the embedded preview version), only for them to be replaced shortly by a new color interpretation (the Lightroom-processed standard-sized preview version). When you render standard-sized or 1:1 previews, the Camera Raw cache also gets updated. Lightroom Classic CC generates standard and 1:1 previews fast enough that you should notice better walk-through performance, especially at 1:1.

Smart Previews play a role, too, in allowing access to proxy versions of your image assets when these are offline and speeding up the standard view Develop module editing, but this does not affect the previews, as viewed in the Library module.

Having said all the above, you also need to check the Lightroom General preferences. If the “Replace embedded previews with standard previews during idle time” option is unselected, then the Loupe view may retain the embedded previews and not update to display larger, Standard, or 1:1 previews until you have explicitly instructed Lightroom to generate such previews, or you have viewed the photos via the Develop module (which will always generate an updated Standard preview). If this option is enabled, then Lightroom will gradually generate Standard previews during idle time to replace the embedded previews.

The 1:1 previews are generated only whenever you choose to zoom in on an image and inspect it close up. But you can force Lightroom to build 1:1 previews in advance. You can do this via the Import Photos dialog File Handling panel, or you can do it after everything has been imported by going to the Library module Library Previews menu and choosing Render 1:1 Previews. This forces Lightroom to generate 1:1 previews for all the selected photos. These will, at the same time, regenerate the standard-sized previews. 1:1 previews are useful because they can speed up the time it takes to review images at a 1:1 zoom view or higher. There is also an option in the Catalog Settings File Handling section (see page 113) that lets you automatically discard 1:1 previews after a designated period of time. If you are unconcerned about the Previews.lrdata file getting too big, you can choose to never discard the 1:1 previews. After all, unless you are using a solid-state drive, hard-disk space is quite cheap these days. If you go to the Library Previews submenu, you can also choose the Discard 1:1 Previews option. This opens the warning dialog shown in Figure 3.54.

Figure 3.58 shows a Survey view of the photos currently selected in the Filmstrip. (I will discuss the Filmstrip a little later in this chapter.) The arrangement and size of the individual Survey view previews adjust dynamically according to the number of photos you have selected and the amount of screen real estate that is available in the content area. So, depending on the number of photos you have selected, the orientation of those photos, and the physical size of the content area, Lightroom adjusts the Survey view to display all the selected photos as big as possible. However, if you make a really large selection of photos and choose to view them in the Survey view, there is a cut-off point. Lightroom may show only the first 100 or so photos and will display the number of remaining photos in the bottom-right corner to tell you how many photos in the current selection are not included in the visible Survey view.

The primary, or most selected, image is displayed with a white border, and you can navigate the photos displayed in a Survey view by click-selecting individual images or using the Left and Right Arrow keys to navigate between them. You can remove photos from a Survey view selection by clicking the X icon in the bottom-right corner, or by -clicking (Mac) or -clicking (PC) the photos you wish to deselect (clicking either in the Survey view content area or in the Filmstrip). The Survey view images will then automatically resize to make full use of the screen space now available in the content area. Note that removing a photo from a Survey view simply removes it from the selection and does not remove it from the catalog.

Personally, I find the Survey view mode to be a useful tool for editing selections of photos, more so, in fact, than the Compare view that is described on page 116. I find it particularly helpful when I am working with clients and have arrived at a shortlist of favorite shots. By using the Survey view mode, the client can see all the final candidate images on the screen at once, much in the same way you would sort through a final selection of photographs on a light box. When editing personal work, I love the simplicity of the Survey view and how it provides you with a quick overview of a final selection of pictures and helps you gauge how well they work alongside each other.

If the Navigator panel is open, you can use it to navigate the Compare view display (Figure 3.60). Use a single click in the Navigator preview to zoom in to whatever the close-up view zoom level is, and then click and drag the zoomed-in rectangle to analyze different areas of the two images as they are viewed side by side. Of course, you still have the zoom lock button in the Toolbar to unlock the zoom and scrolling for the two images in order to navigate each separately. To return to the normal zoomed-out view, just double-click anywhere inside the Navigator preview. When you have decided which image is the favorite select, click the Done button (circled in Figure 3.59) to display the current select image in a standard Loupe view.

1. In the Filmstrip, you can tell which photo is the select and which is the candidate by the icon in the top-right corner. The select photo (orange border) is indicated with a hollow diamond, and the current candidate photo (blue border) is indicated by a filled diamond.

