Editing software, and photo organisation.

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Edit My Images
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Hi,
Been a serious amateur photographer now for 2 years (when time allows), but not seriously looked at editing and organisation, kept photos on my iPad so far and lightly used Affinity Photo (Ipad version).
Now the dark nights are rolling in I have decided to have a more serious look at editing, I have built a mid range Windows PC and I am firstly looking at software, don’t really fancy the Lightroom route because of the monthly subscription, I will go there if I feel it is the right tool but would have to forfeit my iTunes , debating to carry on with Affinity but the Windows version, I don’t know if this differs greatly from the iPad version. Also the Skylum Luminar 4 looks good, not out yet til November though, can can buy a package with 3 which includes 4 when it is released but it is more expensive than buying 4 alone, which baffles me why would you use 3 when you have 4. Anybody have both of these and can give a comparison.
Open to any other suggestions and also debating the best way to organise photos on the PC, is Photos good enough or is there a better way to catalogue them.
As a side thought just brought a Sony A6000 to run along side my main DSLR for travel and Video, any recommendations for video software that can cope with Sony’s AVCHD files
Many Thanks.
 
You should organise photo storage on your computer, rather than allowing the computer to do it for you. My personal preference is by date, and I have folders by year, then by individual date (YYYY.MM.DD) and where relevent also including the subject. I also keyword images so that I can find them through software (lightroom or On1 Photoraw - both share the same keywords and ratings etc).

I have no comments to make on Luminar, having not used anything by them (previously Macphun) since switching to editing on a PC about 5 years ago.
 
Thanks for that ancient_mariner I did think of just creating my own folder system, I like the format you have used and can see the importance of using keywords especially if looking for a certain subject or place rather than trolling though pictures.
 
As Toni said, you can organise your own folder structure for image files.

You say that you're serious, but we're unclear as to what that means translated to the real world.

Are you shooting raw? For probably most serious purposes (not all), you ought to be. In which case you need a raw processor, such as Lightroom, Luminar, Capture One, DxO Photolab, Darktable, etc. As well as a bias towards raw translation functions, each will contain image-processing tools. So you don't really need Affinity.

But if you only shoot jpg or tif, then Affinity alone might be your animal ... and it's powerful, and cheap!
 
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Yes droj, I only shoot raw and still getting my head around how the process of editing, Affinity photos lets me change the exposure, white balance, noise, lens distortion etc and then I have to develop the picture and can to other editing to it like making layers, adding graphics etc, still not sure how to edit from start to finish.
I don’t know how this compares to how other editing software operates.

As for serious
D500
Tokina 11-16mm f2.8
Sigma 17-50mm f.2.8
Nikon 50mm 1.8G
Nikon AF-P 70-300mm
Sigma 150-600mm C
+ couple of others
Sony A6000 + kit lens for dropping into pocket when the D500 is too big.

I shoot anything that appeals, wildlife is favourite, portraits least favourite.
 
Thanks for the list of kit, but that's just the shopping that you could afford. 'Serious' isn't just about intention, but in the real world is about results, which are a product of competence and vision in various proportions.

You're on the right track to explore with the pc as a processing platform, there's a great big world ahead of you ...

Look at other people's pictures a lot, and critique them in your mind - this'll develop your vision. Try to analyse how they were done, not to copy but just to understand.

Aesthetics are one thing, and meaning another. Hopefully you can get them to conspire. It's an endless road. Be humble.
 
I must firstly admit that I don't organize everything very well, but I plan to do a large re-structuring of my files soon. I use lightroom as editing suite, and it also organizes your pictures in some way.
As for file folder structuring, I read a great article, paraphrased it explained that you should order your picture, by how you remember them. If you think back of a particular photo of a mountain that you took two years ago, and you know the exact date, then thats a great way to organize. For me though, I try to use a location based structure. Firstly organize based on location, then date when I took them (and in the folder name the event name).

Example file structure:
Asia
Japan
2016 06 23 - Hiking in the mountains
2016 08 07 - Buddhist mountain temple
....
2019 06 23 - Hiking in the mountains
2019 08 07 - Dance event
2019 08 15 - Fireworks festival
....
Indonesia
2014 05 03 - Jakarta city center
2014 05 04 - Jakarta beach visit
....
Europe
Netherlands
...
Italy
....

