The Adobe

40

Chapter 3 Organizing Your Photos

The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers

Step One:

Another way to quickly separate out

your best photos is to create a Quick

Collection of just those photos. Here’s

how it’s done: As you’re looking at your

photos (in any view—Grid, Loupe, or

Compare), when you come across one

you like, just press the B key on your

keyboard and that photo is added to

your Quick Collection (it’s like flagging

your best photos). If you have the Quick

Collection Marker checkbox turned on

in the View Options panel, you’ll see a

black dot appear in the upper-left corner

of your thumbnail (circled here in red) to

let you know that it was added to your

Quick Collection.

Step Two:

Now, to see just the photos you’ve

flagged, click on Show Quick Collection

(as shown here), which appears in the

Photo Library panel on the top-left side

of the Lightroom window (or just press

Command-B). To remove a photo from

your Quick Collection, just click on the

little black dot again, or click on the

photo and press the letter B again, or

just click on the photo and press the

Delete key on your keyboard (don’t

worry, this only deletes the photo from

this Quick Collection—not from your

Library of photos).

One-Click Sorting

by Using Collections

When you’re sorting your photos, there are going to be plenty of times where you

just want to focus on a particular group of images. Maybe it’s all your best shots

from a shoot, or maybe it’s all your black-and-white shots, or maybe you want to

decide which photos you want print. Luckily, you can make all of these groups of

photos just one click away by using collections (which are there every time you

fire up Lightroom) or Quick Collections, which are temporary collections you use

just when you need them.

41Chapter 3Organizing Your Photos

Continued

The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers

Step Three:

Quick Collections are great for helping

you quickly rate your best photos. Now

that your best photos from your shoot

are in this Quick Collection, you can

instantly give them all a 5-star rating by

simply pressing Command-A to select all

the photos, then pressing the number

5 to assign a 5-star rating to them all.

Another cool thing about using Quick

Collections is that once you’ve got one,

you can create an instant slide show of

just those photos by going under the

Library menu and choosing Impromptu

Slideshow. In just seconds, you’ll see a

full-screen slide show with transitions (to

cancel this slide show, press the Esc key).

Step Four:

Once you’ve used the trick above to

quickly rate your best photos, you

can then clear your temporary Quick

Collection (so you can use it later for

sorting other photos). You can do this

by either clicking on Options, in the bot-

tom-left corner of Lightroom’s window,

and choosing Clear Quick Collection

from the pop-up menu, or just pressing

Command-Shift-B. You can also use the

Options pop-up menu to add photos to

your Quick Collection, but using the key-

board shortcuts is just so much faster.

42

Chapter 3 Organizing Your Photos

The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers

Step Five:

Quick Collections are temporary col-

lections—just a tool to help you tem-

porarily sort your images or to make

an impromptu slide show. But if you’ve

come up with a Quick Collection that

you’d like to keep for future reference,

just transfer it to a regular collection

so it’s always just one click away. Here’s

how: Go to the Browse Collections panel

(it’s in the group of panels on the left

side of Lightroom) and click on the large

+ (plus sign), as shown here circled in

red. This brings up the Create Collection

dialog where you can name your new

collection (as shown). Enter a name and

click the Create button.

Step Six:

Now, if you’re not still viewing it, press

Command-B to jump back to your Quick

Collection. Press Command-A (the short-

cut for Select All) to select all the photos

in your Quick Collection. Next, click-and-

drag on any one of those photos and

they all drag together as a group (you’ll

see a tiny thumbnail appear as you drag

that shows a stack of photos, as shown

here circled in red). Click-and-drag this

group of photos over to the Browse

Collections panel and drop (release the

mouse button) them right on the collec-

tion you created in the previous step.