The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook
82
Summary
Lightroom comprises  ve modules, each designed for a speci c
task. The functionality of each module is controlled by a toolbar,
panels and templates. There are many useful keyboard shortcuts
and presets to boost work ow.
Discussion Questions
(1) Q. Name four useful keyboard shortcuts to control how
Lightroom displays images.
A. Tab, Shift-Tab, spacebar and F key.
(2) Q. Why would the Lights Out mode be useful?
A. The Lights Out mode is a perfect way of showing a client
or teacher your work without seeing the application.

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83
CHAPTER 7
The Lightroom Library
Module
L
et’s start by talking about Lightroom’s  rst Module, the Library.
The Library Module is command central for Lightroom. This is your
digital asset management system. It is where you view, sort, search,
manage, organize, rank, compare and browse through your images .
The Lightroom Library Module is a true database that catalogs
all imported images so you can view previews and data whether
the images are online or not. All images must be imported into
Lightroom to view them. The process of importing photos, imports
the image and also creates a metadata record in Lightroom’s catalog.
This record contains all the data about the image including location,

Keywording Panel, Keyword List,
and Metadata Panel, as well as
the Histogram
Library Filter
Collections
panel
Folder
panel
Catalog
panel

FIG 7.1

The Library Module main window

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The Lightroom Library Module
85
Now we’ll go over how all the panels in the Library Module
function. We’ll start with the left-hand panels.
Navigator Panel
The Navigator is located on the top left. This gives you a preview of
the selected image. Clicking on the image in the Navigator will go
to Loupe Mode that displays the image in a large view.
There are four views in the Navigator. The last view has a drop-
down menu with eight choices ranging from 1:4 to 11:1.

●
F i t


space bar, or clicking on the image in loupe view.
Figure 7.2B
displays 1:1.

FIG 7.2B

Cycle between two views by
using the space bar, or clicking on the
image in loupe view

(B)

FIG 7.3

The Catalog Panel

The Catalog Panel
The Catalog panel displays the number of photographs in
your Library under All Photographs. When you highlight All
Photographs, you will see all the images in your catalog displayed
in the grid. It also displays any quick collection you may have, as
well as your previous import and previous export as a catalog or
any missing  les ( Figure 7.3 ) .
What are Quick Collections?
A Quick Collection is a temporary culling of images. To create a
quick collection you can click on the circle on the top right of the
cell around the image when going through the shoot. A dialog
box will pop up and ask you if you’d like to add this image to a
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The Lightroom Library Module

(A)

FIG 7.4A

Target Collections
There is a ϩ next to Quick Collection when you  rst open
Lightroom 2.0. The ϩ sign signi es that Quick Collection is
designated as your Target Collection. Any collection can be
deemed a Target Collection. A target is simply the location that the
image(s) will be referenced to when using the keyboard shortcut B.
By default, Quick Collection is your target collection. You can
only have one Target Collection at a time. To change your target
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The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook
88
collection, control or right click on the new collection you want to
be deemed as your target, and choose Set as Target Collection.
I n
Figure 7.4B , we have set our Portfolio Collection as our Target
Collection, so anytime we hit the B key on an image, we are adding
a reference  le of that image to our Portfolio Collection.
(B)

FIG 7.4B

Setting a Target Collection

Work ow Tips for Quick Collections

●

that volume.

FIG 7.4C

The Volume Browser

(C)
Work ow in the Folder Panel
D-65 uses a speci c  le-naming convention for all the imported
folders of images, as well as to the images themselves. We import
into a folder with a naming convention of Year, Month, Day and Job
Name. All of our image folders line up in a hierarchical order based
on year, month, day making it is easy to browse through the jobs in a
logical progression. The images inside those folders are also named
with the same convention, adding on a sequence number. More
details on this once we begin importing images ( Figures 7.5A and B ) .
Click on the + icon to create a new folder or subfolder.
Clicking on the –icon will remove a folder. You can also
Add New Root Folder, display Folder Name Only, display
Path From Volume and or display Folder and Path
The folder panel displays all the imported folders into Lightroom. Everything
you import will show up in this panel in specific folders with the number
of images included within each folder.
(A) (B)

FIG 7.5

The Folders Panel

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Figure 7.6 ).
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The Lightroom Library Module
91
The Synchronize Folders is useful as you have the option of adding
 les that have been added to the folder but not imported into the
catalog, and removing  les which have been deleted. The Save
Metadata option will update and save any changed metadata to
either the catalog or to sidecar .xmp  les as determined by your
preferences. Lastly, Update Folder Location allows you to change
the folder links without having to  rst remove the existing folder
(
Figure 7.7 ).