2. In this step, I had the photo highlighted with the orange border as the current select and the photo highlighted with the blue border as the current candidate.

3. I proceeded to use the Right Arrow key to move forward through the Filmstrip selection and compared other photos with the original select.

4. When I had found a new photo that I liked more, I used the Up Arrow key to promote this candidate photo to become the new select and continued searching for alternative candidates.

The Filmstrip is always accessible as you move between modules in Lightroom and provides a secondary, Library view of the catalog contents (Figure 3.63). Therefore, when working in the other Lightroom modules, the Filmstrip provides an overview of the currently filtered photos in the catalog (Figure 3.62). As with the Library module Grid view, the Filmstrip lets you make selections of photos. Editing by dragging is possible via the Filmstrip, and any sort order changes you make will be reflected in the Library module Grid view (although dragging won’t always be possible; see page 98 for the reasons why). Where custom sort order edits are possible, these are remembered when you save a selection of photos as a collection.

The Filmstrip allows you to navigate through your photos just as you can in the Library Grid view. For example, you can press the Left or Right Arrow key to progress through the folder thumbnails one at a time, or hold down an Arrow key to quickly navigate through the thumbnails and see the Loupe preview update as you do so. Or, you can drag the Filmstrip’s slider bar, or click and hold down the side arrows to scroll even more quickly through the Filmstrip view.

Let’s now look at how you might use a dual-display setup. Figure 3.65 shows a secondary display Loupe view ( toggles showing/hiding a secondary Loupe view window), where there are three options in the top-right corner. The Normal mode displays the current image and updates it whenever you make a new image active. The Live view updates as you hover over the photos in the main Grid view or the Filmstrip, which is handy if you want to inspect other photos in close-up without losing the current image selection. It also means that if you have the second display set to a 1:1 view, you can run the pointer over the photos in a Grid view and use the 1:1 Loupe view as a quick focus checker. You should try this out—it’s like running a large magnifying glass over a set of contact sheets. The Locked view option locks the Loupe view in place and does not update until you unlock from this view mode. This offers an alternative way for you to compare photos side by side, which leads me to the secondary Compare view mode shown in Figure 3.66 ( toggles showing/hiding the secondary Compare window). The secondary Compare view shown here works just like the main Compare view. Figure 3.67 shows the secondary display Grid view ( toggles showing/hiding the secondary Loupe window). You have here the same controls as are found in the normal Grid view, including a menu list of recently visited folders/collections, a thumbnails slider to adjust the size of the Grid display, and a keyboard shortcut to show/hide the Filter bar. Basically, the keyboard shortcuts for the secondary display are just the same as those used for the normal display, except you add a key to the shortcut.

It is possible that you may want to use this feature to control a separate display that is set up for clients to view picture selections. If the secondary window is active and in full-screen mode, you can go to the Window Second Display menu and choose Show Second Monitor Preview ( F11 [Mac] or F11 [PC]). This opens the control preview shown in Figure 3.68. This might be useful where you want to control a display that was set up in a different location and you were using it to preview photos to clients. This kind of setup could be useful for wedding and portrait photographers when presenting photographs on a separate display.

Having marked photos with flag ratings, you can then use the filter controls in the Filmstrip to display your flagged selections. These flag filter buttons are cumulative, which means you can click each to show or hide the flagged, unflagged, or rejected photos. In Figure 3.73, you can see the flag filter buttons in the Filmstrip, which can be used to filter photos according to their flag status. In the content area above, you can see the flag status as applied to the grid view cells. Notice how a reject flag status also dims a rejected cell in the Grid view and Filmstrip.

One more important thing to point out here is that flag ratings cannot be saved to the XMP space. Therefore, flag ratings can’t be viewed in other programs. Star ratings, on the other hand, are universal and can be written to XMP data.

You can assign star ratings to reflect a photo’s importance. For example, you can use a one-star rating to make a first pass selection of your favorite images and afterwards use a one star or higher filter to view the one-star photos only. In Figure 3.76, you can see how I used the filter controls in the Filmstrip to display only those images that had a one-star rating or higher. Then, you can make a further ratings edit in which you assign higher star ratings to those you consider to be the very best photos. If you have second thoughts about the photos you previously rated as one star, you can give these a zero rating to remove them from the filtered view. You can save a ratings filter as a filter preset. In Figure 3.77, a filter for three stars or higher was active. I went to the Custom Filter menu and chose Save Current Settings as New Preset and saved this as a 3 stars or higher filter.

