One of my absolute favorite features inside of Lightroom Classic is the Collections panel. They allow the user to “collect” photos from different folders all into one place to organize projects or ideas. Putting photos into a collection does not move the image; instead, it references the file and groups them however you like, similar to filtering your images.

I started heavily using this feature several years ago, mostly when writing books, articles and doing several other miscellaneous educational projects. However, since then I have implemented them into my daily routine. I constantly add images to collections, sort through them and look in my older collections for inspiration.

Here are a few of the ways that I find this useful:

Clouds and textures

When I’m out photographing a landscape, or if I happen to be just somewhere with my camera and I see a good sky or texture, I will take a few random photos of that sky (or texture) to use in a future project. Since I don’t always remember where these random files are located, adding them to a collection is the best way to store them for further use. You can see my example of clouds in the photo above.

Every so often I want to replace a sky in a landscape photo or stylize a photo with a texture, and it’s nice to have them all in one place. By adding them to a collection I will always have them grouped so that I can access them quickly when I find an image where I want to either add a sky or some texture.

Quick Collection for temporary projects

To quickly add images, right-click the collection and select Set as Target. By default, the Quick Collection is the Target Collection, but you can change it to whatever you like; once it’s selected as the Target Collection you’ll see a plus icon (+) next to it. Then, use the keyboard shortcut B to add (or remove) selected photos.

Take your photography further

Get the Adobe Photography Plan, with Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop — all for one low monthly fee!