FIG 7.7

Options in the Folders Panel

Lightroom as a DAM
Lightroom is a true digital asset management system. The catalog
can display folders and images even if they are not currently
physically present. In the example on the next page D-65 is on
the road using a laptop computer. We have taken our Lightroom_
Catalog folder with us but we have only taken a few folders of images
from our Lightroom_Library hard drive. We have taken these folders
of images because we want to work on these  les while we are on
location. The folders in the light gray shade with the ? designate
folders with images inside the folder that are not physically present
on the external hard drive associated with our laptop’s Lightroom_
Location_Library. The folders in WHITE are physically present on our

FIG 7.9

Using the Library Module in Work ow while ‘ On the Road ’
Because we have built high-res 1:1 previews, we can even zoom
in on these  les without any artifacting. This is one large plus for
generating 1:1 previews. You can take them on the road without
having the  les and still make web galleries and slideshows and
view the images at 100%. The only downside is that these previews
do take up considerable space. In Figure 7.10A , we have a  le that
is o -line, but has a high-res preview. This allows us to zoom into
100%, and use the  le for all purposes in Lightroom with the
exception of the Develop Module, even without having the image
with us. Figure 7.10B is an example of an o -line  le which only has the
low-res preview generated. It reveals artifacting at 100%, rendering
it useless for any other purpose than reference within Lightroom.
The Collections Panel
The last panel on the left side is called Collections, and it is located
under the Folder panel. Collections are similar to Quick Collections,
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The Lightroom Library Module
93
but they are permanent and you can have as many Collections as
you would like in Lightroom.
Why Use a Collection?
Here is the real power of Lightroom. You have an image in one
folder. It’s of some pink  ippers on a dock in Belize (like the one
on the next page). You want to place this image with a group of
other images called Portfolio and you also want to use this for
a stock submission for your agency. In the old days, you would
(A)

Click on it, choosing Set as Target Collection ( Figure 7.11A ).
Each one of these images
lives in a different folder,
but they are all organized as
a ‘portfolio’ collection based
on the metadata
(A)

FIG 7.11A

Example of a Collection

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The Lightroom Library Module
95
(C)

FIG 7.11C

Creating Collections Sets

(B)

FIG 7.11B

Options for Collections

Smart Collections
Smart Collections are totally cool and new for 2.0. They allow
you to select criteria to automatically group your images into


Creating Smart Collections
with conditional rules

Work ow Tip for Smart Collections

●
Smart Collections can have very complex criteria. Hold down the
Alt key on the plus sign when making decisions, the plus sign
will turn into a # sign and give you the added ability to make
conditional rules which are very cool ( Figure 7.11E ) .
More on Smart Collections
Smart Collections can be edited as well. In fact they can be
renamed, deleted and you can even import and export Smart
Collections to another catalog ( Figure 7.11F ).
Library Right-Side Panels
The right-hand panel of the Library displays a Histogram, Quick
Develop, Keywording and Metadata.
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The Lightroom Library Module
97

FIG 7.13

The Quick Develop PanelFIG 7.12

The Histogram Panel

power of using Lightroom as a digital asset management system
begins. The best way of using any DAM is to take advantage of
the applications ability to  nd speci c images. Proper keywording
and fully  lling out all metadata is not only advantageous but
essentially the only way of  nding speci c images in a very large
collection. It is one thing to scroll through a few hundred images
to  nd the one you want. It is an entirely di erent matter to scroll
through 50,000 images to  nd the one you want.
The Keyword List Panel
A keyword tag or ‘ keyword ’ is metadata that categorizes and
describes the key elements of a photo. According to one study it
may take more than 400 keywords to accurately describe an image
without actually looking at the thumbnail. Building a Keyword
Hierarchy can be a tedious and painful task but it is essential to
Digital Asset Management.
Keywords help in identi cation and searching for images in a
catalog. Keyword tags are stored either in the photo  le or in XMP
sidecar  les or in Lightroom’s catalog. The XMP can be read by any
application that supports XMP metadata.
Keywording Images
To keyword your images, think globally  rst and then go for local.
Think of keywording the same way you would classify an animal.
A Spider Monkey would  rst be a Mammal then an Ape, then a
monkey and  nally a spider monkey. For example, to classify Miami
Beach, you might want to make several keyword hierarchies. One
Parent would be Continent with a child called North America. A
second Parent might be called Countries, with a child keyword
of United States. A third Parent might be called cities with a child
keyword of Miami Beach. Continent, Country, State, City and so on
would categorize the image.

will go to those
images that contain
that keyword.
Click the +
icon to
create a new
keyword tag
(A) (B)

FIG 7.15

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The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook
100
Creating Keyword Tags with Synonyms and Export Options
When creating keywords, you can add synonyms and export
options. Synonyms are similar or related terms for keyword tags.
Synonyms allow you to apply one keyword and automatically
apply additional synonyms. For those of you keywording animals,
one very useful synonym is to use the Latin name or scienti c
name of the animal as a synonym. You can also choose to include
keywords or not on export. This too is a very signi cant feature. We
use keywords for jobs and for names of folks we know. We put this
type of information into a Parent Keyword called Private Metadata
and we don’t include it on export. This way the information
becomes useful in searching within Lightroom but it isn’t included
in the images on export.
Keyword tags can be created as children of parent keyword tags.
For example, a parent tag might be ‘ WEATHER ’ and the child could
be ‘ hurricane ’ and you could apply a group of synonyms at the

Some Keywording Tips

●
If an asterisk appears next to a keyword that means that this
keyword is present in some but not in all of the selected images
( Figure 7.18A ).

●
In the grid mode, you can see that an image has keywords with
the keyword badge. Clicking on this badge will bring you to
the Keywords panel and display the keywords in the image
( Figure 7.18B ).
If one the keywords has an asterisk next
to it, that means that the keyword is
present in some, but not all of the
images selected.
(A)
In the grid mode, you can see
that an image has keywords
with the keyword badge.
Clicking on this badge will
bring you to the keywords
panel and display the
keywords in the image.
(B)

FIG 7.18

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