I suggest you use the higher ratings sparingly. I use a zero rating for images that have yet to be rated or are unsuitable for further consideration and a one-star rating for pictures that are possible contenders. During a second-pass picture edit, I use a two-star rating to mark my favorite images, and later I may use three stars to mark the final-choice images. I prefer not to assign the higher star ratings too freely. This leaves me some headroom to assign higher ratings later. I want to be careful as to how I allocate my four- or five-star ratings. These should be reserved for the very best shots only.

You can assign color labels via the Photo Set Color Label menu and choosing a label color. Color labels can also be assigned by clicking a color label button on the Toolbar (Figure 3.78), or you can use keyboard numbers to assign labels as follows: red (), yellow (), green (), blue () (there is no keyboard shortcut available for purple). These number shortcuts have a toggle action, so you can press to apply a red label and press again to remove it. You can use the key plus a number to apply a color label and move to the next photo. Or, do so with the key enabled. Lastly, you can add a color label by typing in the name in the Color Label field of the Metadata panel. The Library grid and Filmstrip cells normally appear tinted when you apply a color label. You can customize the Library View Options (Figure 3.79) by adjusting the intensity of the tint color from the default 20% setting. Or, you can deselect the “Tint cells with label colors” option and, instead, check the Include Color Label item in the Show Rating Footer section.

The easiest way to access the Stacking submenu is to right-click in the Grid view or Filmstrip. This lets you quickly access the Stacking submenu options from the main context menu (Figure 3.81). If you want to remove an image or selection of images from a stack, select the image or images first, and then use the context menu to choose Remove from Stack. Similarly, you can use this same menu to choose Collapse All Stacks or Expand All Stacks.

If you create a stack to group a series of related photos, it may be that the first image in the sequence does not best represent all the other photos in the stacked group. To switch photos, expand the stack, select the photograph you like most in the series, and use to move that image up or use to move an image down the stacking order. Or, to make things simpler, just select the photo you want to have represent all the images in the stack and use the Move to Top of Stack command ().

Whenever you choose Photo Create Virtual Copy, the virtual copy (proxy) image is automatically grouped in the stack along with the master image. Also, when you choose Photo Edit in Photoshop, there is also a preference for stacking the edited copy photos with the originals.

1. Here is a Library view of a folder containing over 900 photos from a time-lapse sequence. I wanted to automatically stack the folder contents, so I went to the Photo Stacking menu and chose Auto-Stack by Capture Time. I adjusted the Time Between Stacks slider to be between 33 seconds of each other.

2. The photos in the content area were now stacked, but the stacks remained expanded. To collapse the stacks, I clicked the badge icon in the top-left corner. (Clicking again expands the stacks.) I could have also right-clicked to access the context menu and chosen Collapse All Stacks.

You can view the photos in the Quick Collection by clicking Quick Collection in the Catalog panel (Figure 3.83), choosing File Show Quick Collection, or using the (Mac) or (PC) shortcut. You can then choose File Return to Previous Content (or press or again) to return to the previous Library module view. With Quick Collections, you can make selections of photos from separate sources and group them in what is effectively a temporary collection. Quick Collections remain “sticky” for however long you find it useful to keep the images grouped this way. A Quick Collection is always remembered even after you quit Lightroom—no saving or naming is necessary—and the images remain grouped this way until you decide to remove them from the collection. If you want to save a Quick Collection as a permanent collection, you can do so by using (Mac) or (PC). This shortcut opens the Save Quick Collection dialog (Figure 3.84), which lets you save the current Quick Collection as a normal catalog collection. Once you have done this, it is good housekeeping practice to clear the Quick Collection, which you can do by choosing File Clear Quick Collection or using (Mac) or (PC). Figure 3.85 shows an example of how a Quick Collection can be made up of photos from more than one source folder.

You can group images from different source locations (i.e., different folders) and then select Quick Collection to view all the selected images at once. In the example shown here, I highlighted the source folder locations in the Folders panel for the photos that made up this current Quick Collection.

