# Synch Smart Collections



## richard b (Apr 13, 2020)

I have Adobe LR Classic 8.4.1 on OSX 10.12.6 running on a mid 2010 iMac. This means I cannot upgrade the OSX which in turn limits me to the v of LR.

I want to synch a smart collection however in Victoria's book p489 and many other comments on the net it is clear that Adobe chose not to include this in the v I have.

What I want to do is to create a mart collection using label colour eq Green for a certain year and then sync the result across to LR mobile which runs on my Apple TV. I am trying to figure out how to modify the text on p489. I would appreciate any comment and here is what I propose to do.
A) Set up collections
1. Create a collection called "Colour label eq Green 2020 sync"
2.Create a smart collection "Colour label eq Green 2020 sync check"with settings
a)Colour label eq Green
b)Capture date is range 01/01/20 and 31/12/20
c)File type is not video
d)collection doesn't contain "Colour ! label !eq !Green !2020 !sync"  PLEASE NOTE IT IS THIS SYNTAX I NEED HELP WITH PLS

B)Dragging and dropping??
On p489 it talks about about dragging and dropping images. Should this be interpreted as
1)Run "Colour label eq Green 2020 sync check"
2)Select all photos each time the smart collection is added and dragging all photos in the smart collection to the collection "Colour label eq Green 2020 sync"

I guess this must be a very common problem but couldn't find it in the forums and so would appreciate any help.

Richard


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 13, 2020)

There is no "Run Colour label eq Green 2020 sync check" required. Once created a smart collection is continuously updated, so add a green label to any image shot this year, and it automatically gets added to the smart collection. At that point the photo count for the two collections, the static and the smart, will differ, so yes you can then select all the images in the smart collection and drag and drop them onto the static collection. It doesn't matter that you will have already previously added most of them to the static, Lightroom will only add the new ones.

A similar take on the process could be to change the criteria for the smart collection to add a new condition, basically only adding green labelled images that are not already in the static collection....so the smart collection would only populate with new "not-yet-added to static collection" green labelled images. Thus as soon as you label some new images, they will appear in the smart collection. If you then drag them to the static collection, Lightroom should then automatically remove them from the smart collection.

Because of the fact that smart collections do not sync, Jeffrey Friedl wrote a plugin which automatically updates a static collection with new items from a corresponding smart collection. It's a little clunky, but does work (or did the last time I tested it). Jeffrey's "Smart-Collection Sync" Lightroom Plugin


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## johnrellis (Apr 13, 2020)

My Any Source plugin also provides syncing with smart collections, using a somewhat different approach.

Syncing smart collections is by far the most popular feature request for Lightroom Classic, with three times as many votes as the next most popular request (storing the catalog on a network drive):
https://feedback.photoshop.com/phot...tions_to_lightroom_mobile_lightroom_adobe_com
Be sure to add your vote -- who knows, Adobe might change their mind!


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 13, 2020)

Sorry John, didn't realise you'd done one as well. I only knew about Jeffrey's as I was one of his original testers.


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## clee01l (Apr 13, 2020)

Jim Wilde said:


> A similar take on the process could be to change the criteria for the smart collection to add a new condition, basically only adding green labelled images that are not already in the static collection....so the smart collection would only populate with new "not-yet-added to static collection" green labelled images.


This is the approach that I take to get LR Classic static collections updated from Smart Collections and added to Lightroom (cloudy) albums.   If Adobe would make Smart Collections with the ability to sync automatically to Lightroom (cloudy) albums, then this necessity to jump through hoops would be nullified.


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