Now, in the earlier podcast, we talked a little bit about collections. And, collections were add ins. We created them as we needed them. Now, what we want to talk about now is the ability to be able to use smart collections. Smart collections are kind of cool. And they let you create collections based on criteria that you will only set up once. So the collection expands and contracts as you change that criteria. Let me show you a quick one here.
I am going to select my smart collection section over here click on the plus arrow to be able to create a smart collection. And, you will notice that the smart collection shows up. I am going to create this smart collection. My Five Star Shots, I can either set up one rule or I can add continuous rules and then have it meet all of those criteria or any of those criteria. Let us start with a simple one here. I am going to set up one that has a rating. Notice that we click on the drop down. There are tons of different things that you can set that smart collection for but I am going to set mine have a rating as greater than or equal to five stars. Once I have that set, I am going to go ahead and click on create. Automatically, what it does is it takes all of the pictures inside of your catalogue that are ranked with 5 stars and places them in a virtual collection over here. Keep your eye on this picture right here. Watch what happens when I mark this a two, this one now set to a rating of two, if I go back to my five star shots, the picture is gone. It is not there. So, that collection expands and contracts as you start changing the properties of these things.
Now, this is a great way to be able to create a collection. Let us say that you shoot weddings and you want to show everybody all of your wedding shots. You could go in here and create a smart collection and make that collection match a keyword that contains a word wedding. In that way, it takes all of the wedding keywords and it puts them in there. So, this is a positive way to be able to use it. Let us use it as a preventative measure as well. I am going to go ahead and go over here and click on this, select the smart collection. Instead of using something includes this keyword or happens to be a five star rating, why do not we do something that is going to help us house keep the Lightroom 2 catalogue? For example, what if I go ahead and I select something with a frog? And, that frog is set to being rejected? A lot of the times when you working inside of Lightroom and you are importing all of these pictures, your collection is going to get pretty big and it is always a good idea to be able to go back in.
When you are working with your collections, it sets all your rejects automatically. So, when you bring something in, go through them. Reject, hot that x key to reject your images. But sometimes, you will forget that you did not delete those images. So by having a smart collection that is set up to reject images, what you can do is you can have that set up there. I am going to go back over here with my old photographs. Let us just say that not only did I think that that was a two, I actually think that that should be rejected. Hit there and I am going be come down here and I am going to reject this here. I have all four of these rejected. Now, through my workflow, I have done in there and I have rejected those images but I kind of gone about it and started importing more and importing more. I started noticing that my catalogue is getting bigger. So let me go back to my smart collection and let me take a look at whether or not I have any rejected images. Automatically, those rejected images show up there. Now, it is just a question of taking those images and deleting those images from your collection.
We can use this in a variety of different ways. Let us go ahead and create something else that allows us to make a correction with multiple rules. I am going create a smart collection and let us call it a Two Condition. I am going to go ahead and set mine for greater than or equal to three stars and notice here, I can click on this add and I am going to add something else. I wanted to have a pict but it has been flagged. So pict that has three stars or greater are going to show up here. Click on create and notice that there is nothing here. Let us go back to our All Photographs and let us see if we have anything that meets those conditions. Now, I have two stars so obviously, that will not show up there. I have some three stars, that did not show up but both of those conditions were met. If I single click on that and then I hit the letter P for pict, that should satisfy both the requirements. There is a three start and it is a pict file. So if we come down here into the two conditions, it automatically shows up. So there you have it. Smart Collections are going to be a great way for you to be able to manage your images inside of Lightroom 2. Make sure you give them a spin.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services