The date structure of YYYY MM DD - TOPIC makes all the folders organize from earliest to latest so you do have sort of a date ordering system as well.

Because for me, the first things about a picture I remember is where I took it, not necessarily precisely when. I still have the dates in the folder name so that if I search through the folder for a particular date I can find it, and if I search for example for 'beach' i can easily find beach related pictures too. Although this last part is not an ideal solution, from what I can see lightroom tags offer a far better solution, however tagging all my pictures is an insurmountable task.

edit: formatting
 
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I use same system as ancient_mariner. There’s an explanation on a recent thread about backing up On1.
 
I no longer make any attempt to construct an ordered file system. After all it is the ease of finding an individual or set of images that is important, not where they are.
While you might seem to have a nice neat file system on your computer, in reality it is only an index, and the actual image files are scattered willy nilly over your hard disk.
I put all my images in files in a volume called pictures on my E drive. and give them a suitable name. (It is important that these files are then never moved again) I then use Light Room to create the necessary library, and give every image suitable Key words categories groups etc to make them easy to define. There is no need to do this by date as every image file has a creation date in its exif data, which can be used for sorting as required.

As individual images can belong in numerous categories at the same time, or share key words. It is extremely easy to find any selection of images you could conceivably require.

Prior to the Digital age I used a more manual system for my professional work. On processing, every image was given an individual consecutive number that was never reused. Every image or film file was put in an individual file envelope showing the date, and first and last image number that it contained. It also contained a print or contact sheet of those images. The finding system consisted of a written log of all numbers and a short description of the image. There was also a log of all jobs done by date and numbers of the resulting images. And a card system of clients, showing jobs done So it was easy to find individual images when needed.

I also had a visual system for finding images by category. when processed all images printed for the client had additional copies made and placed in subject matter Lever arch files so that all image of the same group were filed together and could easily be found or selected. all prints had the individual number written on the back. so could be tracked to client, Job, date and location of the negative in matter of a moment.

DAM systems like Lightroom Do not care where an image is stored... provided it is not moved. ( ok! You might need to move it to a new computer or hard disk, but providing you give it the same file address it can still be found with out trouble.... last year I had to do just that....)

I would be very happy indeed if I could find a DAM system that was independent of Adobe or other Processing software so that it was not tied to any one supplier.
 
@Sean Wilson Do you realise that no matter what photo organisation software you use, whether it is Lightroom or any other similar software, they all actually access your original image files on your hard drive by means of links? You open a photo organisation software, but the photos you see in a grid view are actually thumbnail copies of the originals, not the actual image file itself. When you click on an image, it goes and show a copy of the original image, not much different from say, importing an image into Microsoft Word.

You may as well start at the beginning, like others who posted above had suggested, by manually organising your own folders and image files in Windows itself, in the first place. After all, sometimes we may import photos from the camera to the computer through the photo organisation software which is technically just making a catalogue of your images, but the image are still going to end up in their final place, Windows itself.

It's like a museum. Archaeologist digs up objects from Egypt (you take photos), the museum takes photos and make notes for records (your photo organisation software takes thumbnail copies, makes links, and notes as you import the photos), the objects are then kept either in vaults or put on display (your images gets to end up in a folder on Windows).

Your photos does not end up inside the photo organisation software. Thus photos does not live in a Lightroom Catalogue. The photos is in your Windows folders.

After you manually organise your own photos and your own folders on your own Windows, once you are totally happy with your prefer system of sorting the images, you can then go ahead, download and install whatever photo organisation software you want, and import the photos into it. After that, you either move the new photos to Windows and update the photo organisation software, or move the photos through the photo organisation software to Windows.

Beside, you already got Windows, it's there and it's free (well of course you paid for Windows, but I mean it's not extra payment, like paying for Lightroom), you've got Windows to use to organise your photos. Once your photos are all sorted and filed, you then either download and install (paid or free) software for it.

As a matter of a fact, that's what I did. Spent hours and hours, sometimes days, sorting out my image files in Windows itself. Manually creating folders and subfolders, manually moving them, manually renaming the filenames, until I'm happy with the way my image files are sorted. After that, I downloaded and installed Lightroom, then imported my photos into it. After getting Lightroom, I then just transfer my photos from camera through Lightroom to Windows, so that Lightroom would create thumbnails and notes, while the files ends up in on Windows.

