# When Do You Use Collections Instead of Keywords?



## Julian (Jul 31, 2012)

What’s the difference between my creating (for example), a Collection of all the photos of my dog Alfie or simply adding the keyword “Alfie” to all photos in my library that include her.    If I run a keyword search vs. looking in the “Alfie” collection, won’t the outcome be the same?  

If not, please explain why one method is more effective than the other.

Thanks.


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## Hal P Anderson (Jul 31, 2012)

Julian,

I'd make Alfie a keyword. Keywords are more flexible than collections, for pretty much the same reason that keywords are more flexible than folders. Also, if you have keywords, you can quickly make smart collections from them.

Collections have their uses, but for me at least, those uses are as ad hoc holding areas for images that are in some particular stage of being worked on. I just don't use them to organize pictures by content.

Hal


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## johnbeardy (Jul 31, 2012)

One way to think of it is that keywords are the prime tool for describing and categorising based on what's in the picture or the picture's meaning. Collections are a tool for organisational structure and workflow control.

Another point is that keywords are standard and exist outside Lightroom. You can read them in other apps now, or in whatever app ultimately replaces Lightroom. So in the long term, such standard fields are where you want to be recording information that you want to keep forever, while collections are more temporary and arbitrary ways of using and grouping.

John


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## clee01l (Jul 31, 2012)

There are collections and there are smart collections. If you want a collection of photos of your dog, without keywords, you first need to search all of your images looking for photos where "Alfie" is present. With keywords you generate the collection in seconds, either by clicking on the arrow at the right of the keyword "Alfie", or a metadata or text filter on keywords, or by creating a smart collections. Which of these two is quicker, with or without?


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 31, 2012)

TBH, if someone is starting from a position of having a picture library but no collections and no keywords, building a collection of all images containing one subject would be as quick as selecting that same set of images and applying the same keyword to them. Certainly when I first started I put a lot more effort into building collections that I did in keywording....but eventually, largely through the insights gained through membership of this forum, I put more serious effort into keywording. The much greater flexibility of keywords allowed me to start using smart collections (and now smart publish services), and gradually my use of static collections has reduced to the sort of ad hoc usage outlined by Hal.


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## erro (Jul 31, 2012)

Once you have created a keyword, it can beused in searches, filters and smart collections over and over again. A normal "dumb" collection is static and inflexible


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## Julian (Jul 31, 2012)

The combination of your answers has given me depth and insight into the answer to my question that my Kelby book and Lynda.com courses can't accomplish.  Thank you, Gentlemen. 
Julian


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## NJHeart2Heart (Aug 1, 2012)

further to TNG's point, if you are starting from zero keywords, it may be worth while to create static collection out of related photos as a way to GATHER those photos to keyword them.  For example, instead of looking through 1000's of photos at one time for "Alfie", take the imported photos you know are likely to have "Alfie" in them, then keyword that collection (with other keywords as well).  So in that sense, creating collections has it's place.  Also, I have used static collections as a way to verify that my smart collections have the required criteria.  If I have 58 photos in my manually created "horse" collection, but my smart collection only grabs 42, I know I need to adjust my criteria on my smart collection or add the criteria to those photos who didn't make the "grab" because they were missing some critical criteria.


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## Julian (Aug 1, 2012)

Hi NJ,
So are you suggesting that keywording may be easier if I create collections of (in this case) photos of Alfie and then keywording each image in that collection as Alfie?  Or are you suggesting that I input a list of keywords that I think I'll use prior to beginning the keywording process?

Will you please clarify?

Thanks!


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## NJHeart2Heart (Aug 1, 2012)

Hi Julian,
Wow... so excited.. never got someone to actually ask a follow up question.. Does this mean I might know something? (but then the more you know the more you realize you don't know, right?)

Anyway,
The short answer is that I created static collections one at a time (ie. Christmas 1980, 81, 82, etc., or "my cats") then worked on that group at one time. I do not find creating keywords first helpful, as my "best laid plans" for keywords seems to leave me with a lot of "empty" keywords. 

More answer: 
My personal experience: When I first started keywording my already large family photo collection in LR, I wasn't sure how to shortcut this rather time-consuming process. I decided that by "chunking" the job down, it would seem less "overwhelming". My photos were imported into folders by date and often with a 1-3 word subject, like "Christmas" "Backyard birds", etc. So, starting from the oldest pics, I selected certain folders that I knew, based on date/topic were going to have a lot of the same keywords, and placed them in a static collection, ie. photos from December 24-25 from various years went into a static collection. From there I went ahead and began keywording that collection - my favorite technique was to "spray paint" photos with 1 or 2 keywords at a time. You could accomplish this by simply selecting those folders and keywording on those selections, but since I get distracted often by various projects, by creating static collections, I was able to work on a group of photos, leave it, then come back and work on them again later. Eventually, when all the photos are keyworded as I desire, I just delete the collection, or alternatively, I have created smart collections that "grab" any photos with say "Christmas" or "Jasmine + cat" and create the collection for me. That way, with my newer photos, which I try to keyword right away, once they are keyworded they automatically get added to the appropriate smart collections if they meet that collection's criteria.

