Smart Collection Workflow - 1 Metadata

This article covers the Metadata section of the Smart Collections Workflow and is part of the complete Smart Collection Workflow for Lightroom.

The Metadata is the heart of the information about an image. Metadata is useful to pull later when printing, using a slideshow or publishing to the web. More importantly, Metadata is how you record your copyright. This section of the Smart Collection Workflow deals with making sure the most important Metadata is input into each image in the Current Work.


Each item in the Metadata workflow is covered under a separate heading. Changes to this portion of the workflow will appear as edits. The first rule of each portion of the workflow is that the collection name contains 'Current Work.' This is done to ensure we are looking at only the images we are working on.

No Copyright

This item shows the images with no copyright message. The rule is that the copyright status is not copyrighted. During the import, I use a standard addition of the copyright information into the images. For my workflow, this item should start out with zero images added.

No Creator

In addition to the copyright, I want to know if the creator has not been filled in as it is also an automatic addition. Unfortunately, Lightroom does not yet have the best consistency between checking fields in smart collections. As such, the creator Metadata does not have a choice for 'isEmpty.' Thus, the rule is creator is where is a blank item, no text or spaces input. This shows all images with no creator input in the Metadata.

No Location

Location is another Metadata item without perfect rules created. More importantly, the rule for the Creator doesn't work for the Location. Thus, we had to resort to workaround type two: check to see that the item doesn't contain any vowels. The rule is location doesn't contain a e i o u. I suppose we could try adding each letter of the alphabet as well, but I did not take the time to input that string.

No Label

Label may not be important for your uses, but when publishing images to the Web, Label, Title and Caption can be more important. To check for the Label, the rule is label text contains .

No Title

Similar to the Label, the rule for checking the Title is title contains .

No Caption

The caption is a Metadata item with more standard rules. Thus, the rule for checking the caption is caption is empty.

No Keywords

The more images you add to the library, the more important keyword assignment is. This rule checks to be sure at least one keyword is assigned to each image. The rule is keywords are empty.

Conclusion

There are other Metadata fields that are important to my workflow, especially when using sophisticated web publishing galleries like Lightroom Galleries LRG Complete. However, Lightroom under its current version does not allow a smart collection for every Metadata item. The best solution to this problem is to continue to ask Adobe to add these additional Metdata items, even if they only have simple 'contains' and 'does not contain' rules.

Adding additional rules can be easy by simply creating another smart collection and putting the appropriate numbers in front of the description to sort it.

... Read More!

Don't forget to visit my photography web site where we sell museum quality black and white prints framed to last up to 175 years - Outdoor Images Fine Art.

Smart Collection Workflow - 0 Overview

This article covers the Overview section of the Smart Collections Workflow and is part of the complete Smart Collection Workflow for Lightroom.

The Overview section of the Smart Collection Workflow is labeled at placeholder zero (0) so that it will appear first in the list. The overview contains, as you might expect, collections that give you an overview of your work. More important is the first collection of the group.

Current Work

This first collection is called the Current Work collection and is a normal collection, not a smart collection. The heart of the entire Smart Collection Workflow is with the Current Work collection. Just about every Smart Collection in the Workflow uses the images in the Current Work collection. Thus, a filter in the smart collection is as follows:

Collection contains 'Current Workflow'

To use the Smart Collection Workflow, the Current Work collection must contain images. Once it is populated with images, the remainder of the work flow will populate with results. Don't worry about particulars yet, this is a summary of the Overview section of the work flow. We will discuss how to use the Smart Collection Workflow after we go through each section.

Components of the Overview

The first item to notice is how the numbering system works. The base collection set is labeled: 0 Workflow. Notice how each collection name begins with a number. The reason this occurs is to properly sort the items. With no number at the front, the collections would be sorted alphabetically and not in the correct order.

The next level of Collection Sets starts with 0 and moves forward in 0.1 increments. These are as follows:

0 Current Work
0.1 Edited - All Library
0.2 Flagged - Current
0.3 File Conversions
0.4 Images Taken - All Library
0.5 Current Work Composition

So the next item to notice after the numbering is the description. If the description includes 'All Library' then the entire image library is the scope of the Smart Collection. Thus, the 0.1 Edited collection includes images that have been edited recently through the current week. These are without regard to the Current Work collection and are based on the entire library.

If the collection includes the tag 'Current' then it only applies to the Current Work collection. Thus, the 0.2 Flagged collection shows images in the Current Work collection split by type of flag the image has. If the image is deleted (rejected) or contains no flag and is a member of the Current Work collection, then the image would appear here.