Beside, even if any photo organisation software you use fails or stops, like you stop paying Adobe, or whatever photo organisation software you use stopped working, you would still have to fail back on your own organisation on Windows. Same does for changing photo organisation software, you change the software but your own photos are still on Windows, and most photo organisation software will just use your own filing system on Windows anyway.
 
I must firstly admit that I don't organize everything very well, but I plan to do a large re-structuring of my files soon. I use lightroom as editing suite, and it also organizes your pictures in some way.
As for file folder structuring, I read a great article, paraphrased it explained that you should order your picture, by how you remember them. If you think back of a particular photo of a mountain that you took two years ago, and you know the exact date, then thats a great way to organize. For me though, I try to use a location based structure. Firstly organize based on location, then date when I took them (and in the folder name the event name).

[SNIP]


The date structure of YYYY MM DD - TOPIC makes all the folders organize from earliest to latest so you do have sort of a date ordering system as well.

Sadly whoever wrote any articles, whether in magazines or online, usually forgot that not everyone are the same. Those writers tend to be fine and well, very healthy, and have good memory. But did not consider to think about people who are not 100% healthy, did not consider people who have mental health, did not consider people who have poor memory skills. It is great that those writers just happens to remember when did they take the photos, so they can give it a proper date structure of YYYY MM DD.

But there are people who would barely remember the year, would not remember the month, let alone the actual date. They may be the sort of people who would say something like "I know I took that photo in 2007, but I don't remember what month, I think it was in June, no, I could be wrong I think it is July. No, either it's June or July!"

So I decided to use a filing structure on the computer by borrowing the old film and darkroom method.

Because sometimes some of us may take photos on one film over a length of time, like a week or so, may have forgotten to have it developed and printed maybe because it wasn't that important enough. By the time we have it developed, we may forgot what date each frame was taken, so we chose to use a developed dated instead, or use a roll number. For example: 1987-01-10 could be the date the film was developed or that 1987-001 could be a roll or film number 1, after all, we tend to keep the negatives in a sheet, so it could also double as a page number.

So I have a filing system based on the year, and a subfolder based on the order of when I transferred the images to the computer. Mine is like this...

2007
---001
---002
---003
2008
---001
---002

And so on. It is useful because backtracking, if I found old photos, scan them, and if I know the year but not the month (let alone the day), then I could put it into a new subfolder. For example, found lot of old photos that I know I have taken in 1985, so scan them, and put the batch of scanned images into subfolder 001.

Creating a folder structure using the date is fine if people actually remember when they took those photos (or have wrote them down, ie writing a diary about it), but they're not much use for people who would not remember an actual date.
 
I organize by date on my hard drive, with each trip or event listed by date and a short descriptor:
2019
--2019_01_05_Yorkshire_vacation
--2019_02_10_Cousin_Bill_wedding

Then, I use key-wording to index photos so that I can use the searching function in my software to find common images across the different physical locations (e.g. all photos of beaches). And, I use 'collections' to assemble images across different physical locations into groups if I want to work on a book or slide show (e.g. family photos for the year).
I can't see any advantage to a folder naming system for the original images which is based on a complex classification sytem when the software has excellent search capabilities. I don't access my original photos except through my software.

As for software, I know that many people shy away from the monthly plans but, the Adobe photo plans are good value and the software is very good and reliable. Other software (e.g. Capture One) is moving towards a subscription model. I prefer the control offered by LR and Capture One over the AI/preset approach that some other companies seem to be moving towards (e.g. Topaz). From what I have heard, Luminar 4 is moving that way. I also heard the Luminar 4 will not be compatible with Luminar 3 edits (https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1616052/#14999832 ).
 
The advanvantage of a filing system you organise yourself is that IF the software you're using ever fails, for example the catalogue in Lightroom becomes corrupted, Apple Photos fall over, your OS dies etc then you can relatively easily find them again just by popping the HDD in a caddy and navgating to the relevant folder. This doesn't take away from the need for backups, of course, but may make life easier in some circumstances.