As for creating keywords before vs. during the process, I'd much rather just create the keywords on the fly, and when needed I create keyword collections to help me remember which keywords to use on a particular topic (ie. a "Christmas" keyword collection might include "Christmas", "gifts", as well as the names of the people most likely to be in those pics (mom, dad, husband, aunt, uncle). I find the keyword collections helpful but limited by their numbers- I'd like to see say 18 vs. the current 9 keywords per colleciton limit.


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## MarkNicholas (Aug 2, 2012)

There is no substitute or alternaive for keywords. They are the main identifier of a photo in LR. Collections "collect" a group of photos. Smart collections can be created which collect photos having a particular identified attribute such as taken before or after or during certain dates and containing certain keywords or taken with a type of camera or lens. Non smart collections can contain a random collection of photos chosen by the user but having no particular common attritute. You can search for photos in many different ways in LR.


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## cbizzo (Aug 2, 2012)

In my workflow I have found that I must do my keywording on import and modifiy as necessary when I work through editing picks for step 3 in my process below:  

1.  On import into LR
Select one of my basic metadata  preset options
Add keywords—ex. Baseball, Arizona Diamondbacks, MLB, …
Import

Key wording at the outset gets the basic information into the database and I know that I can and will refine it later when I have to work with lesser numbers of frames. .  

Quick Edit
2.  Flag Picks 
Mark standout Picks with Color 

3.  Create Collection of Picks
Refine /Add more specific Keywords – ex. Shortstop, player number, Player Name…
Process Picks 

4,  **Optional**
Create Collection of Processed Final Picks that are ready for print and web use.

I find key wording imperative for my work shooting both sports and fashion and by proxy it also applies to my personal work (family stuff) as well.

Hope this helps.


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## willdoak (Aug 2, 2012)

I use hierarchical keywords now, rather than words that occur to me when I import. For example, People>Family>Brian. I don't know how to work the hierarchy on import, so I just keyword everything "@" (I didn't invent this technique). Then I go back and assign photos to their proper place in the hierarchies. 

If someone can tell me how to avoid that middle step, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers,

Will


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## clee01l (Aug 2, 2012)

Will, 
The LR import panel understands hierarchical keywords just fine.   In your example, People>Family>Brian, just enter the existing keyword "Brian" and if there is no ambiguity, LR will accept it in the import keyword field.  If there is an ambiguity, LR will present you with the hierarchical choices that already exist. However, if you enter "Brain" instead of "Brian", LR will add this as a new keyword at the top level.  You can also add new hierarchical keywords as "Betty>Family>People" or even "Betty>Family"  (note that in LR nomenclature ">" would be the equivalent of "Betty is a child of Family is a child of People")


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## leighrichly (Jan 3, 2020)

Fascinating thread. I know it's old but still has lots of good insights 
Just found this which is advice i think i'll be taking now i'm setting up LR for the first time!
https://williambeem.com/never-create-lightroom-cc-collections-again/


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## MarkNicholas (Jan 4, 2020)

leighrichly said:


> Fascinating thread. I know it's old but still has lots of good insights
> Just found this which is advice i think i'll be taking now i'm setting up LR for the first time!
> https://williambeem.com/never-create-lightroom-cc-collections-again/


As the article states, you need collections to sync from Classic to the Cloud.
Also, sometimes I want a collection of photos that cannot be done simply with Smart collections. For example I might want only 3 out of 100s of photos of Sunsets, all of which contain the keyword Sunset. A smart collection would pick up all such photos.
In general I use keywords to "FIND" photos and collections to "COLLECT" chosen photos together.


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## johnbeardy (Jan 4, 2020)

It's a bit of a straw man article with a click bait title. Yes, people are confused about the role of collections and often create them unnecessarily when they should be adding standard metadata like keywords. My guidance aims to be simple:

Folders are only for physical storage and safeguarding - inc backup and restore plan - but not categorisation
Keywords and other metadata for categorising and analysing
Collections for gathering images for specific needs - as Mark said, the clue is the word "collect"


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## Philippe Coudé du Foresto (Jan 4, 2020)

I think the article is missing an important point : images (or photos) are not what computer manages. Like liquids, images connot be physically managed, they need to be put in a container (a bootle or a carafe for liquids, a file for images). Although what can be manipulated and stored physically is the container (bottle or file), what we are interested in is the contents (liquide or image).
Here lies the difference between collections and folders in LR. Folders are where the containers (files) are stored. We don't care much about them except to  access the original image. Collection OTOH, is where images are managed. Since images are not "physical" they don't need to be stored in one place nor to be duplicated to be in several places. We can even have different images originated from the same file (Virtual copy). That's the purpose of LR as a DAM : manages and organize images and what collections (smart or standard) are for.
One big difference between collections and keywords is that keywords are attached to the image whereas the image is attached to a collection.
That means that keyword and metadada, being attached to the image, can follow it. When tou export an image and create a files to store it, metadata can be put in the file as well. When you send the file to omeone else, he will receive not only the image, but also the metadata and use them to organize the images.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 4, 2020)

I often use collections where I could have used smart collections, for one reason only: collections support stacks, and I like to stack HDR images and their brackets and panorama images. Smart collections do not support stacks. So for that reason I created a ‘Liguria’ collection rather than a ‘Liguria’ smart collection when I travelled through that region. As you can add images to a collection on import, this is just as easy as adding a ‘Liguria’ keyword on import (what I did as well) and then have a ‘Liguria’ smart collection auto-fill itself.

The key is not collections or smart collections, but being smart yourself and knowing what you want.


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