To create a new collection from within the Library module, click the + button in the Collections panel (Figure 3.86) or use the (Mac) or (PC) shortcut. This opens the Create Collection dialog shown in Figure 3.87. Here, you have the option to save a new collection to the top-level hierarchy within the Collections folder or save within a collection set (see page 142). You will normally want to keep “Include selected photos” selected. You can also select the “Make new virtual copies” option if you wish to create virtual copies only from the master photos when creating a new collection. This might be useful if you want to create a new collection for the purpose of creating say, black-and-white versions of the selected master photo images. “Set as target collection” will make this collection the target for quick collection additions in place of the Quick Collection in the Catalog panel (you’ll see a plus sign appear next to the collection). “Sync with Lightroom CC” is normally checked by default, allowing you to sync a collection. To make the collections management easier, you can filter collections. In Figure 3.88, I applied a filter to the Collections panel. In this instance, I typed “ashridge,” which shortlisted the two collections shown here.

Whenever you make a selection of photos and enter the Book, Slideshow, Print, or Web modules, you normally have the freedom to play around with the settings without saving anything. After all, you won’t necessarily need to create a new collection each time you visit, say, the Print module. But when you do want to permanently save the work you’ve done, you have the option to do so.

In Figure 3.89, you can see examples of the Create bars for the four “create” modules. These are made visible by default, but you can use the Backslash key (\) to toggle showing/hiding them. The Create bar is displayed prominently in order to prompt you to save what you are doing as a module collection and not lose any work. This is particularly important when working in the Book module, because this can include information about the way the pages have been laid out, as well as any text that might have been added. To create a module collection, just click the Create button to open the Create dialog (Figure 3.90). You can then enter a name, select a Set to contain the collection, choose to make new virtual copies, or set as the target collection.

Clicking the Collections panel + button also opens a menu from which you can launch the Create dialog to create a module-specific collection for the particular module you are working in (Figure 3.91).

Let’s say you want to create a new module collection, such as a new slideshow collection. This will add a new module collection to the Collections panel, which you will be prompted to name via the Create dialog (Figure 3.90), and the Web collection will have a special icon () to distinguish it from other types of collections in that panel. The current Filmstrip contents are used as the source and preserve everything that is in that Filmstrip selection, such as a custom sort order.

Module collections can be created from any collection of photos except for Smart Collections, but photos that have been added to a module collection can be shared across other module collections. Therefore, a single photo can be used in multiple Book collections, as well as in other Slideshow, Print, and Web collections.

To duplicate an existing collection, -drag a collection within the Collections panel. This can be useful where you need to, say, duplicate a current book collection to create variations of the current book layout.

However, when you are in one of the create modules—Book, Slideshow, Print, or Web—you can select any collection that is specific to that module to switch working between different collections of that module type. So, if you are in the Book module, you can click on other book collections to switch between different book projects. If you then single-click another type of module collection, this will select the photos in that collection and take you to the associated module. For example, if I were to click on the Landscape book collection highlighted in Figure 3.94, this would filter the catalog to select the 48 photos in that collection. If I were in the Library, Develop, or Map module, I would have to double-click the collection to select the photos and take me to the Book module. But if I were in the Slideshow, Print, or Web module, this would also take me straight to the Book module. Once in the Book module, I would see the book collection with the book layout in the same state as the last time I worked on it. If I were to then select one of the other Book module collections listed in Figure 3.94, this would let me switch between different book projects. If I then clicked on the Scotland Prints Print module collection, this would select the photos contained in that collection and take me to the Print module using the print settings that were applied at the time the Print collection was last saved. Remember also, when you work on a saved module collection, any edits you make to the module settings are saved automatically, overwriting the previous module collection settings.

Deleting collections in Lightroom Classic CC should be fast, although this depends on the catalog size as well as the number of collections and images in a collection. Lastly, if you wish to rename a collection, you can do so via the Collections panel context menu, shown in Figure 3.97.

After you create a Smart Collection, you can double-click to edit the Smart Collection settings. Figure 3.101 shows the Edit Smart Collection dialog, where I changed the File Type from TIFF to Raw. So instead of selecting all the TIFF master retouch files from that year, I could edit the Smart Collection to filter all the raw files associated with client jobs for that year into a Smart Collection.

Smart Collections can filter based on static criteria, such as the number of star ratings assigned to images or the keywords added. You can create Smart Collections to filter photos that have missing copyright notices or that have not been keyworded yet, or to search by metadata status. You can even create a Smart Collection based on whether the camera flash fired or not. Other Smart Collections can be more dynamic, such as “photos that have been shot in the last month.” Using the Collections panel context menu, you can export Smart Collections settings for selected Smart Collections. This allows you to share your Smart Collections settings with other users (Figure 3.102). Alternatively, simply export a catalog with, say, a single photo in it. This will let you achieve the same thing when you import from catalog, but preserves your Smart Collection hierarchy.