This is not to knock Apple in any way, but some years back a group of women from our village had a cycling adventure in Cuba, then after returning the village got together to hear them talk about it and see the pictures. One of them had their images on a MB Air, and the relevant software had uploaded images from her camera and placed them 'somewhere' on her hard drive, all very painless. This became a problem when she wanted to show her pictures and couldn't find an easy way of locating the actual image files for display on another computer. It is alway best to know where your files are.
 
I have a really great way of organising all my photos, it is called the "chaos" method. The advantage is that finding a particular photo takes up a lot of time to prevent being bored. Also it does enable one to find long lost and forgotten photos.

get Adobe elements I use version 14 although there are newer ones
 
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The advanvantage of a filing system you organise yourself is that IF the software you're using ever fails, for example the catalogue in Lightroom becomes corrupted, Apple Photos fall over, your OS dies etc then you can relatively easily find them again just by popping the HDD in a caddy and navgating to the relevant folder. This doesn't take away from the need for backups, of course, but may make life easier in some circumstances.

This is not to knock Apple in any way, but some years back a group of women from our village had a cycling adventure in Cuba, then after returning the village got together to hear them talk about it and see the pictures. One of them had their images on a MB Air, and the relevant software had uploaded images from her camera and placed them 'somewhere' on her hard drive, all very painless. This became a problem when she wanted to show her pictures and couldn't find an easy way of locating the actual image files for display on another computer. It is alway best to know where your files are.

Yep

Windows = Your computer, your operating system, your files and folders, your photos, YOUR organisation.
Apple = Your computer, your operating system, your files and folders, your photos, THEIR organisation!

With my own DVDs on my own shelves, I can organise them how I like it. The majority of the DVDs will be in A-Z order, expect few DVDs will be grouped together and put somewhere. Example being 48Hrs and Another 48Hrs which I would group together an placed at the start, or that I would group Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes would be grouped together and put between Pixels and Predator

But with Apple, downloaded movies gets sorted in A-Z followed by 0-9, so I end up finding 48Hrs at the end of my iTunes Library while Another 48Hrs is at the start, desperate the fact that Another 48Hrs is a sequel so should come after 48Hrs!!

So sorting out and organising your own photographs manually on Windows, by moving them to whatever folders you want to create, and rename how you like them to be, means you have control over where they should go. Beside, most of us are likely to get used to our own system, eventually some of us will end up remembering roughly whereabouts 'that photo' is.

A photo organisation software (ie Lightroom or whatever) will only just display the photos in the order you want them to be as they on your hard drive, and only give you the options of showing them in different order (ie by date), but if we lose the software, we would always still remember whereabouts the photos are, same as we would remember whereabouts our books or DVDs are.

It's a human nature to go for where we know where it is. You want to show a friend a book, you went straight for the book on the shelf, despite the fact that you did not start at the first book and go through it all A to Z, you just magically went for where the books is. Of course you may sometimes zone in on roughly where it is, and only need to go through a few books until you found the one you're looking for.

Same with photos on your hard drive, because you could, as @ancient_mariner points out, "know where your files are" so you could easily say "I know that photo is roughly somewhere in this folder." then you open the folder and look for it until you found it. In the same way as you know roughly where that book is and zone in on a group of books on the shelf.
 
Yep

Windows = Your computer, your operating system, your files and folders, your photos, YOUR organisation.
Apple = Your computer, your operating system, your files and folders, your photos, THEIR organisation!

With my own DVDs on my own shelves, I can organise them how I like it. The majority of the DVDs will be in A-Z order, expect few DVDs will be grouped together and put somewhere. Example being 48Hrs and Another 48Hrs which I would group together an placed at the start, or that I would group Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes would be grouped together and put between Pixels and Predator

But with Apple, downloaded movies gets sorted in A-Z followed by 0-9, so I end up finding 48Hrs at the end of my iTunes Library while Another 48Hrs is at the start, desperate the fact that Another 48Hrs is a sequel so should come after 48Hrs!!

So sorting out and organising your own photographs manually on Windows, by moving them to whatever folders you want to create, and rename how you like them to be, means you have control over where they should go. Beside, most of us are likely to get used to our own system, eventually some of us will end up remembering roughly whereabouts 'that photo' is.

