The EASIEST WAY to sort your LIGHTROOM Photos

Organising your photos might not be the most glamorous of activities, but look how important it is when trying to find your favourite images.

NIKON GEAR (Main STILLS camera)

FILM GEAR

OTHER PHOTO GEAR

[andydragon]

Quick tip while culling and finding initial picks...if you turn on caps lock, when you use 'p' to pick, 'x' to discard, 'u' to unpick (or a number to set a rating) then the selected image will automatically move to the next image. I usually hit 'x' to discard, 'p' to pick and right-arrow to skip to very quickly cull the images from an import. Once I hit the end, cmd+delete (ctrl+delete on PC) to remove the discards and then filter by picked to move towards editing. Just having LR move from image to image without using the arrow keys saves time when you have 100s or 1000s of images to cull.

[scarcesense]

I have a novel solution to oganising my catalog: I tend to take rubbish photos so I get to just delete most of them before I start. 😆

[lfalowerambion]

Here's my system, which works well for me. Firstly, pick (flag) images selected for editing. Only give star ratings once the images have been edited and their true potential can be seen: 1* edited but not good enough to be used for anything; 2* include in my photobook for that trip (I produce a book for each major trip and group shorter trips into a year book); 3* use as a screensaver so I see them fairly often; 4* upload to my website; 5* portfolio ie the best of the best. Trouble is I only evolved this system quite recently so really need to go back and rate my folders from earlier years.

[brucedelorme]

Nigel I have had the pleasure of doing a workshop with you and Mads. It doesn't surprise me the number of people that come to your showings, workshops and follows your channel because you are a great teacher and photographer, and you're absolutely approachable. The love you have for what you do shines through and draws people in.

[SueFerreira]

Thanks for this video, Nigel.
After your previous video on organizing Lightroom photos a few years ago, I adopted your classification system of quarterly folders with subfolders plus smart collections and it works effortlessly.
I have well over 50, 000 photos and also keyword quite obsessively. Yesterday, my daughter sent a photo of my toddler grandson and I knew I had a photo of her in the same spot about 40 years ago. Combining folder dates with keywords, I was able to find the 40 year old photo with a couple of keystrokes. Your system works!

[joelrollins]

Nigel, I’ve been watching your channel since the episode when you talked about your car crash. Over the years you’ve inspired & educated me. I, too, suffer from chronic back issues and, despite the pain I see you’re pushing back in your mind, you continue to be out on location pursuing your passion. I respect you as a master of your craft as well as a human being. Thank you so much.

[MichaelLesher]

Great video! Very similar to my own workflow. Only difference is that I have gotten away from the 3-5 star rating system and only use 5 star as a "Select" flag. Workflow looks like:

- First pass: X (Reject), P (Pick), or Skip
- Second pass: Review Picks for Selects (Add a 5-star to selects)

This might sound silly, but in my experience, it has really cut down a LOT of time determining what a 3 vs. 4 vs. 5 is and it ultimately ends up with non-picks (no flag), Picks (flag), and Selects (flag + 5-star). What's nice about this is that it let's your gut make the choice for you most of the time and let's be honest... most of the time your gut knows in a split second if the photo is a banger or not.

[DonDickinson-oo]

The most beneficial thing to me in this video was the ability to see some of your catalogue of photos.
You seem to save everything, and it is interesting to see examples of how you work in the field.
I get that we see your process in all of your videos, but to see your unvarnished photos in such depth was very revealing… and very helpful. 👍👍

[omorxfe]

for a beginner photographer who is taking more photos than i know what to do with, this video is VERY helpful. i appreciate you and the knowledge you have and how you are sharing it with the world. thank you 🙏🙏

[andreasgiobel]

Fantastic to see you to.

This topic pinpoints one of my issues with a lot of media, Sorting & what to save.

During some rough years with stress related issues I deleted everything to get some peace of mind.😮

The only thing that I saved was family pictures…

[keithsanders]

I find the MAP feature in Lightroom very handy. By dragging each image to where it was taken it adds the co-ordinates to the Exif data. That way, if I know where an image was taken but not when or what its grading is, I can get it immediately by searching the map. Of course it is automatic if you have a GPS on your camera that puts the co-ordinates in your Exif data. I find it very useful.

[AliasJimWirth]

I am having so much difficulty with the organization of my photos. This video helps some, so thank you for creating and posting it, Nigel.

[neilstevensphotography]

Cheers for pointing out that Auto Stack by Capture time... I'm constantly Exposure Bracketing, and that'll save me so much time

[bastekanonim]

Nigel, to confirm: I am a real person (not a bot), watching you movies from Poland, appreciating your hard work on the content you share and learning a lot from you! Kudos to you and I do appreciate what you do - please, do not stop... :)
Best,
Sebastian

[nigelcooke]

Rather than create folders for quarters (I'll never remember when in the year a trip was) I prefix each for name with yyyymm. That way I can just view the year folder and see all trips in chronological order. Also, rather than create folders for days on big trips, I have one folder for the trip and use the meta data filter in Grid view to select the day

[sjdyt]

Thanks for sharing your workflow. My folder structure is similar but I need to make more use of catalogues and categorising my images. Photography is only a hobby for me (a bit of gear and some idea) but I do take a lot of photos and I’m not as organised as I’d like to be!

[TheNaturalLandscapePhotography]

One thing that has helped me know what photos I still need to process and what shoots I’m done with is having sub folders for each shoot called “In Progress” (picks I haven’t processed yet) and “Outtakes” (discards they I don’t delete just in case I find a use or change my mind one day). Then I only have my keepers that are done with processing in the main folder for that shoot. This really comes in handy when someone wants (or I convince) to see photos from a certain trip or shoot I just show the main folder pics that are my fully finished keepers and no one is the wiser that I have a ton of outtakes and unfinished work. When I’m done with all the photos from a shoot I collapse that folder so I dont see the sub folders and I know I’m done with it, and I keep all the shoot folders expanded that I still have in progress items for so it’s a visual reminder when I find time to sit down and process that there are photos from those shoots to work.

[stevenl.passalacqua]

My drive from Leicester was really worth it. For me it was a real pleasure to shake hands with you. I would've like to talk with you a bit longer, but I saw there were many people with my same wishes.

[davidgillespie]

Very useful Nigel, and definitely not boring! I use year for the main folder, then load my photos by shooting date and append a descriptor, for example, 2023 09 24 Cultus Lake forest walk. This stands in for keywords, which I am lousy at too. For projects that span multiple dates I use e.g., 2023 09 10 -2023 09 15, and load all the images from a multiple day trip into one folder. . My images then sort within a year by date of shooting, which I find handy.

[wasatchpowder]

I used to organize my folders by year, but I found I couldn't remember what year I took the photo. So, I changed and organized my folders by genre. I have folders for landscape, cityscapes, people, sports, aviation, etc. Under those folders I have locations/photo shoots. For example, under the Landscape folder, I have separate folders for Zion, Moab, Bryce, Yellowstone, etc. Every photo that I've ever taken in Zion over the years is in the Zion folder. With this system, I don't have to keyword or search through every year to try to find all my Zion photos. If I still wanted to use the date organization method I could create a 2021_Zion, 2022_Zion, 2023_Zion folder under the Landscape->Zion folder. I learned this method for organizing from Scott Kelby.