If you select an image and press the key, you will see the dialog shown in Figure 3.108. Clicking Remove simply removes a photo from the Lightroom catalog and the original remains on the computer hard disk. To avoid seeing this dialog, you can instead use . If the photo is part of a published collection, such as Flickr, you will see a warning dialog asking if you wish to remove or leave the photos on the published service still. The other option is Delete from Disk. This removes the photos from the catalog and sends them to the system Trash/Recycle bin. A warning message reminds you this process cannot be undone, although the files will not be completely deleted until you choose to empty the Trash/Recycle bin. Alternatively, you can use (Mac) or (PC) to remove a photo and send it to the Trash/Recycle bin, where again, you will still be able to recover the files before they are permanently deleted—you can always rescue the deleted images from the trash and import them back into the Lightroom catalog again. The fact that the Delete command does not irrevocably remove files from your system provides a margin of safety. However, as discussed in “Editing collections” on page 140, if the photo or photos you are about to delete are also in synced collections, you need to consider what will happen here. The Figure 3.108 dialog points out that clicking Delete from Disk removes the photo from the disk as well as from any collections synced to Lightroom CC. If these are masters stored with Lightroom Classic CC there will be no backup on the cloud.

Whenever you work with photos that are offline and are therefore working with Smart Previews only, the Delete option is deliberately made unavailable. This is a deliberate policy to prevent users from deleting photos that are currently offline.

You can use this command to create an exact duplicate of your catalog with all the photos in the original catalog copied to a new catalog folder, preserving the hierarchy of all the folders that make up the current catalog. Or, you might want to use it to export a subsection of the catalog. For example, when I am on location working on a laptop computer, I will return with files that have been imported into the laptop Lightroom catalog that I then wish to add to the main Lightroom desktop catalog. I could simply choose to save all the metadata and copy the files (with their updated metadata) across to the main catalog. But, when I choose to export as a catalog, I can create a copy of not just the files but also the preview data that has already been generated plus any virtual copies that I might have made. You can then use the Import from Catalog feature (see page 149) to add the exported Lightroom catalog information and files to the main catalog on a separate computer running Lightroom. Of course, when you choose to export the master negatives with a catalog export, this can considerably slow down the export process and you will see the progress bar indicator in the top panel of the Library window (Figure 3.110). Furthermore, when creating a new exported catalog, you’ll need to have at least 200 MB of free disk space on your computer, which Lightroom uses as a temporary file storage directory.

If you check the “Export negative files,” Build Smart Previews, and “Include available previews” options, you can end up with an exported catalog that looks like the one shown in Figure 3.111, where the catalog folder has an .lrcat catalog file, a Smart Previews.lrdata file that contains Smart Preview versions (when generated), and a Previews.lrdata file that contains the thumbnails and preview image data, along with a subfolder containing the master negatives.

Lightroom goes through several stages of preview rendering. At a minimum, Lightroom should have stored thumbnail and Standard previews of each photo in the catalog. You should at least see good-quality thumbnails, but if Lightroom has not had a chance to render proper standard-sized previews (at the pixel size you set in the Preferences dialog), then the standard/full-screen Loupe view previews may look pixelated (because they’ll be nothing more than enlarged thumbnails). However, if you export a catalog that contains Smart Previews, it will be possible for the catalog to subsequently render standard-sized previews from the available Smart Previews.

The “Include available previews” option is therefore more critical when exporting a catalog that does not include Smart Previews or master negatives. If a catalog is exported without either of these, there will be no way to re-render them. In which case, you may want to consider choosing Library Previews Render Standard-Sized Previews before you export the catalog. If you think you’ll need to include full-resolution previews, you may also want to choose the Render 1:1 Previews option. By at least selecting the Render Standard-Sized Previews option, you’ll have decent screen previews when working on the exported catalog.

Most of the time you will want to include previews as part of an export. But there are also some good reasons why you might not always want to include them. For example, if you need to export a catalog that contains just the most recent metadata edits (so that you can sync these up with a master catalog), then deselecting “Include available previews” saves having to carry out this extra step and makes the export process much faster. Basically, you can use an export with no negatives and no previews as a means to simply export the most recent metadata edits from one catalog to another.