A photo organisation software (ie Lightroom or whatever) will only just display the photos in the order you want them to be as they on your hard drive, and only give you the options of showing them in different order (ie by date), but if we lose the software, we would always still remember whereabouts the photos are, same as we would remember whereabouts our books or DVDs are.

It's a human nature to go for where we know where it is. You want to show a friend a book, you went straight for the book on the shelf, despite the fact that you did not start at the first book and go through it all A to Z, you just magically went for where the books is. Of course you may sometimes zone in on roughly where it is, and only need to go through a few books until you found the one you're looking for.

Same with photos on your hard drive, because you could, as @ancient_mariner points out, "know where your files are" so you could easily say "I know that photo is roughly somewhere in this folder." then you open the folder and look for it until you found it. In the same way as you know roughly where that book is and zone in on a group of books on the shelf.

The reason DAM exists is to save you the trouble of knowing or remembering practically nothing. when your memory goes or you forget, you will still be able to find your images.
That is what your key words do. and combined with a year or month it can narrow it down even further. It will show you every image that meets any particular or combination of criteria. usually in fractions of a second. If I were to enter Just Saddleworth I would call up hundreds of results. if I added Uppermill it would narrow it down to a few hundred if I added 2019 it would find less than a hundred if I added House it would cut it to the low tens. By using standard Key words most searches only take a few seconds to find an individual image. When you have found the image you can find its location on the computer with a couple of clicks.
If you also catalogue your images as groups you can find all images in that group in a single click. ... what is not to like. You do not even need to organise your files. though for house keeping they should all be in the same place.
 
Yep

Windows = Your computer, your operating system, your files and folders, your photos, YOUR organisation.
Apple = Your computer, your operating system, your files and folders, your photos, THEIR organisation!

I may be missgin something here, but that's not a fair characterizatiojn of all Apple products. I use an iMac and MacBook pro. I can organize my files anyway that I want on the internal disc or on external discs. I can use Apple software (Photos) with my organization. I actually use Lightroom, again with my organization. THis is no different from what I could do under Windows.

If you use an IOS based product, then you lose a lot of control. But, that is only a small part of the Apple computers used for photos.
 
...Everything...

Everything Terry said is pretty much how I do things and how I think.

I loosely organise by year and within that I have folders that are named based on things that make sense. "Holiday to Egypt", or "Alison's Biscuit Blog"

Lightroom is the ultimate tool though and the keywording structure I use allows me to find images based on what I want to find.

If I know I took the pic in 2008, I can find it by going to the 2008 folder and looking through the folder structure.
If I know I took it on holiday, I can search by "holiday" keyword.
If it was a nice tree pic, I can earch by the tree keyword.
If it went on Instagram I can look for the Instagram keyword.
If I tookm it with my RB67, I can search for that keyword.

Keywording is a huge PITA and boring as hell. But the rewards are more than worth the tedium. I wrote an article about it here which goes into more detail.

I truly wish someone would come up with a comparable DAM solution becuase Adobe are doing very nicely because they have a monopoly [with a system that just works really well] and I think they're lazy because they know it.

/grumble
 
If you also catalogue your images as groups you can find all images in that group in a single click. ... what is not to like. You do not even need to organise your files. though for house keeping they should all be in the same place.

Absolutely. The self-organising is for when you need to take over because the software can't cope/has broken/other emergency. I also have a personal loathing of the machine taking stuff *like that* out of my hands, because I don't trust it and know that at some time it WILL fail. It will work for me in the way I want it to, and not the other way round.

IMO the On1 approach is better, because they don't use a database, instead storing information in sidecar files, however that may have problems searching across folders (I've not tried yet, because I don't use it for management.)
 
because they don't use a database, instead storing information in sidecar files

Lightroomm does do this, but you need to press a couple of buttons (CTRL+A and CTRL+S) AFAIR....
 
My advice is try and do as little organising and management by folders (so a simple dated folder structure) and as much organising in your DAM software. Use the photo metadata such as location and keywords to find your photos.
 
I find myself in much the same situation as the OP and felt the need to make a belated contribution to this thread. Something that I don’t think was mentioned in the previous posts is “backup”. Apologies if it was and I missed it.

