How can I sort Lightroom collections by the date a photo walk started?
Asked 10/4/2015
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2 answers
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I create a Lightroom collection for each photo walk, usually named after the location, and the collection may include the original photos plus edited versions. Some walks span multiple days or weeks, and sometimes I repeat the same walk more than once.
I’d like to see these walk collections ordered chronologically by the date each walk started, with the newest at the top and the oldest at the bottom. Can Lightroom sort collections by date, or is there a better way to organize this? If not, what naming scheme works best for repeated walks and multi-day walks?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
1
I checked in Lightroom CC 2015.1.1 and you can choose from two options for sorting:
- Sort by name
- Sort by Kind
It's on the Adobe help website as well (https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/photo-collections.html) which confirms that it sorted the name alphabetically. It doesn't say anything about by Kind but that also sorted within the same kind by name alphabetically.
So you can add a prefix to a collection name to sort by date, here are some examples:
- yyyy-mm-dd-WalkName e.g. 2015-10-04-SomePlaceName
- yyyymmdd-WalkName e.g. 20151004-SomePlaceName
- yyyy-mm-dd-7d-WalkName e.g. 2015-10-04-7d-SomePlaceName
- yyyy-mm-dd to yyyy-mm-dd WalkName e.g. 2015-10-02 to 2015-10-04 SomePlaceName
Putting the date in that order makes it sort chronologically as you want. One example has '7d' which could mean that the collection contains photos over 7 days, you could use other letters for longer periods. I tried adding the start and end date which works fine if you don't mind a longer name.
Extra details:
For those that don't know, a Lightroom catalog is actually an SQLite database. I was curious about how long you could make a collection name. I checked online and I couldn't find any evidence about limits. I checked the database and it had no limit set, I think it might be based on the Limits In SQLite. For a quick test I was able to create a collection name with 1000 character which is way more than any sensibly named collection would ever need :). This means you could put as much information into a collection name as you like.
Originally by user19037. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user19037
10y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom collections can be sorted by name or by kind, not by a custom date field for the collection itself. So the practical solution is to include the start date in the collection name so alphabetical sorting becomes chronological.
Use a date-first format such as:
- 2015-10-04 SomePlaceName
- 20151004 SomePlaceName
- 2015-10-02 to 2015-10-04 SomePlaceName
- 2015-10-04 7d SomePlaceName
Putting the date in year-month-day order makes the list sort correctly. This also solves duplicate walk names, since repeating the same route on different dates will still produce unique collection names.
If you want the most recent walks at the top, you may need to reverse the sort order if Lightroom allows it in that panel; otherwise the naming convention still gives you correct chronological ordering.
For walks spanning several days, include either the start date only or a date range, depending on how much detail you want.
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