If you are worried about overwriting the current Develop settings, you can choose “Preserve old settings as a virtual copy” (especially if you also choose to replace “Metadata, develop settings, and negative files”). If you want to avoid overwriting any of the raw masters, you can select the “Replace non-raw files only” option, which can save time, because the raw files will not be overwritten and only the metadata edit settings will be imported to the catalog. As an extra security option, any photos that are exactly the same (i.e., they share the same creation date) will not be imported or overwrite the originals.

Choosing to generate Smart Previews as you import new photos can prove useful in a number of ways. When working in the Develop module at a standard Fit or Fill screen view, a Smart Preview can load more quickly, allowing you to start work sooner on a small (proxy) version rather than waiting for the entire master image to load. This might help when editing large capture files. There is also an item in the Performance preferences for Lightroom to fully use Smart Previews in place of originals for image editing. The Smart Preview status is indicated in the Histogram panel in the Library and Develop modules (Figure 3.115), along with a brief description of the four indicated states. Figure 3.116 shows the Grid cell badge for an image where only the Smart Preview is available. An identical badge is also displayed in the Filmstrip.

Another benefit is that Smart Previews are easily portable with the catalog, letting you work offline more effectively. As I mentioned previously, a catalog without negatives has certain restrictions, but if you generate Smart Previews for some or all of your catalog images, you will be able to work offline more effectively. You can use the Develop module and Quick Develop to edit original images offline, and once the catalog is reunited with the originals, the edits applied offline are updated automatically. Note that original files are prioritized over Smart Previews and these will always be used when available—a Smart Preview is used only in the absence of an original file. There are some limitations, though. Because Smart Previews are reduced-sized versions, when editing a Smart Preview, you won’t be able to evaluate an image properly to adjust the Detail panel settings or other adjustments that require working at a proper 1:1 view mode (when zooming to 1:1, this zooms to the maximum Smart Preview resolution rather than a true 1:1). Smart Previews can be built from photos only and not video files. Smart Previews can be exported as JPEGs and used with Publish Services. You can geotag photos using the Map module. You can lay out a book in the Book module using Smart Previews, but not actually create a print book (to do that, the originals will need to be online).

Downloadable Content:

thelightroombook.com

However, thanks to Smart Previews, there is another way. If you place the entire catalog on an external drive and choose to generate Smart Previews for all the photos in the catalog, it can be made portable between different computers, so long as both are able to run Lightroom. This way you can transfer from working on one computer to another in a matter of a few minutes. You can have all the master assets stored on one computer system and be able to edit the files whether working online or offline, plus preserve the Publish Services settings. If this sounds appealing, it makes sense to use an external drive that is easy to carry around and that does not require an external power source; ideally, a solid-state drive (SSD) that provides fast read/write access and has enough disk capacity to hold the catalog file plus previews and Smart Previews data. These days, a 512 GB SSD would not be unreasonably expensive, and it would be just about big enough for most Lightroom users’ needs. I have tried this approach, and it works very well. You can edit offline remotely, and as soon as the catalog is reunited with the master images on the main computer, Lightroom updates them automatically. Having said that, there are some pitfalls to be aware of. I recommend regular catalog updates to a backup folder on the host computer, as well as regular scheduled backups of the drive holding the catalog to include the previews and Smart Previews files. Also be aware of the consequences if the external drive holding the catalog were to lose its connection. This happened to me while using a drive that proved to be unreliable. No lasting damage was done, but the incident highlighted a major weakness in this way of working. Weigh these considerations carefully before doing the same. The following steps explain in more detail how this can be done.

1. Let’s say you have all the master catalog asset files stored on a main computer and wish to continue working with the catalog remotely. With my setup shown here, the catalog files, including the Smart Previews, were stored on an external drive.

2. I closed Lightroom on the main computer, disconnected the external drive, and reconnected it to a laptop computer. I opened Lightroom on the laptop, launching the same catalog stored on the external drive.

3. I was then able to edit the catalog on the laptop. This could have included making Develop module edits (providing Smart Previews were available for those images).

4. I quit Lightroom on the laptop, disconnected the drive, and reconnected it to the main computer. I then launched Lightroom again, opening the same catalog. The Develop edits made while working on the laptop were automatically synchronized to the main computer.