One key benefit of taking responsibility for the file structure holding your images is that you can make backups and be in control of those backups. Our images are important assets that we want to protect. The ideal is to work towards the backup goal of at least three copies of your data, storing two backup copies on different storage media and with one copy located offsite.

For this reason, I favour an approach using the file system with limited subfolders and keywording. I’m trying to work with the top level of the structure folders named after years and below these subfolders named after the shoot/event/trip and the date. As posted by Nick Birkett

2010
2010_06_23_Anne_Wedding
2010_09_01_France
::
::
2011
2011_07_12_Carnival
2011_10_01_Sophie
::
::

Taking this approach allows for backups to be made incrementally, structured by the year.
 
K
I find myself in much the same situation as the OP and felt the need to make a belated contribution to this thread. Something that I don’t think was mentioned in the previous posts is “backup”. Apologies if it was and I missed it.

One key benefit of taking responsibility for the file structure holding your images is that you can make backups and be in control of those backups. Our images are important assets that we want to protect. The ideal is to work towards the backup goal of at least three copies of your data, storing two backup copies on different storage media and with one copy located offsite.

For this reason, I favour an approach using the file system with limited subfolders and keywording. I’m trying to work with the top level of the structure folders named after years and below these subfolders named after the shoot/event/trip and the date. As posted by Nick Birkett

2010
2010_06_23_Anne_Wedding
2010_09_01_France
::
::
2011
2011_07_12_Carnival
2011_10_01_Sophie
::
::

Taking this approach allows for backups to be made incrementally, structured by the year.

Back up software can happily incrementally back files however they are organized.
Nor is there a need to date them, as Every image and file is dated when it is created.
key words are the Key that is why they are so called.
 
I understand what you are saying Terrywoodenpic. Unfortunately it was poor use of "incremental". I really meant to convey the concept of systematically backing up images under your own control. I think that is important to have some control over archiving/backing up. I feel happier not totally relying on software.

I totally agree that keywords are crucial and should not be neglected, and dates are held in EXIF data. However by having a structure with some date information means that images can still be located without recourse to software. The best of both worlds.
 
There important thing with backup software is to understand how it works, configure it correctly - including setting up notifications of unsuccessful jobs - test it and then leave it alone to do its job.
While it may be nicer to feel you have the element of control, the more a human has input into what should be a repeatable, automated process, the more likely the human will cock things up!
 
Every so often I make a new duplicate hard disk of all my image files including my light room catalogue. In this way I have a back up that is independent of my normal soft ware back ups.
 
I truly wish someone would come up with a comparable DAM solution because Adobe are doing very nicely because they have a monopoly [with a system that just works really well] and I think they're lazy because they know it.
Take a look at Digikam. It's the no. 1 open source, serious photographers DAM program.

It has a huge set of DAM features and new ones being released continuously. It has the full keywords/colours/groups/star ratings, Geo Tags, Face Recognition, Saved searches, duplicate/similar/by sketch searches, EXIF Editor, Calendar/tree/geo-map views, integrated download and upload e.g. Flikr/web, Batch processing, watermarks. It integrates well with all my editors and Raw programs too.

It's free, so it's easy to try out for yourself too. https://www.digikam.org/
 
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Take a look at Digikam. It's the no. 1 open source, serious photographers DAM program.

It has a huge set of DAM features and new ones being released continuously. It has the full keywords/colours/groups/star ratings, Geo Tags, Face Recognition, Saved searches, duplicate/similar/by sketch searches, EXIF Editor, Calendar/tree/geo-map views, integrated download and upload e.g. Flikr/web, Batch processing, watermarks. It integrates well with all my editors and Raw programs too.

It's free, so it's easy to try out for yourself too. https://www.digikam.org/

As it is based on "Collections" rather than key words. It could be difficult to find cross "collection" images
I do create collections in Lightroom, but usually "Find" particular group or individual images with Key words are it is infinitely flexible, and far quicker, what ever "Collections" an image might have been put in.
 
As it is based on "Collections" rather than key words. It could be difficult to find cross "collection" images
I do create collections in Lightroom, but usually "Find" particular group or individual images with Key words are it is infinitely flexible, and far quicker, what ever "Collections" an image might have been put in.
Sure it uses key words as well as all the other methods. I use lots of structured keywords for my pictures. Cross referencing them with flags and star ratings etc.
 
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