Collection Descriptions

We will discuss each section of collections and a description of the type of information gleaned by the collections. Not all of the Smart Collections are important to the actual work at hand in the Current Work collection. Some are just to give you a feel for how much (or little) work you have accomplished and what the makeup of your library is. The remaining workflow steps after the Overview are more focussed to the work.

0.1 Edited - All Library

As we alluded to above, the edited list of Smart Collections tells us the volume of work that has been done at various time intervals. These intervals are one hour, this day, yesterday and this week. Since the Smart Collection filters the entire image library, you can see how much work you have accomplished over the week.

I also added a new item - Deleted - All Library. The purpose of this collection is to indicate which images in the entire library are marked as rejects and ready for deleting. I use the reject flag to determine which images need to be deleted. Then I use the Lightroom command to delete the rejected images from the disk. This collection prevents me from accidentally deleting other images. I check this collection before I start a workflow session and it should be empty. If not, I verify those images still want to be deleted.

0.2 Flagged - Current

This group of collections lets you see at a glance the status of your images - but only as they relate to the Current Work. Images outside of the Current Work collection are not reviewed.

Thus, as rejects are flagged during the early processing of the working collection, they are segregated here. Any images that are Flagged are shown here as well as images that have no flag (Unflagged). The confusing collection is the one I added - A No Rating collection. The difference between an Unflagged collection and a No Rating collection is the difference between a flag and a star rating. Unflagged collections have no flag and no reject flag assigned. A No Rating collection is one that has no stars for a rating and is not selected as a reject. Thus, even though an image might be flagged, until it receives at least a one star rating it will show up in this collection.

EDIT 11/19/2008:

I have found with the help of some of the folks very close to Lightroom, that flags are specific to a collection and the library. Thus a single image can have different flag status: picked, not flagged and rejected. This is possible when an image is a member of different collections. More importantly, even using two rules in a smart collection: a) collection name contains 'Current Work' and b) pick flag isPicked, the pick flag rule only looks at the library, not the collection returned from the first rule. Thus, for now, 0.2 Flagged - Current does not work.

0.3 File Conversions

This collection shows the group of images that are being worked on and their current file type. If the image is a RAW image it is collected in the first group. A DNG file is recorded in the second type and any files converted to Adobe Photoshop files are listed in the last group - PSD Files. Since I shoot with a Leica M8 that saves images in an Adobe native DNG format, I shouldn't see any RAW files. If I do, I can look to see where they came from. I can also see quickly if I converted any files to Photoshop files. If you use JPEGs or TIFFs, then you can add those smart collections as well.

0.4 Images Taken

Images Shot just sounds poor in writing even though we might say it that way. Images Taken represent the entire library and when the images were taken. Using these smart collections you can get a quick grasp on how many images you have been taking over time. You can add other time frames if your goals are broken down differently.

0.5 Current Work Composition

The composition group indicates the makeup of the Current Work collection. How many are actually virtual images? How many images are the real thing - the original master copy? Finally, how many are black and white (Bnw) virtuals and master copies. In my workflow, I want to know how many have been converted to black and white, or greyscale, and how many actually started that way. You could add two more to show color virtuals and color masters if you wanted to.

Conclusion

The numbering for the Overview is done with sections less than 1.0. At the same time, section numbers within each type are listed as 10, 20, 30 so that they could be moved around without having to be renumbered.

Also, the key collection is the Current Work collection. The Current Work collection drives the remainder of the workflow. We see how the Overview section tells us some information about the group of images we are working on as well as the status of the library as a whole.

Next we will discuss the Metadata section to see what data hasn't been input properly. Stay tuned!

... Read More!

Don't forget to visit my photography web site where we sell museum quality black and white prints framed to last up to 175 years - Outdoor Images Fine Art.

Smart Collection Workflow - Contents

Simply presenting a file for downloading with a smart collection workflow will not help anyone actually use it. Because smart collections are customizable, I want you to understand each section and how it works. Then you can further customize it for your specific workflow. Here is a list of each section with a link to the corresponding article describing it. Thus, you can use this as instructions for using the Smart Collection Workflow.

NOTE: The download will be added last after all the other articles are written.

NOTE2: This workflow concept was adapted and improved from John Beardsworth's Smart Collection Workflow.

