Before the time saver, a few basics on collections:

Collections in the Library module of Lightroom are virtual grouping of images.   They allow you to pull together images from anywhere in your catalog without having to create physical copies of your files.  I use collections alot, to group images for  portfolios, show submissions, examples for the classes I teach, slide shows I plan to create, images I want to show to friends, etc…     A single image can be a member of an unlimited number of collections.

You can select photos in grid view and then create a collection that will contain them, or you can create the collection first, and drag photos into it afterwards.

To create a collection, click on plus sign (+) the top right corner of the Collections panel -(below the Folders panel.)  Name your collection.  A collection set is a folder to store collections in so that you can keep them organized.  If you haven’t created a collection set at this point, choose None.    If you selected photos first, click the box “Include selected photos.”  If you want your collection to be of new virtual copies of the images you selected, perhaps because you plan to develop them differently than the master images, click “Make new virtual copies.”   For most of my purposes I want my collections to be of the master images, so I don’t use this feature often.  Click Create.

Create Collection Dialog

To add images to your collection, select one or more images in grid view, click inside the thumbnail of one of them, and drag over to the collection.

Now the time saver:

As you are searching through folders looking for images to include, dragging images over to the collection can be a bit of a hassle, because you have to scroll up and down from the Folders panel to Collections and vice versa.  Plus it just takes time to drag an image over.  Instead, take advantage of the target collection shortcut:

  • Right-click on your collection name and select “Set as  Target Collection.”
  • To assign an image to the collection, click on it to select, then hit the shortcut key “B”.
  • To remove an image from the collection, hit B again.