Lightroom also lets you edit photos with a variety of tools and effects. It is also a powerful tool for organizing your photos. It allows you to create catalogs of images, label them with flags, tags, and color markers, add keywords, and quickly find the right photo. Now we will show you how to quickly organize your large photo library. By the way, if you want to find the best plugins for Lightroom, we recommend following this link to Skylum’s blog.
General File Organization Tips for Lightroom
Learning how to organize footage properly is very important for any photographer. So, among the recommendations on the best plugins for Lightroom, you will always find options that make it easier to sort your images.
When you are just starting in photography, you are more likely to quickly find the right shot to process. Over time, you will have thousands of images, and without cataloging, the work process will simply stop. So, here are some general tips for using Lightroom to organize your photos.
Create Virtual Copies
Virtual copies in Lightroom are copies of your original photo that you can edit separately. They allow you to experiment with different edits without affecting the original photo. Creating a virtual copy is easy: right-click the photo you want to copy and select “Create Virtual Copy”. This generates a new version of the image that you can edit and manipulate without affecting the original file.
Use Flags and Rejects
In Lightroom, flags/rejects are a quick way to mark photos you want to keep or discard. Keyboard shortcuts make it easy to flag or reject photos. For example, press the “P” to flag a photo as a keep, the “X” to flag it as a reject, and the “U” key to remove any mark or reject status. Flagging and rejecting photos can help you quickly sort through your photos and determine which ones are worth keeping or should be discarded.
Remove Unwanted Images
We typically wait a year to go through and remove unwanted images. In any case, we recommend waiting until your client receives and approves their photos before removing unprocessed files from your catalog. You can save only JPEGs to save space. Or, if you prefer, you can keep your storage of RAW files forever and delete only the “rejected” images.
Use Collections to Organize Projects
Suppose you have a specific project in mind, such as creating a photo book or slideshow. In this case, you can use Lightroom’s collections feature to organize your photos. This way, you can easily access all the photos relevant to your project in one place, without having to search through your entire photo library. By the way, if you follow the link at the top of the article, you can easily select the best plugins for Lightroom 3 and use them to bring any photo shoot to perfection.
Use Color Labels
Color tags are a useful feature in Lightroom that allows you to categorize your photos in a variety of ways. You can apply labels to indicate the status of your photos, such as “in process,” “done,” or “rejected”. Select a photo and either click the color tag in the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut. These labels make it easy to keep track of the status of your photos and quickly identify those that need attention.
Use Keywords Consistently
To make it easier to find photos later, use keywords consistently. Choose different words that are descriptive and specific to the photo, and use them consistently across all of your photos. You can use Lightroom’s keyword suggestion feature to help you choose relevant words.
Backup Your Catalog
Finally, it’s important to regularly back up your Lightroom catalog to ensure that your photos and edits are safe. It’s also a good idea to periodically export your edited photos to an external hard drive or cloud storage service as an additional backup.
How to Fix a Mess of Files in Lightroom
Some photographers find it very difficult to solve the problems of organizing a large number of files. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to find and reorganize your file system without starting over or losing photos. Depending on the number of directories and files you are trying to reorganize, this may take some time.
Before you get started, we recommend going through all the best plugins for Lightroom 5 and highlighting the ones that will help you organize your images. For example, this could be Darkroom Notebook. So, what do you do if you can’t get the clutter out of your images:
- Keep in mind that moving images outside of Lightroom can wreak havoc on your file system. The photo editor won’t know where your files have been moved, leaving you with folders full of broken links.
- If you have a lot of photos that you need to organize quickly, you can create a new collection called “Random” (or something similar) and move the unsorted images into it. Then you can apply various filters to identify specific pictures and move them to the folder you want.
- If you’re having problems organizing within folders, such as inconsistent images, you can select all the images and rename the entire batch by pressing F2. Simply assign a new sequence number and Lightroom will rename the images based on your selection criteria, such as the date/time the photo was created.
As you can see, many tools in Lightroom can help you organize thousands of images and greatly simplify your workflow. But it’s not the only organizer available.
If you want a state-of-the-art AI-based editor and manager for a large photo library, try Luminar Neo. This software allows you to manage your shoots, assign stars or color tags to them, and includes everything you need to easily sort your files. Plus, Luminar Neo is an amazing photo editor that opens up new dimensions of creativity.
