Organize by "Events" in Lightroom?

[danlobl]

I am brand new to Lightroom and as I am starting my transition from iPhoto over to Lightroom I am noticing a few things I miss. Foremost I miss the "Events" view in iPhoto and Aperture that organized photo imports graphically (and with a key photo as an icon) based on the event the photos were from, rather than the date. Is there any functionality in Lightroom for something like this? How are people handling this? I know there are tons of options out there.

It seems that when I import into my catalogue I see on the left, my hard drive, under that is a year (2011) and under that are dates of photos that were imported. If I click the date, I get those photos into a grid view. What I think I would like is a list of events under the hard drive (like "Zoo, Paris Trip, Jill's Birthday Party, Machu Picchu, etc), possibly with dates under that? I thought I could achieve that with "folders", but when I import to a subfolder, it just makes another level deep on the directory structure on disk, but it doesn't show up in the interface. Instead it seperated dates under a different year, making a huge mess.

I must be missing something easy. Events seem like a nice way to browse through photos by memory. I guess I could use collections for this, but I don't think they are hierarchical.

Anyone have good ways to work in the familiar iPhoto workflow? And what about getting photos into an iPhone or iPad? Are people exporting photos and importing them into iPhoto to get them on your phone? Seems pretty inconvenient in a lightroom workflow.

Thanks for any help!

 

[marsmissions]

Change Organize "By Date" on import dialogue into organize "into one folder"

Also, make a new folder for every import. When I import, my files get imported into a subfolder that I type out, all inside of the 2011 folder in my pictures folder.

Also, you can simply select all of your photos, and on the left hand column of the library pane, select the "plus" icon above "collections" and make sure "include selected photos" is checked. This will allow you to have something even closer to the events interface.

What you lose in convenience you gain in functionality. iPhoto is a powerful image viewing application with some editing ability, while Lightroom is a powerful image editing application with some viewing characteristics.

Also, google some lightroom video tutorials, they helped me a ton. Start with importing, and finish with editing basics

 

[acearchie]

I have been using Lightroom for nearly 8 months and one of the things that I would like to do is instead of having the folders in the left hand bar under 2011 sorted by name I would like them sorted by date.

It may be just the way my brain works but I find it much easier to remember things chronologically rather than by name i.e. it makes much more sense to relate to it by date, christmas photo's in december before easter photo's etc. than having to remember that I called my christmas photo's "Christmas" instead of "Party at Christmas". (not a great example but you get what I mean!)

Is there anyway to do this?

 

[Edge100]

My advice would be to avoid using folders altogether, and use collections and collection sets, which can be ordered in any way you'd like

Import your images into a folder with a date and a descriptive name, for example:

Pictures > 20110928 - Party > RAW

As soon as you import the images, create a collection set called '20110928 - Party' and a collection within that set called 'Full Shoot'. Drag all of the imported images into that collection. Now go through and cull the images using flag (shortcut 'P') or reject (shortcut 'X). When you're done, filter the flagged images, and create a new collection within the original set called 'Keepers', and add the flagged images to this collection.

Now you're ready to edit. I find that in the editing process, there will be images that I decide not to continue with. Therefore, I create another collection called 'Final Output', which gets only the images that get delivered to the client or shared in some way. Once I have a final batch of images to share, I batch rename these, with a number to indicate sequence. This way, the client only sees a sequential set of image numbers, and doesn't know that I culled from 600 shots down to 200, or whatever.

With this type of setup, you never have to deal with folders at all. You can ever create a larger collection set that holds all of your 'shoot' collection sets (such as the one I created above). And these sets can be ordered in whatever way you'd like.

 

[flynz4]

I have been using Lightroom for nearly 8 months and one of the things that I would like to do is instead of having the folders in the left hand bar under 2011 sorted by name I would like them sorted by date.

It may be just the way my brain works but I find it much easier to remember things chronologically rather than by name i.e. it makes much more sense to relate to it by date, christmas photo's in december before easter photo's etc. than having to remember that I called my christmas photo's "Christmas" instead of "Party at Christmas". (not a great example but you get what I mean!)

Is there anyway to do this?

I use Aperture 3 (not lightroom).... but what you are asking is really not specific to any single program.

Like you... I hated the fact that "Christmas" would organize before "Summer Beach Vacation" when viewed alphabetically.

Now what I do is:

2011-02-14 Valentines Day
2011-07-23 Summer Beach Vacation
2011-12-25 Christmas
2011-12-31 New Years Eve

I always use the full date description as shown above which keeps the text descriptions lined up and easy to read. If you are 100% sure that you will never have anything from the 1900's... then you can delete the first two characters.

/Jim

 

[snberk103]

Anyone who is creating subfolders, instead of using the default Year/Month-Date system is making it harder than they need to to. That is, imho, Keywords and Smart Collections are for.

On import you could use "Birthday" , "Smith Family" (And whatever else is appropriate.) You only need to type this once on an import.

In the Collections pane, you might already have a Smart Collection called "Events" that picks up anything with "Birthday" in it. You can further subdivide this into Smart Collections that also filter on the date, so you could have "2009 Events", "2010 Events", "2011 Events", etc. You could also have Smart Collection for just "Smith Family" and another one just for "Birthday". The more keywords, the more you can search on - either with permanent searches (Smart Collections) or on an as needed basis.

A bit more more than just an automatic "Event", but - you can have multiple "Event Equivalents".

Also note - you can nest keywords. So, you can have A keyword "Smith Family" but then nest "Black Family" under that for members of the family with different surnames. A keyword search for "Smith Family" will also show "Black Family" images, but not vice versa.

Also, images can have Titles and Captions (And Smart Collections will search on those as well) that can be added to on import. This allows one to add "Smith Family" as the keyword, and then identify each person shown in the caption.

Also, Smart Collections can be nested in folders (and folders inside folders) so that you can manually collect Smart Collections into a single folder - and you can see all the images in a folder in grid view. IIRC, you can place a single Collection (Smart or otherwise) into any number of Folders.

The trick is to keyword and caption on import. I will import my images, typically, in 'waves'. I only select the images that are similar for each import so that I can keyword on import. Then while LR is rendering the previews, I will select the next set of similar images and keyword those. Repeat as necessary. You don't need to wait for LR to finish to start the next step. Big time saver, if your images are big enough to take time to import.

You can tune up keywords and captions after the fact since, if you follow this advice, all of the images will be in a single dated folder.

Good Luck