Folders or Collections?

[Gerry Pasternack]

New to LR and trying to understand the benefits of Collections over Folders.

All of my photos are stored on a dedicated HD using a different Win/XP folder for each shoot. I’ve imported these folders into LR as named folders and keyworded the contained images appropriately. I can quickly find the photo I need using a combination of filters. All seems fine for my needs.

Should I have imported my images as Collections instead of as Folders? What would be the benefit? Right now I don’t see the need to keep the same image in multiple places. I can always add a Collection in the future if I find the need for specialized groupings.  If I need to assemble a slide-show with images from several folders I can invoke this by choosing slides directly from my LR folders and keeping them as a Quick-Collection for as long as needed.

Sooo should I have started out by forming Collections of my shoots, or will Folders do me just as well?  Please help resolve my confusion on this.

[MBehrens]

Folders and Collections are 2 different animals. Folders are the Folders or Directories on your disk and they contain the actual image files, with the exception  of Virtual Copies. Collections are simply a collection of references to the actual images in the folders. An image can be referenced to many Collections, but can only reside in one Folder.

Many folks use a simple date based Folder structure to provide a simple yet useful method of grouping the actual images. Collections are then more topic or subject oriented and reference images from many Folders. The Smart Collections may help you to visualize this as they will allow the auto-population of a Collection based on Keywords, or other attributes assigned to the actual images... in the Folders. In the database world we call Smart Collections "Views". The key is that Collections contain no actual images, only references to images in Folders.

[dchew]

Gerry,

Two examples of using collections:

1.  You make a slideshow, book, article or other presentation of images with some theme that doesn't tie to a keyword.  Sure, you could go back and add a keyword like "local arboretum gallery display," so you can search for them later, but that gets a bit tedious.  I've got a selection for a beginner's photography seminar.  Not necessarily my best work, but images that demonstrate a specific technique, or lack there of.

2.  You are a part-time wedding photographer and a potential client wants to see samples of outdoor weddings you've done, or shots of hands, or the ring-bearer.  While theoretically you could keyword your way to each of these solutions, you may not be able to predict future requests (even your own requests)!

Collections let you do this at any time.  While they are basically saved searches, they can be much more random than keyword searches.

Dave Chew

[Gerry Pasternack]

New to LR and trying to understand the benefits of Collections over Folders.

All of my photos are stored on a dedicated HD using a different Win/XP folder for each shoot. I’ve imported these folders into LR as named folders and keyworded the contained images appropriately. I can quickly find the photo I need using a combination of filters. All seems fine for my needs.

Should I have imported my images as Collections instead of as Folders? What would be the benefit? Right now I don’t see the need to keep the same image in multiple places. I can always add a Collection in the future if I find the need for specialized groupings.  If I need to assemble a slide-show with images from several folders I can invoke this by choosing slides directly from my LR folders and keeping them as a Quick-Collection for as long as needed.

Sooo should I have started out by forming Collections of my shoots, or will Folders do me just as well?  Please help resolve my confusion on this.

[Gerry Pasternack]

Thanks for the advice.
I guess I'll continue to add LR folders to keep a 1:1 correspondance with the folders on my HD (rather than reference each image on the HD in a LR Collection).  I'll use the LR Collections for special groupings of images of lasting value residing in one or more folders.  Sort of a "keyword search on steroids".

Does this make sense?

[jfsavage]

New to LR and trying to understand the benefits of Collections over Folders.

All of my photos are stored on a dedicated HD using a different Win/XP folder for each shoot. I’ve imported these folders into LR as named folders and keyworded the contained images appropriately. I can quickly find the photo I need using a combination of filters. All seems fine for my needs.

Should I have imported my images as Collections instead of as Folders? What would be the benefit? Right now I don’t see the need to keep the same image in multiple places. I can always add a Collection in the future if I find the need for specialized groupings.  If I need to assemble a slide-show with images from several folders I can invoke this by choosing slides directly from my LR folders and keeping them as a Quick-Collection for as long as needed.

Sooo should I have started out by forming Collections of my shoots, or will Folders do me just as well?  Please help resolve my confusion on this.

I let LR do the default organization into Folders based on date, and I do not use collections either. What I do is to use Keywords and smart collections so that I can view images in multiple different ways. So I can have a smart collection of images from a trip to Virginia that are in IR, and images that are rated 2* that are HDR (auto bracket); some images will be in both smart collections.

The biggest flaw in smart collections is that a smart collection can not be based on another smart collection. If you use iTunes, the smart play lists provide great flexibility.