Table of Contents

• Overview of Smart Collections and Workflow
• 0 - Overview
• 1 - Metadata Entry
• 2 - Edited List
• 3 - Adjustments
• 4 - Style
• 6 - Color Labels
• 7 - Final Review

This represents a start to the Smart Collection Workflow. As Adobe allows a more fully accessed use of the Metadata in Lightroom with Smart Collections, we can add to this workflow.

... Read More!

Don't forget to visit my photography web site where we sell museum quality black and white prints framed to last up to 175 years - Outdoor Images Fine Art.

Smart Collection Workflow

This is an introduction to Smart Collections and is part of the complete Smart Collection Workflow for Lightroom.

With the advent of Smart Collections in Lightroom 2, the web is abound with uses for them. Many of the uses presented are fancy filtering concepts. I ran across a great adaptation of Smart Collections to assist in the everyday workflow in August. Unfortunately, it's taken me until now to modify everything to fit my workflow. Here we discuss the concept of Smart Collections and our adaptation into the Digital Image Workflow.

First, credit goes where credit is due. John Beardsworth posted the original idea for Smart Collection Workflows on his blog in August 2008. This was my starting point. Thanks, John!

Smart Collection Concepts

We won't cover all the details of Smart Collections here, although that is the subject of a future planned post which I'll link here as it gets done. We will cover the concept and a few pitfalls in the most current release of Lightroom.

Smart Collections were designed to provide a group of images based on some predefined forumula or formulas. These forumulas can be based on much, but not all, of the metadata in the images. They can also be based on attributes of the images such as flags, assigned colors, some development characteristics and others.

NOTE: Adobe is hearing from many of us that we would like ALL of the metadata to be searchable for a Smart Collection. As of release 2.1, this is not the case, but we are getting closer, I am sure.

Because several statements can be used to filter out which images belong in a Smart Collection, the ability to create complex formulas exists. In fact, Smart Collections can be created to search within an existing collection or the entire library.

Smart Collections in the Image Workflow

As a result of these complex queries, Smart Collections are a logical choice to use for creating the ultimate Image Workflow. John Beardsworth created the framework for one such Image Workflow. I have adapted that workflow to my needs, adding some additional steps along the way. Further, I adapted his numbering system to be more flexible for others to add steps in their workflow.

The image to the left shows you a sample of the changes I have made. By using 10, 20 , 30 as indexes within each step, you can customize the workflow by inserting your own step or renumbering the parent step without having to change each step it contains. I added dashes in between the number and the step to make them more readable.

I also used the rating system customized to my own taste. For example, if I have an image rated as a 5 star image, then it is one of the 'absolute best' as are other ratings. Using the color labels I also customized the text to the meaning for my color labels. You can change any of these rules to suite your taste.

Finally, I expanded the ISO range. I use a Leica M8 and the ISO ratings are different. I wanted to know which images really need noise reduction and which one's are fine as shot. I can also more quickly tell which images are lower ISO and good quality for enlargements.

Conclusion

Smart Collections add value to your workflow. Keep an eye out here and I'll make the workflow availablle for download.

... Read More!

Don't forget to visit my photography web site where we sell museum quality black and white prints framed to last up to 175 years - Outdoor Images Fine Art.

Lightroom Tip#11-LR2 Filtering in Smart Collections

Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Beta included a new feature called Smart Collections. These collections are created automatically after setting some rules. The rules are very customizable and can filter based on certain data from your images. There is a trick to filtering for some words though that are contained within other words. If not properly entered in the filter, the smart collection will contain images that were not intended to be included.

When setting up a rule to filter on a word that is short, not very unique and can be part of other words, there is trick to follow. Take the example of a keyword 'rob' which is also contained in 'robby', 'robert', 'throb' and 'robin'. Simply setting the smart collection to contain 'rob' will filter in a lot of other images that were not desired.

The trick (or rather rule) is this: use the '+' sign in your filter text. The '+' sign, or plus sign, indicates either starts with or ends with depending on whether you place it at the beginning of a word or the end.

Thus, to filter out 'throb' in our example, use '+rob' as the filter. This will leave 'rob', 'robby', robbert' and 'robin'. To filter out everything except 'rob', use the '+' sign at both the beginning and the end. Thus, '+rob+' will filter out 'robby', 'robbert' and 'robin' in addition to 'throb'. Reading the translation of the filter you get 'starts with rob and ends with rob'.

Hope this helps! ... Read More!

Don't forget to visit my photography web site where we sell museum quality black and white prints framed to last up to 175 years - Outdoor Images Fine Art.